They Never Said it Would Be Easy

Have you always looked at other clients in the air & thought ‘they make it look easy’? Can confirm- it’s not! With practice, patience & apparently pilates, you will get there!

This is Rachel’s story, our lovely studio member & Hammock student.

I started hammock mid October of 2017 and I was a total newbie! Other than the videos I saw on Instagram of aerialists and thinking how beautiful and graceful they looked up in the silks, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. My only inkling of how difficult hammock would be was two aerial yoga classes. Naively I thought, 'this probably won't be too bad.' Yeah... boy was I about to eat my words. Despite thinking I was in decent shape, (at the time I was doing body pump, body attack and HIIT classes at the gym 3-4 times a week and vinyasa yoga at the studio once a week), nothing prepared me for how difficult and different hammock was going to be.

It took me 5 weeks to be able to do one 'up and over' and a couple more months after that to be able to do it almost consistently. My core was weak and my upper body strength, lacking.

Fast forward to August last year, in my 4th term of hammock, and gone was my unused gym membership by that point. I was bored of the large, impersonal and cold atmosphere of the gym. So instead I decided to do 3 classes a week at the studio and thus began my foray into barre and Pilates. In conjunction with my hammock classes the difference I saw was huge!

Now I'm not taking away from the strength that I managed to build from doing hammock alone, however the gains from adding barre and Pilates into my routine was striking. Not only had I gained more core and upper body strength, I also had more control. Through barre and Pilates, I learned how to engage the muscles I needed to perform tricks. I also had more flexibility!

I went from one class a week, to three and now I'm pretty much at the studio 4-5 days a week doing 1-2 classes each day. Despite how painful and hard the classes can be, I always leave feeling stronger than when I first arrived. The classes are always fun, engaging and dynamic. I'm definitely looking forward to even more gains this year!