After (B)East Coast, I took a couple of days to rest and then I was more than ready to go back to training. The event inspired me to train harder and push myself mentally and physically. Not to give up so easily, but to keep trying until I get something. I don't know if it's this renewed drive to get a little farther outside my comfort zone, or that everyone is feeling a little playful, but I've been having so much fun with my training this week. I mean, I always have fun training. But sometimes it’s a little more playtime, a little less intense workout. We’ve been getting very weird this week and experimenting with awkward movement. Definitely requires an open mind but it’s a lot of fun.
On Wednesday, we worked on air awareness. The ultimate goal was to be like a cat—if someone holds you upside down by your hands and feet and drops you from the second story window, you want to be able to correct yourself in the air and land on your feet, or hands and feet. No, they didn't actually throw us out the window to test our cat-like abilities.
We started by doing some basic tumbling—cartwheels, rolls, round-offs, etc. Then we threw in some weirdness. Cartwheel, 180, roll. Roll, 180, cartwheel. Round-off, 360, roll. Lots of twisting, jumping, tumbling and trying to confuse our bodies. We also worked on doing 180s and 360s from a higher surface to a lower surface. We were trying to train our bodies to always be square with our momentum to prevent messing up our knees, for example, by landing incorrectly. It was all a little disorienting but definitely a useful exercise.
After class, we started experimenting with what we had learned. I played on the bars a bit and then went back to tumbling. I tried to work my aerial but I kept putting my left hand down. I probably didn’t need to, but it just really wanted to touch the ground. Then I decided to stop being a wimp and work on my standing tucks. This literally took about 20 minutes. Seriously. I wandered around the room trying to convince myself to just throw it. Every time, I’d find an excuse not to do it or distract myself with some other challenge. Finally, I wandered over to a line on the floor that I liked for some reason, set, and went for it. I touched my hands down the first couple of times but by the third or fourth try I was landing on my feet without reaching towards the ground. Standing tuck on non-spring floor: check. I was more relieved than excited. As if I knew I could do it already, I just had to get it out of the way. I have to keep working them though so my body gets used to it again.
Next stop: wall spins. One of the other girls, M, was working on them and invited me to try it with her. Sure, why not? It’s one of those moves that looks really simple. They’re just spinning around their hand. Easy. Not easy. It honestly didn’t occur to me that you still have to go upside down to do it. The first time I ran up to the wall, I placed my hand on the mat leaning against the wall, jumped and... nothing. This is scarier than I thought. I tried again. Ran up to the wall, placed my hand on it, flipped upside down, realized I was upside down, and froze. Splat on the mat beneath me. At least I got the upside down part this time, I’m halfway there! I finally managed to get somewhere close to landing on my feet when M2 drew me a picture to help explain what I was doing wrong. I was traveling too much instead of staying in one spot. His picture worked miracles. After a few more tries, I felt comfortable moving the crash mat away so I would be forced to land on my feet. It worked. I did a few really good ones before wrapping up for the night. Wall spin on a mat: check. Next stop: harder surfaces.
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