I’m totally in love with aerial fitness. I’ve been taking aerial hoop and trapeze classes weekly for about the past 6 months at Off the bat, I’m gonna say I didn’t technically do aerial EVERY day of the week. But it was a week of related exercises plus 1 rest day so I’m going to say it still counts!
Monday – Spinning pole (elementary-intermediate)
ClassPass: Ecole de Pole, Camden
My first class of the week was spinning pole in Camden. The location is a bit tucked away in a back street so it was kinda difficult to find in the dark but it was a nice little studio. The instructor was really great, very encouraging and lovely. Her manner and her voice really reminded me of Julie Andrews and I mentally gave her the nickname of Mary Poppins of Pole. She taught us some really cool combos. Even though my friend and I hadn’t done pole in a long time, I think elementary-intermediate level was still fine for us since we’ve been doing a lot of strength and conditioning for aerial hoop.If you have motion sickness, spinning pole might not be for you. But I really loved the pretty spins and luckily didn’t feel any sickness. I found that pole uses a lot more arm strength than hoop. I feel like maybe hoop is the easiest discipline in aerial fitness because there’s more area to play with and you also have different options to rest certain body parts while still being in the hoop. With pole, you have to be constantly grabbing and holding on the entire time you’re in the air. There’s no way to sit prettily to regain your breath and anything you do on the pole you have to engage fully with your muscles. Plus you have the added irritation of sweaty hands so you have to keep wiping the pole so you don’t slip. It’s really really hard! Gravity is not your friend. I felt like my dominant arm and shoulder had a massive wake-up call for the week. Despite that, I really liked the fun combos our instructor taught us. All in all we really enjoyed this class, which is why we booked on again for next week!
Tuesday – Contortion
Gymbox
Not technically aerial because there is no flying involved, but flexibility is a key part in aerial fitness so it’s an important aspect to train! Although the name of the class sounds really intense, we don’t do advanced contortion exercises, it’s more basic and we focus on stretches to get front splits, middle splits, and back-bends. This week we stretched for our middle splits. I’ve gotten a lot closer to the ground than when I first started, but still a long way to go… I thought I had made some new progress this week but actually when I checked my stories archive on insta, there’s not much visible difference.Wednesday – Spinning pole (beginners)
ClassPass: Kelechnekoff, Peckham
This time I booked onto a beginners spinning pole class. This was partly because I needed to find a class that didn’t clash with some other prior commitments. The class was at Kelechnekoff in Peckham. It was slightly easier to find but Citymapper took me on some ‘interesting’ walk through some dark streets and a quiet park. The classes are held in a community centre which looks like it’s converted from a Victorian school building. The entrance wasn’t lit so I thought I was in the wrong place! You have to ring up to be let in, then you have to wait in the reception area until class or until someone lets you in through the second doors. I think I was the first to arrive for my class so there wasn’t anyone else around. The reception area was lit but it was a bit creepy being alone there! 100% sure that place would be haunted if you stayed there overnight haha. Luckily some other people showed up for the class and livened it up until class. It’s quite a small studio so for spinning pole, you have to be extra careful in case you kick the wall / other people / yourself. I found 2 ‘safe’ spots in the room where I could stand out of the reach of any stray spinning legs while I waited my turn.We learnt some basic moves while spinning like the storm pose, chair pose and back spin. I don’t know if I got all those names right… I felt like this really worked out my arms again. It was a little frustrating to not be really good at the basic moves though, especially after quite a progressive session in the elementary class I took on Monday. I’m just impatient! I guess the lesson here is you really have to get the foundations down first, doh. I was really struggling to master the push-and-pull for the arms. Still an enjoyable class and the classmates were all very friendly and supportive. I could tell that they’re all very close and have a good vibe together so if you go as regular, it’s definitely a place for making new friends.
Thursday – Aerial silks
ClassPass: Flying Fantastic, Battersea
I’ve always wanted to try aerial silks! This is the one that I really wanted to progress to after doing hoop. Personally, it always seemed like the hardest out of them all because you have to deal with all the regular suspects of aerial fitness, plus you have to not slip out of silks and know how to knot yourself and the silks into pretzels! I took this class at Battersea’s Flying Fantastic. The venue was also a community centre but this one seemed more like a big church hall so it could carry the high silks. It was nice that this class was for all levels because you could learn beginner stuff but also get to see some really awesome advanced stuff too. This was one of the longer classes too so I felt like you really get to try a lot of different things a few times as well as get to do a decent warm up and cool down. I thought the instructors were all really good at explaining the moves. Silks requires even more mental gymnastics with the added element of having to tie your foot into grips. I did feel like the instructors’ vibes were in general a little bit sad though? I can’t quite put my finger on why I felt that… maybe they were just super chilled?
What I wasn’t expecting from silks is the pain in your feet. The silks squish your feet so much that you’re basically footbinding in the air. It hurt so much. We were also on a thinner material silk which is better for more advanced dancers, since you have less friction, but really difficult for beginners! We learnt to climb but it was near impossible as a newbie to do it on our slippery silk. When we tried the thicker one, it was much squisher and grippy, so it was a lot easier to do all the things we learnt! We tried out a few different moves like figurehead (like the statue at the front of a ship), big walk back, inversion on a sling. It was interesting to learn how to tie the silk around the feet and the techniques. Even though it was all basic moves, it was very interesting to learn since it was all brand new to me! I really loved it so I’m sad I won’t be able to take any more lessons in silks in the near future. Some day!!!
Friday – Aerial hoop
Gymbox
Aerial hoop is my weekly jam. I’ve been taking aerial hoop classes at Gymbox for 6 months now. We did a really intense warm up. Ophelie generally KILLS us in the first 15 minutes of the class with some crazy conditioning. I used to have to give up about 3 quarters of the way through but my endurance has improved since I started and I can just about keep up until the bitter end… We did the warm up completely to a Prodigy playlist and it really does get you pumped. In this class I managed to unlock a new skill! Doing a straight arm straddle was impossible for me before, but in this class, with Ophelie’s cue of’ arms-core-arms’, I was finally able to pull up into the straddle from a low hang now! So excited about this and a great round up of my week. We also learnt a new split move. My favourite aerial moves always have splits involved. Still working on getting my splits all the way to the ground.
Saturday – Static trapeze
Gymbox
My final aerial class for the week! I’ve also been doing trapeze every week since I joined Gymbox. I think trapeze is the hardest class because you have your own trapeze meaning you have so much extra time in the air. I’m always exhausted after trapeze class. It’s really one that pushes you to the limit because you need so much strength to stay in the air on such a small surface area!Adrienne’s conditioning and warm up is also very difficult. Another improvement I noticed was that I can now do 2 consecutive straddles pulling up into short arm hold. I don’t have much arm strength so I was never able to get back up after doing one straddle. It’s not a massive improvement but definitely a noticeable one! Even doing 2 in a row is super difficult!
Adrienne taught us a new trick where you wrap your leg up in the rope and then do a straddle. It looks a bit like a silks move but I think it might be more painful because the rope is so hard! This move had us puzzled for a long time because there’s a lot of twisting and turning. Definitely mental gymnastics involved. The problem is, once you make it into the twist, it pinches your leg and freaking HURTS. And then you need to figure out how to unravel yourself! I was stuck for so long in absolute pain. It’s hard to stop yourself from panicking in that situation because you’re quite high off the ground, stuck, and in so much pain! Usually you can just jump down when something hurts but because I was coiled up in the rope, I was completely trapped! My irrational brain was calculating whether it would hurt more to stay in that position or just to rip my foot off to let my leg down haha. I was sooo happy to finally figure this move out! It’s so pretty, next time I need to try to do it quicker and with better flow. I only managed to do it on one side because by the time I attempted the other side, I’d lost all my grip strength. My forearms were SWOLE.
Sunday – Rest and reflect
BED
Surprisingly, I didn’t feel any muscle ache the whole week until today! Even with all the intense upper body workout I was doing almost every day, the DOMs did not hit me until now, and also not very hard! I take that as a good sign that my muscles are getting used to holding my body weight and that I’m getting stronger. I feel like the strength and improvement really showed on my final two days. Maybe trying out the other disciplines forced me to use my muscles in slightly different ways which helped me to unlock some of the skills that I’d never been able to do previously? Or maybe doing a whole week of aerial put me in a hyper focused mindset which helped me reach new heights on my final days of this week since I wanted to end on a high?Regardless, I definitely felt a marked improvement in my performance after this week. It could be a coincidence and maybe my new achievements were from my accumulated training over the last 6 months. However, I feel like whatever the real reason was, this intense week somehow was the catalyst that helped to push my progress to new levels. So, I would definitely recommend trying to give do a 1 week aerial challenge and see if you get any results!
This experience has totally made me reevaluate my opinion on fitness retreats. I was never really convinced they’d be good for actually improving your training and I just thought it was an opportunity to merge holiday with hobby. Now that I’ve seen that doing an intense week of training can really push your progress, I can totally see why people go on fitness retreats!
I feel like my aerial hoop and trapeze training did help me to pick up the other other disciplines quicker than if I hadn’t been training for a while already. Correlation is not causation and I’m definitely not saying that any of my new achievements were simply from doing one week of classes, but after this week I did feel like I had a ‘level-up’ moment. If you’re in a progression plateau period, doing an intense week of aerial fitness might help lift you out of the rut or help you unlock new skills like it helped me!