Fostering a sustainable practice

Are you interested in training hard and hurting less?  Do you envision yourself in your sixties  balancing on your hands, or on your friends' hands or feet?   If the answer to either of these questions is a resounding "yes" read on for a few helpful tips on creating a sustainable acrobatics practice.

1.  Get regular self care:  Whether it is a monthly massage, daily foam rolling, or hot baths followed by soul-shaking yodeling, spend time on a regular basis taking care of your body and your mind.

Cupping to relieve shoulder pain, done by a physical therapist 

Note - if you are having pain when you practice - STOP, and get help.  Pushing through pain without knowing the source of it rarely leads to good results.  As aging athletes we rely upon a network of practitioners to keep us pushing hard and suffering less.  Here's a list of various modalities that we utilize to stay in the practice:

• Physical therapy:  to help diagnose the source of your pain and functional limitations, give corrective exercises to help you return to your chosen activity, offer manual therapy techniques to help you meet training and functional goals
• Massage therapy:  to maintain health of your muscles and maintain peace in your body mind
• Accupuncture:   for pain management; nervous system regulation; joint stabilization for AC and SC joint; dry needling for trigger point work; internal medicine and hormonal regulation 
• Chiropractic care:  for joint mobilization/adjustments to correct alignment

2.  Cross train for Acro with strength training: Strength training is a vital component to injury prevention and skill progression.  For those of you already doing this - good job and keep it up! If you don't know how to get stronger - hire a strength coach.  

3.  Work with a professional coach:  While jams are fun and YouTube and Instagram are groovy, there is no more efficient way to progress your practice than to work with a coach.  An experienced coach can break down a complex move into attainable steps and guide you through the learning process following the stages of motor learning.  If you don't know a coach - ask around ... they are out there, and they are waiting for you!

4.  Rest:  It is well known that resting improves recovery, and is therefore a necessary component of every training program.  Adequate sleep AND breaks from training are both important!  

TJ shows us how it's done

With these long-term principles in mind, let's talk about how to manage a single practice session.  

1.  Warm up before you practice:

• Before you jump on someone's feet (or lift someone in the air) - warm up your body!  Dance, skip, walk or jog in circles, ride your bike ... do something to increase your heart rate and increase blood flow throughout your body.  
• Do a few exercises that target the muscles we use in Acro.  You can see my favorite shoulder exercises in this previous blog post.  Note the use of the foam roller.  I use the foam roller before, sometimes during, and often after a training session.  This helps keep soft tissues extensible and can, over time and with consistent use, help improve flexibility.  
• Warm up your core ... there are a million and one core exercises - in recent years I have focused on doing exercises with an "imprint" position or "flat" lumbar spine as this position is more relevant to my style of handstands.  Whatever you choose - make sure your mechanics are clean, and you aren't experiencing any pain in your lower back.  And, for the love of your body, unless you are a pilates expert, stop doing aggressive V-ups as a "core" warm up.  

2.  Warm up with a few partner calibrations:  Ariel and I have a fairly basic routine that we have done for years; we start with that routine then progress to calibrations specific to our chosen focus for the session.

• For foot to hand, we have a series of progressions that we start with, EVERY TIME.  
• For hand to hand, we start with 5 reps of each:  jump to low, tempo to low, jump to reverse, tempo to extended reverse.  We then choose a few other variations as a focal point for that session.  We warm up our grip, modify it as needed, check in along the way, and STOP our practice if one or the other of us feels a strain in the wrists.

3.  Practice and play to your heart's content:  You may want to choose a focus for each session; you may want to just wing it... or perhaps a mixture of both.  Not a lot of rules here - just remember to keep yourself and your Acro partners safe.  Avoid training to failure - working to failure in a partner practice may mean someone gets dropped or someone gets fallen upon - not good.  

4.  Save at least 10 minutes at the end of each session for self care:  While admittedly Ariel and I aren't perfect at this, we do put concerted efforts into taking care of each other on a regular basis with stretching, bodywork, or flying therapeutics.  The physical relief is great; the energetic care taking is perhaps even more beneficial to our partnership.

Finishing a 3-day intensive with therapeutics

We hope this information is helpful!  Join us at Bay Acro on April 18th for Shoulder rehab for Acrobats to learn about maintaining the health and strength of your shoulders. Stay tuned next month for a deeper dive into keeping the wrists happy and healthy.  Keep training, stay safe, and see you soon ...

Registration link for all workshops:  bayacro.com

Upcoming workshops (with FB event links):

Shoulder rehab for Acrobats with Liz:  April 18th
Beginner Acro Intensive:  April 28th-30th
Series 3:  POPS!:  May 2nd, 9th and 16th
Semi-private coaching:  June 6th
Master's Handstand Workshop with Ariel:  June 20th