Practical things to do at home to help your return to aerials

We all need some rest and relaxation or sometimes we need time away from our aerial practice. If you haven’t already, you may like to read: "Safe, Smooth and Joyful return to aerials" for a more in depth discussion.

If you find yourself ready to get back into things, here is a list of practical suggestions to do outside of the studio, to assist your readiness to return to the air.

1. Ready your grip strength - “wring out” a towel

We ask a lot of our hands and forearms for our aerial practice. Upon return, the forearms will likely be the first body part to fatigue. Mitigate this by spending a few minutes on a few occasions working your grip strength in preparation to return. Try to mimic the squeezing and twisting of your hands on the silks but with your hands on the towel, ideally until you feel some fatigue.

How Many? 10 second squeezing with a 10 sec rest, 10x left and right, repeat the whole process 3x

2. Gentle activity - walking, star jumps or other cardio

If you’ve been relaxing to the max - why not do a 20mins brisk walk or even 5mins of star jumps on a few occasions to prepare to return. Aerials is pretty intense exercise - in fact it’s high intensity interval training. So any cardio or strength preparation will cushion your return as well as probably make you feel great on the day that you do it.

Here is a Quick Cardio Warm Up

3. Gentle stretching - get limber

There are so many easy, short and free yoga or stretching videos on youtube, get a mental rest and hopefully relieve some tension with a stretch. Any activity will be helpful for getting back on the silks.

Here is an easy follow along Joint Mobility and Gentle Stretch Video

4. Review your notes and/or videos

Do some mental revision on the basics. Focus on moves you have mastery off and do imagined revision. This will give you some go to moves to do which you remember for when you return, and hopefully this will give you some inspiration in the interim. Just to reiterate - don’t choose your challenging skills for this - leave those for once you’re back in your groove.

5. For the keen beans - Do some push ups.

After your gentle activity and/or stretching, chuck in a few sets of push ups to remember the burn. If you can, start in full plank for the first few push up, or drop to knees after the first lower down. Keep going until you can’t lift any more then hover just off the ground for as long as you can. Whether you do 3 or 30, it’s about starting, not how many you do. Try 3 sets with rests in between, and please remember to warm up your wrists and give your arms and shoulders a stretch after.

Rebecca Bilyard

is an aerial arts performer and teacher with over 10 years of experience. She is a member and the Lead teacher of the Aracnation Collective.