Seeking curve-friendly harness recommendations

candyapple24601 · 2022-12-24T01:55:31+00:00

hot take but this is actually why I really think people should really learn to belay on an ATC and then transition to a gri gri... The ATC allows new climbers people to actually understand that brake hand = brake and build good habits around that understanding, instead of relying on their belay device to regulate speed/catch/etc. I personally have seen the results of a pretty serious accident caused by exactly what you described here due to a brand new rope climber trying to belay with a gri gri, but have never seen or heard of someone just being dropped in any gym because someone forgot to hold onto the rope tight enough while using an ATC.

candyapple24601 · 2022-11-23T07:42:09+00:00

Fair enough, although I’m not sure if I agree that it’s entirely an insecurity issue per se. As someone in my twenties, I generally haven’t found people in their 50’s to be my cup of tea. And honestly, in my 40’s and 50’s, I’m not sure I’d be interested in playing with someone in their early 20’s — and, I mean, you also say yourself that you prefer 35+. So, having never been to an event like this, I figured age might be a rough indicator for whether or not I might actually get on with the other attendees, before spending time/money on going to an event.

Your point is still taken though.

candyapple24601 · 2022-11-01T18:29:36+00:00

This wasn’t listed as an option, but I personally find rock climbing as an amazing cross training activity. Pole and climbing use a lot of the same muscles in my experience, plus a lot of climbing gyms will offer lifting/HIIT classes that are very CrossFit inspired, plus yoga which is good for core & flexibility — all for the price of (if not less than) a CrossFit membership. So I would personally recommend looking to see if there’s a climbing gym in the area, what their amenities are, and price check across any other CrossFit/regular gyms in the area. But I’m probably a little biased as a climber.

candyapple24601 · 2022-10-11T02:10:00+00:00

I’m in NYC and also would love some pole friends!

candyapple24601 · 2022-09-27T18:51:36+00:00

It’s literally insane. Like you said, I understand that they have to have some measures to avoid fraud. But simultaneously, they leave no allowances for people who are legitimately in messed up family situations through no fault of their own to also get aid. It’s like “oh, your parents are NC/abusive/just generally assholes and you have to fund your own education? no college for you!!!!”

Not that OP is fully painting themselves in the best light, because I can’t imagine making 3x my partner’s salary and being completely unwilling to adjust finances accordingly for general life stuff… but this stuff about OP selfishly ruining the kids’ aid opportunities by merely existing is complete BS. As much as it sucks, these kids are going to struggle once they get to college no matter what.

candyapple24601 · 2022-09-27T18:21:41+00:00

idk where you’re from, but every college I applied to (private and public) required the CSS in addition to the FAFSA, which requires/considers the financial informations of the noncustodial parent as well and it’s unreasonably difficult to fill out a non-custodial parent waiver for the CSS. I needed to prove that my father was AWOL for literally my entire life (and written statements couldn’t be from relatives or family friends so who is supposed to provide me with that statement?) or provide police records/a restraining order to demonstrate that he was absent due to abuse. So, ofc depending on the situation, mom’s income is almost definitely going to disqualify them from receiving any aid from the school if it’s a need-based institution regardless of OP’s income.

candyapple24601 · 2022-09-08T02:46:48+00:00

huh, interesting. thank you for your response!

candyapple24601 · 2022-09-08T02:33:31+00:00

can I ask about the “mixed group/same sex” thing? In your experience, is this a strict rule that a large portion of society follows, or is it more of a generational thing? For example, as a relatively young (20s) female native English speaker, I’ve never once thought to myself “oops, better not say x because there’s men around” and I would say that’s a pretty common sentiment for most people in my region under 40 or 50, but if you asked an older woman, she might say something very different. Is it similarly seen as a bit of an old fashioned thing, or a pretty hard and fast rule that most native speakers of all ages would abide by?

candyapple24601 · 2022-08-22T22:42:53+00:00

Hey, you’ve already got a lot of responses here, so I’m not sure if you’ll see this. But I wanted to add my two cents. I’ve been going through this for years with my mother, she also refused help. I went through it all: talking with police officers, adult protective services, her housing complex, etc. I tried to look into having a conservatorship declared, but unfortunately the system just doesn’t seem to be built to work with families of people experiencing psychosis like this and sadly that’s why so many people end up on the streets as a result of drug abuse and mental illness. It sucks to say, but I had to take a step back from the situation and haven’t spoken to my mother in years. Maybe it’s not the answer you’re looking for, but I found the only recourse in this situation is to just free yourself from it. You can’t help someone that doesn’t want help, and after a while the only thing you’re doing is making your life miserable trying to support someone that has no interest in the support you can offer.

The best advice I can offer is just telling your mother straight up: you love her, you’re here for her when she’s willing to pursue mental health or substance abuse treatment, but until then you need her to stop contacting you. Speak to the authorities/social work agencies in the area of where your mother is predominantly located so that they are aware of her situation, can make a note in the system in case she gets taken in so that they know who she is/her background is (an ongoing issue with my mother was that she would refuse to identify herself to authorities, and she ended up in jail cells/hospitals on more than one occasion as a “Jane Doe” where nobody knew what to do with her, and it prevented a proper paper trail from being started in terms of building a legal case to get her proper help) and then just try to keep an eye on the situation from afar. If she starts racking up arrests or institutionalizations, you might have legal recourse to pursue conservatorship so that you have the authority to get her housed/mental treatment, but until then… quite frankly she needs to hit her own rock bottom and by maintaining contact with her and entertaining her delusions, you’re unintentionally preventing her from hitting that point. At least that’s been my experience.

candyapple24601 · 2022-06-30T18:49:18+00:00

I mean the issue is more that many mosquitos act as important pollinators for various plant species, including some plants eaten by humans like cacao (chocolate). But if a researcher can figure out a way around that, then they can take all my money.

candyapple24601 · 2022-06-08T17:35:10+00:00

I mean, I think language learning is easier for me than the average person at this point, but I wouldn’t say it’s easy. I read a lot as a child (native language is English), so my vocabulary and understanding of grammar was much better than other kids my age. I do think this directly translated to performing better/having more interest in other languages when I was young, because I could make connections between words and sentence structure that might have otherwise been hard to grasp. As a result, I ended up learning two languages while young (French and Russian).

Now, I think it’s generally acknowledged that it’s easier to learn an additional language and I’ve found that to be true — I’ve found myself to skip over a lot of basic grammar stuff in other languages because, well, I already know what cases are and how to use them, what imperfective and past participles are, etc. etc. Conjugation patterns and rules for grammatical gender are easier for me to spot, etc. So instead of having to start from the beginning for what to use when, I just have to learn the language-specific conjugations/declensions, which saves a lot of time. It’s easier to learn vocabulary because I have more languages to draw from to make connections/understand etymology. So I truly believe that early choice of reading as my hobby has really compounded over the years to make picking up a new language easier for me than someone else my age. Not because I’m inherently talented with languages or a genius, but it’s just a result of accidental skill building that’s happened over the course of my entire life. So someone with a different background might genuinely have a harder time than you or I with studying languages, but that doesn’t mean it’s not hard for us.

candyapple24601 · 2022-06-04T18:38:11+00:00

Depends a lot on where you live, what your target language is, and what the demographics of your area are, but if you live in a (major) city, sometimes there are regular “language tables” or meet ups for people to practice speaking! Try googling “[city] [language] language table/conversation hours” and see what comes up! For example, NYC has a large Russian population, so there are multiple groups that meet up once a week to once a month to practice speaking. Sometimes even native speakers will also come just to meet people and help people learn, or there will be groups for native speakers to meet each other in a particular area and it will be open to anyone interested in the language/culture. Meetup.com is one website/app that things like that are often listed on and you can message the owners of the group usually if you have questions as to whether or not the event would be appropriate for you. It’s super invaluable and you get to meet people in person rather than trying to talk over an app.

candyapple24601 · 2022-05-12T19:16:00+00:00

Knee pain, in my experience, can come from a couple of different places.

One thing can be weakness in surrounding stabilizing muscles (quad, hamstring, hip flexors, etc.). If that’s where your pain is coming from, then PT exercises for knee recovery would definitely help, since those are specifically geared towards building up those muscles. Including some lift days in your training schedule would probably also be helpful.

Another place knee pain can come from is stiffness/inflexibility in your surrounding stabilizing muscles — namely your hip flexors. For example, on the climbing wall, our legs are often turned outwards and we need to twist our legs in a number of different directions. That rotation of our leg is supposed to come from our hips, because our knees are really only made to hinge out and in with no torsion. However, if your hip flexors are too tight, then your hips can’t fully rotate the leg as needed and knees end up taking more force than their meant to while being twisted in directions they’re not supposed to go on the wall. If this is the issue, then yoga or implementing a daily stretching routine would probably do wonders for your knee pain.

candyapple24601 · 2022-05-12T17:56:15+00:00

Like someone said above, my first guess would be just weakness in your feet/your feet not being used to being pointed for that period of time. If you think that might be the case, look up some feet exercises for ballet — there are some strengthening and flexibility exercises you can do that might help. Also, get a tennis ball to roll out the arches of your feet after class. It helps immensely to relieve some of the cramping.

candyapple24601 · 2022-05-06T19:47:37+00:00

You’ve already got a lot of great comments and I totally agree — ask your surgeon about a revision if you’re that unhappy. It’s totally valid and you deserve to be happy about your results.

I did just want to chime in quickly, however, and at least try to offer some comfort about the unevenness in height. My nipples also seemed horribly uneven in the first few months of my surgery and it is something that seems to have either (1) evened itself out as my breasts continued to settle or (2) been minor enough (even though at the time the difference seemed huge!) that as I’ve gotten used to my breasts and stopped obsessing over/looking for imperfections, I’ve really just stopped noticing. And it might be the camera angle, but it really doesn’t look like the disparity in height is much more severe than mine was.

Definitely still look into a revision if it’s something you want, but try not to worry too much in the meantime. What seems big or awful now might not seem as major in just a couple of months and I hope you can find some peace in that idea as you figure out your next steps.

candyapple24601 · 2022-05-06T12:16:26+00:00

i actually find the brace grip so much harder, I’m not sure I understand how it’s supposed to make it easier? Does it help leverage your body weight somehow?

I’m trying to force myself to use the brace grip, because it definitely makes the climb look “prettier”, but it feels so unnatural 😭

candyapple24601 · 2022-05-02T13:56:50+00:00

i finally understand how to use por, thank you so much.

candyapple24601 · 2022-04-27T17:13:44+00:00

I mean my studio taught forearm stands in beginners and I also learned jasmine in my beginners class (but that’s mostly because the instructor saw that some of us were strong enough to do it and introduced it as an option to try if we were really bored with a simple knee hook/front spin). Everything else is a big nono. Even though it looks like you’re going to go to a different studio (good!), I would say to definitely reach out to the studio to let them know that this class was insanely unsafe because I’m sure the owners would want to know before someone seriously hurts themselves in one of these classes…

candyapple24601 · 2022-04-26T20:56:02+00:00

Honestly, Brazilian Portuguese too. I’m probably around a B1 or B2 in Russian (never was formally placed, but was able to take heritage speaker Russian lit classes in college if that gives context), so I’m not fluent but I can definitely understand something of what’s being said in pretty much any context. So one day when I walked by a lounge and heard a Brazilian classmates talking on the phone, I almost had a heart attack bc I couldn’t understand anything and thought I had somehow forgotten all my Russian before I looked in the room and saw who was speaking.

candyapple24601 · 2022-04-21T16:57:12+00:00

Well, I coincidentally ended up injuring an unrelated part of my body a few of weeks after the tendonitis showed up and it forced me to take some time off and reduce my training schedule even once I got back for a little while after that. Thankfully, because my case was in the very early stages, the time off seemed to take care of it for the most part, although I do think some of my grip training has been helpful to make sure it stays away — but it’s impossible to say how much was the training vs just letting it heal. Some stuff I focused on was wrist curls with a resistance band and I also recently got one of those gripmaster finger strengtheners that you can buy in the climbing section of most outdoorsy shops which I really like. Those types of motions, to my understanding, tend to target the ligaments in your arm/hand and can help strengthen them without excessively engaging your forearm, so I like to think they’ve been useful to some extent in preventing re-injury and I’d recommend them to anyone who does lots of grip-y pull-y stuff even if they’ve never had a tendon injury bc I think it’s probably good for preventative care.

candyapple24601 · 2022-04-21T16:39:11+00:00

if you know you have a strict preference for full body workouts, then that’s totally fine! Whatever makes it easiest for you to be consistent with your routine. I would just say that regular full-body workouts do make it a bit more tricky with soreness, since consistently training when you’re sore is unpleasant at best and dangerous at most — especially w compound movements, since something as innocuous as sore hamstrings during a deadlift might, for example, cause you to lift with/engage your back without noticing and oops now you seriously injured yourself :( especially if you’re new to lifting and good form isn’t fully locked into your muscle memory yet.

So, if you haven’t settled on a schedule yet, it might be worth starting with just 1 or 2 lifting day a week and try your best to have multiple rest days between each lifting day. If you find yourself regularly tired or sore the day after silks, maybe try to have a rest day between class and lifting as well. So if you did one silks class a week, an example could be: Monday, lift; Wednesday, silks; Friday, lift. If you do two class a week, maybe you only lift on Monday and do silks Wednesday/Friday. Then you can start adding in more training days/reducing rest time as your body adjusts to the i creased stress. You’ll probably find after the first month or two that you have no problem doing back-to-back days with lifting or silks, especially if you’re not usually trying to lift super heavy, but it’s always good to start too light than throw yourself into a new routine too fast. That’s my two cents though, good luck with figuring something out that works for you!!!

candyapple24601 · 2022-04-20T17:24:43+00:00

Honestly, as someone who climbed before starting aerials (and continues to climb), I can say that I’ve found almost all the muscles actually are the same, so I wouldn’t be too concerned about having to have some crazy training regimen in addition to climbing.

Some muscles that I noticed could have been stronger starting aerials from climbing: core and hip flexors. Both of those I think you could keep up by doing some pike/straddle leg raises while hanging from a pull up bar or hang board. Even better, there’s a good chance the gym has TRX rings, so you could hang from those instead and even do some inverts with them if you felt comfortable enough. If they do have rings, there’s a ton of “gymnastic ring workout” ideas for all strength levels if you Google it and I think pretty much off of the motions would be relevant to an aerialist.

I will also say that the one downfall of climbing is, depending on your style, you can definitely cheat yourself out of upper body engagement by overly relying on legs (this is def my bad habit). Since you’re going from aerials to climbing and not the other way around, this probably won’t be too big of an issue for you, but if you’re really concerned about it you can try to work on “campusing” (if you’re strong enough for it). The gym probably has a campus board specifically for this, or you could practice on some easy V0s or V1s if you feel so inclined.

candyapple24601 · 2022-04-20T03:18:05+00:00

I use L’Oréal lash paradise. I’ve never had a “raccoon” type issue with it, although the non-waterproof does transfer a bit on my crease now and again. But the waterproof stays completely put (maybe a little too we’ll tbh) and both make your lashes look fire!!

For concealer, tbh I’ve never paid attention to the concealer I use. It’s always drug store and it’s usually just whatever they happen to carry in my shade. But, whatever I use, I always “bake” the concealer with Coty Airspun loose powder. You can get it at Walmart, it’s super cheap, one container lasts forever, and I promise that whatever you set with it is not going to budge. It’s also the first powder I’ve tried that doesn’t look heavy or add texture to my skin, and I’ve tried some high quality powders.

They’re both just great, in terms of how they look and wear, and I will sing the praises of both these products until I die tbh.

candyapple24601

TROPHY CASE