The human body evolves to the food and work we feed it.
We must begin any athletic journey rested and fueled properly.
The goal of any workout is to challenge the body just a little bit beyond what the body could previously do. Never push past the point where injury is a high risk, but always take it just a little past the comfort zone.
That challenge stimulates the body and brain to build new muscle and new mind-to-muscle connections.
The workout stimulates change, but change actually happens during rest. That’s why we must put just as much energy into rest, recovery, and nutrition if we want to meet our athletic goals.
If we skip or cheat our rest days, the body doesn’t properly recover from the previous workout. That creates two major problems.
#1. The body is pre-fatigued for the workout and the challenge level is minimized. Basically, we just won’t see progress because the body is too tired to meet previous challenge levels and so cannot push further.
#2. The pre-fatigued body is more prone to injury. That’s because the brain says “Go. We know this one.” But the tired body uses inefficient compensations to get the job done. This can result in immediate acute injury or a stealthy overuse injury that happens over time.
Every human body is different. But we are also all the same.
Each of us have a different challenge point, different limitations, and different goals.
But we are all bound by the same laws of science.
This is why a wise coach or trainer teaches their students the science as a primary lesson, and trains the student to be body-aware and self-regulate according to their own goals.
Among some of my older students who have been with me a while, it’s fun to joke around “Just do it like I do. Be better and it will just happen.” This joke is so funny because it’s a ridiculous notion to think that the intense conditioning needed for advanced skills can be taught in a day. It’s a silly way to break the frustration levels and communicate that we are all struggling with something here, and that’s just part of the athletic side of aerial arts.
We have to break up the work into parts that challenge us just enough for today. And sometimes that’s frustrating. It can be super-frustrating to be sore for days after not achieving the skill, just conditioning for it. But don’t give up here! Hang in there until you’ve had a few weeks like this. Allow yourself recovery time between training sessions. And you’ll begin to see real progress.
Don’t overschedule yourself!!!
You cannot play baseball, volleyball, or go rockwall climbing on your aerial rest days!!! That’s not a rest day!!!
That’s a recipe for a serious injury! That’s over-training.
Saying this out loud has made me unpopular a few times, but it is truth. Aerial Arts is not light, playful movement. It’s NOT a day at the park!
Aerial Arts is intense athletic work, similar to body building. We ARE body building here! It’s just for the purpose of pulling and pushing our bodies through the air instead of posing on a stage. At AerFire, we use the latest in exercise science to build safe, effective training routines for all of our students.
You completely mess up the training routine when you fail to rest on your rest days. You aren’t recovered for your next training session and it impacts your progress.
Parents, if your child wants to pursue aerial beyond beginner and recreational levels, that means making tough choices. They cannot train intermediate and advanced aerial while also juggling other sports, especially sports that are upper-body heavy.
Adults, that means planning yard work and other upper-body activites within the framework of your aerial days. Leave at least one day of rest between yard work and aerial day, for example.
Train with more brain than bicep, and you’ll progress more than you imagine possible!
What you consider a great challenge today will be your warm-up tomorrow!!!
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