Whatever physical activity your child does, they need rest days and attention on proper recovery.
(This is a longer read, but this information has great impact on your children's health. Please read thoroughly and ask questions. I am happy to explain more!)
Muscle is built in any and every sport & art through the same process.
1. Stimulate growth by working muscle beyond current ability. This breaks down muscle fibers. This is why we get sore after workouts sometimes. DOMS is delayed onset muscle soreness. DOMS typically begins the day after a workout and hits a peek on day 2. It is normal for DOMS to last 2-3 days. DOMS is not required for muscle growth and does not accurately indicate how "effective" a workout is. It is normal, especially when doing new exercises, working eccentric movements, and working at a higher volume or intesity than normal.
2. Repair broken down muscle. Growth actually happens between the work. The body repairs the broken down muscle and it's bigger and stronger after recovery.
Food is the fuel and nutrients are the building blocks of muscle repair. It's vital children understand that eating a lot of nutrient dense foods will help them be less sore, recover faster, and have more energy.
Don't count calories. Do eat more protein than the minimum daily recommendations. Don't restrict food groups. Do provide tons of fruits and veggies, carbs and fats. If they crave sour candy, push the citrus fruits. If they crave salty, allow them to salt to taste on potatoes and meat. (And provide additional electrolytes like Gatorade or propel, especially in the morning and after school.)
Sleep. Science uncovers the importance of sleep more and more as we have technology to understand sleep. Our bodies do much of the work of repair (body and brain) while we sleep.
Yes, I'm giving the teenagers ammunition to argue for sleeping in! They are still growing and working as athletes. Their bodies need the sleep.
We, humans, cannot rush the process. We can control for food, sleep, water, and the volume of exercise stress we put on the body. A high level of exercise stress will take many sleeps to recover.
Understanding that, we can understand how if a child is never given rest days to recover, they are continually breaking down muscle and not rebuilding properly. This is how overuse injury happens.
If a person, child or adult, is experiencing DOMS, they should moderate physical activity until the muscles are fully recovered.
If a child does aerial arts classes 2x per week, volleyball 4x per week, dance 3x per week, and plays trombone in the marching band too, they are going injure themselves. Probably a shoulder. It's simple science. 3 out of 4 of those activities are heavy work for the shoulder. That schedule leaves no rest days in the week. The injury will probably happen serving a volley ball the day after a heavy conditioning day in aerial. The muscles in the shoulder will be broken down, stimulated for growth, and instead of recovering and growing stronger, the child is slamming a ball at full force with an arm. Boom! That's a pretty nasty shoulder injury that ends all 4 of the child's activities for a significant period of time.
The more intense the exercise, the more rest days needed for full recovery!
The more intense the exercise, the more rest days needed for full recovery!!!
Saying in italics too so everyone hears it!!!!!!! The more intense the exercise, the more rest days needed for full recovery.
And let's remember: exercising on unrecovered muscle leads to overuse injury.
This point of management of exercise science within the scope of a physical activity is why you pay me. It's my #1 to keep my students safe. It's my #2 job to teach my students how to keep their own self safe.
I have designed my aerial youth program with exercise science in mind. I am a CPT (NASM) and I have a few other certificates to go along, including Youth Exercise. I also have a bachelors degree in music education, vocal/choral. I studied child development deeply, as it pertains to learning. I use what I know to design aerial curriculum that builds strong aerial bodies while keeping the children, as whole persons, the center and most important objective in the room.
That means I teach kids to listen to their body. I won't yell, punish, or use high pressure tactics to manipulate children into working. I respect a person, at any age, who says no to a skill or drill.
I do explain the science and the progressions. Children who want to do the skill will do the work at the level they feel they can manage.
Inverting from a climb is prerequisite for every fun drop on split pole silks. It's an insanely difficult skill to condition. It will make kids sore with DOMS! But the kids work SO HARD to get it done! I don't have to use abusive means to force anyone to train. They want that fun skill, they have to do the hard conditioning work.
I do encourage! One of my goals in every class is to show the children they can manage more work than they thought. "One more try. You were so close!" With more experienced students, "keep going until you can't even do half a rep." And in that way I am teaching working to failure (if you are familiar with gym rat lingo) and that class/rehearsal is an appropriate place for failure. Failures expected in this room. Get it!
I teach children to manage fear. The fight/flight response is very real in the aerial room. If an adult yells or punishes or shames, that only trains children to ignore their own fight/flight system. We don't want that. Those kids end up being the teens who take every dare from their peers and do really dangerous things! We need our kids to keep their fight/flight system in check and learn how to work through it effectively.
That means infinite patience. I have had a few students who refused to do drops until they saw it enough times they felt comfortable trying. Then they get up into the wrap and freeze. This is normal human behavior. This is opportunity to talk the child through the fight/flight response in a controlled environment. I may stand at mat for a child for half a class, talking with them while they manage their world from atop the silk in a drop wrap. It's OK. With practice, they learn to self-manage, and they build systems and habits to manage fear. This results in teens who don't play around with stupid dares and adults who achieve amazing opportunities because they have learned to effectively manage their fear responses.
The Intermediate Youth Schedule and curriculum are designed with child development and exercise science in mind!!!
(And dance at AerFire is closely coordinated to ensure the students are working at a healthy pace, not overtraining, and recovering. Rachel and I discuss these things and build around the children in our classes.)
I didn't just randomly make the schedule. We have a skill day, a rest day, and conditioning day. Then we have several days of rest to recover from conditioning day before we repeat the process.
I aim to produce the kind of work that will result in DOMS on 2/3 of the conditioning days. The other third, we aim for endurance as we prepare pieces to perform. This mirrors the periodization work I do as a personal trainer. It's intensive athletic work!
If students are doing intense exercise in other sports on their rest days from aerial, they aren't recovering as effectively or at all.
If students are doing intense sports the day before an aerial class, I can tell. They fatigue quickly. They don't condition as effectively as they could have, which means they don't progress in their aerial skills as well.
I am trained to scan for signs of exercise fatigue. I will stop a student mid-skill if signs of fatigue indicate a potential injury. That's my #1 job.
I cannot control what happens in other sports atmosphere. If they are in DOMS from aerial and then have a sports practice with a coach who does not respect signs of fatigue, the child will certainly get an overuse injury at some point in the season. You cannot hack the human body. The science is standard for us all.
So to sum it up, if your child is juggling several other sports, that messes up the scientific work-recover process for their aerial training I've designed in the Intermediate program.
If your child wants to pursue aerial in the Intermediate and/or Advanced AerFire track, that requires limiting other sports activities.
I understand that not all kids want to focus that much on aerial. That's why we are making a schedule change summer of 2024 to have 2 options after a child graduates from beginner level.
We will maintain the Intermediate track as an intensive athletic track aimed at effective progression towards Advanced Aerial.
Advanced Aerial will launch when we have at least 3 students ready for it. Entry requires a pretty steep strength assessment. TBA. Intermediate Aerial conditioning classes train towards this achievement.
For children who wish to do a variety of sports, Recreational Youth Aerial will be designed to be less physically intensive. Understand, the Recreational track students will not progress as quickly as the Intermediate track. There are skills that will be restricted because they require intensive conditioning, and recreational students won't be doing that kind of conditioning.
Talk with your children about what they want. Talk about the natural consequences of choices. Talk about body care.
It's my desire to provide a safe aerial space for all children who want to participate at a level that fits. I know I can't provide a perfect space for every child, but the Recreational and Intermediate split will benefit many!
Consider: there is no rush to any finish line in aerial. It's OK to do Recreational aerial for a year or three and then move to Intermediate later.
Consider: when it comes to casting roles in shows, preferences will naturally be given to the students who have put the work in to build solid, safe, consistent skill. A natural consequence of working hard is achieving reward.
Consider: a child's confidence is built upon their achievements. If their energy is divided into too many parts, every sport they participate in suffers from over-scheduling. If they are driven to go to college on a volleyball scholarship, tell me and go Recreational in aerial. I want to support their goals!
Last bit: Most overuse injury doesn't happen in the workout. It happens a day or two after. The muscle fibers are broken down, ready for recovery, and instead of recovering one swift push or throw or kick takes the broken down muscle fibers and tears it into a full strain.
If a person keeps going on a strain, that can quickly result in a need for surgery and a life-long disabling injury. I work so hard to avoid that & teach each person to avoid that!
This long, long post was written to urge parents to moderate children's schedules to avoid a sad lifelong outcome. We all want to build the kids up strong!
Let's keep these conversations going this spring so each child can make an active decision as summer approaches. I'm here to support both Recreational level and Intermediate level choices. Both are valid and good.
Leave questions in the comments or email them to info@aerfire309.com educating on exercise science is my fun! Let's do this!!!
Your Empress of the Air,
Paula