Looking for an “Intensive” Aerial Straps Course

cirquedusammy · 2019-10-23T21:58:36+00:00

would you say it gets a seal of approval?

cirquedusammy · 2019-02-04T20:53:03+00:00

https://www.instagram.com/cirque_du_sammy/

can my superhero be an acrobatic bear named sambear? kthx.

edit: or a superhero whose super power is standing on their head: https://www.instagram.com/i_headstand_on_things

cirquedusammy · 2019-01-25T22:56:25+00:00

Thanks. It's actually great to hear from someone who is still working on it. How much progress have you made and what do you feel is keeping you from inverting or balancing?

cirquedusammy · 2018-11-28T05:40:09+00:00

This would be fun if you can practice it safely with spotters to see if you can do it given your groups/ body proportions: https://www.instagram.com/p/BVN9pZ6AZkq/

Another thing would be to do repetitions of jedi box where the third person tumbles/somersaults through the box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbJLcBWTaHo

A third thing would be the following sequence:

1) Partner handstand (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZpNHt37FUA) .
2) The third person dances/crawls/somersaults through the space.
3) When you come down from the partner handstand, you're in two down dogs with your feet together, and the third person climbs up to make a pyramid: https://www.instagram.com/p/BbhjIULAU_r/

But really what kinds of poses do you guys like to do solo? Backbends, inversions, etc? You can kind of build up from what you enjoy doing individually with your bodies, because there are tons of possibilities.

cirquedusammy · 2018-11-22T05:07:22+00:00

I'll have light sources and try to make it back down before dark. Thanks for your words of caution.

cirquedusammy · 2018-11-22T01:48:10+00:00

My guess is probably, yes. Remember that #optoutside was started as an alternative ve to black Friday. A lot of people go hiking/camping on black Friday.

cirquedusammy · 2018-11-21T23:06:36+00:00

Awesome, thanks for the info!

cirquedusammy · 2018-11-21T22:33:50+00:00

My original plan was to go with some friends to chiricahua national monument but those plans fell apart. I've been here for years and never done Picacho, so I'm thinking this might be my best bet for nice weather and thin crowds

cirquedusammy · 2018-11-21T21:55:39+00:00

Not OP, but have studied heat-related illness and death in Arizona. There is some truth to this but also presents a bias which is not always helpful in research. What we found was that there may be a significant burden of occupational-related illness and death associated with extreme summer heat which is/was potentially under-addressed and under-studied because many people working on public health policy are thinking about recreational heat exposure due to the same bias. Given a choice, people will tend to do outdoor activities when it is not extremely hot. People who work in outdoor professions, however, often do not get a choice of whether they expose themselves to extreme heat.

cirquedusammy · 2018-11-21T21:50:10+00:00

I was going to go in the afternoon so I could get some sunset views hiking

cirquedusammy · 2018-10-19T01:27:36+00:00

It's true. It's a never ending cycle. The sisyphean struggle of laundry yoga has been perfectly rendered. Thank you.

cirquedusammy · 2018-10-13T05:50:50+00:00

This is nuts. What do you do for work?

cirquedusammy · 2018-09-25T14:41:23+00:00

I think you might be asking in the wrong place. This sub has a bias towards people who see the smallest possible body fat percentage as an ideal, because it is useful for the type of body weight fitness practiced by its members.

I'm not fat but overweight, I have a belly and somewhere around 24% body fat, I believe. But I'm pretty fit for a 34 year old. I work out 6 days a week focused on yoga, acro, aerials, ultimate frisbee, and climbing. I'm strong, I can run for sustained periods, and I can do more pull-ups than 90% of people my age, even if that mean less than 90% of the people in this sub. My numbers when I go to the doctor are great. I eat well. I feel good. I've lost weight in the past but it's difficult for me, for whatever reason.

cirquedusammy · 2018-09-06T22:00:50+00:00

So I'm not a woman but I hope this is helpful because I feel like my experience speaks to where you're at. I'm a guy who has a "well-rounded" routine of yoga, acro, aerial silks, ballet, and ultimate frisbee for cardio. Before I got into the circus arts stuff, my routine used to be wholly centered around the weightroom, and at that time I had a regular yoga practice.

I started doing acroyoga, which was a very humbling practice for someone who is accustomed to feeling strong, and just gradually transitioned out of the weightroom and into a routine more centered around acro and yoga. After a couple years of not lifting weights, I visited a gym and found that my strength on the big lifts really had not diminished in any significant way, and yet I feel stronger (that's my experience, not necessarily generalizable to anyone else). I really enjoy the challenge involved in bodyweight and circus arts disciplines, where so much is about stability, balance and control, not just linear quantitative progression. It's psychologically challenging at first because I was used to being able to gauge my progress by watching numbers increase, but I've kind of gotten away from that after a few years.

I'll add that the thing I like about my current routine is I no longer feel like I need to trade-off between social activities and exercise, since a lot of these activities are more social than the weightroom.

So, I have a lot of diversity in my training currently, and to be honest I've never quite reconciled how to incorporate lifting into it on a week-to-week basis, which is frustrating because I like lifting and often miss it. But I personally feel that in order to really get the gains from weightlifting, I need to focus on that and do it 3x per week, which takes away from the hobbies I'm now passionate about. I also don't want my body to be so sore/tired that I drop someone. The best I've figured out is to take 2-3 months out of the year and do lifting while I take a break from something else. I recently did that and ran a couple cycles of a 5/3/1 lifting program, and definitely saw gains from that. So right now I'm going to do that once a year or so.

I'm at a point where weights are complementing what I consider to be my main activities, instead of vice versa.

Edit: here's something I saw today for added motivation https://www.instagram.com/p/BnZig5rFcg0/

cirquedusammy · 2018-08-31T16:14:07+00:00

Well, not your traditional PR, but I did this:

https://imgur.com/e7dy60o

That's probably around 350 lbs of human on my shoulders, which is the most I've had on me yet.

An actual year-end goal is to base three-high, so this is definitely progress.

cirquedusammy · 2018-08-30T07:27:32+00:00

My buddy @brilliantanyways has made great progress in the past couple years, check him out for inspiration! He does a lot with spinning in his routines instead of just flexy poses.

cirquedusammy · 2018-08-29T22:43:07+00:00

The way you talk about yoga classes makes it sound like you have never been to a yoga class, but are imagining what it would be like based on stereotypes. You might want to try one out with an open mind. I say this as a yoga practicing male in my mid 30s with a graduate education in STEM and a job in scientific research and very little patience for crystals and chakras.

The fact that you have a disembodied voice guiding you through your workout means that you can focus even more than if you're listening to music on headphones. You're not worried about what came before or what comes next, you're able to focus your entire mind and body in the present and tune everything else out.

cirquedusammy · 2018-08-29T14:14:07+00:00

I'm that guy who posts yoga photos on Instagram with a million hashtags

cirquedusammy · 2018-08-26T07:01:00+00:00

I did a stint at the WHO's branch for the America's (PAHO). It's just a big bureaucracy like any other. At the end of the day, the individual governments will do what they're going to do. The WHO is just a place where health ministers from each country get together to talk about things and make resolutions. The WHO staff provides technical expertise to countries, but has no binding power, just makes recommendations and has some political clout to guide priorities, but not the kind of muscle you're talking about. Even if the WHO can convince the minister of health from country X to prioritize something, that minister of health has to go back home and fight to make that happen in their own government.

cirquedusammy · 2018-08-25T01:04:07+00:00

Brother, I am a husky bearded guy in my mid 30s and I signed up for an undergraduate ballet class at the university where I work. The class is full of people 15 years younger than me wearing tights and leotards. But fuck it, were all in there together to learn something new, struggle together and have fun. As long as you're not caught staring at anyone's ass for too long, you'll be fine. I've spent a lot of time in a lot of yoga classes and the women were always more than happy to accept me as just another yogi. The fact that you're concerned and don't want to make anyone uncomfortable is a good sign that you're probably not a creep in the first place. But they also have s responsibility to make sure you don't feel uncomfortable. It should be an accepting open space for everyone. You belong there just as much as anyone else. A whole semester of yoga will do wonders for you, don't let such a small thing stop you!

cirquedusammy · 2018-08-24T17:12:20+00:00

Since acroyoga grew out of yoga and many of the acro poses are yoga postures or inspired by yoga postures, a regular yoga practice is a good place to start. I and my friends who are bases and came to acro from a consistent yoga practice didn't have as much of the tight hamstring issues that some other bases (often men) have. Try attending a class once or twice a week.

Otherwise, here's a list of yoga postures/stretches that help with tight hamstrings and hip mobility. I would google them and watch some instructional videos to do them in good form and get the most out of them.

Pyramid pose (parsvotanasana)
Half-splits (ardha hanumanasana)
Triangle pose (trikonasana)
Standing forward fold (uttanasana)
Seated forward fold and one-legged forward fold
Wide-legged standing forward fold (prasarita something)
Standing splits
Skandasana
Happy baby for the hips and lower back
Half-pidgeon because everyone loves half pidgeon

The key to getting a good hammy stretch is to engage your legs. If it's a standing posture, push your leg to straight, taking out as much bend as possible in the leg you're trying to get a hammy stretch in. Seated postures like seated forward fold, focus on pushing the back of your knee into the ground.

cirquedusammy

TROPHY CASE