To trust

Hello everybody, I haven't written in a while.
There are a few things on my mind in regards to flying trapeze.
One of them is the evolution of my layout, but I have put that one on the shelf for a while.
Then there are
The Dowels
Duu Duu Duu Duuuuuum (this is scary music)

For the sake of painting as detailed a picture as I can, I will include my personal background in this discussion.

As a beginner flyer I didn't wear grips. Most beginners don't.
I also have acrophobia, the fear of heights, which is different from the normal fear of height.
I am including the fact that I as a beginner fell of the bar many times during take-off. The "jumping in to the bar thing" which can be made easier by a belt hold. Unfortunately where I learned to fly the bar was far away from the board and no belt hold, so a lot of peeling of the bar.
Eventually I developed a take off that allowed me to take off unassisted and with some kind of palm grip on my hand to protect it from ripping.
On certain hot, dry months, the grips felt dry and slippery, they might have protected my hands but they didn't make me feel safe on the bar.

A year ago I changed into wearing no grips at all, or bare minimum gauze grips, it gave me the confidence to try and work my swing harder, to beat back harder at take-off, which is the most important component of the swing (except for the force-out) and to feel secure.
But it also only allowed me to take 8 swings before my right hand ripped.

Throughout the last 5 years or so, I have encountered flyers from all over the world that had taken to wearing the gymnastic, so called dowel grips. I was initiated into the group by many, I tried about 5 different dowel grips, and that was it. I wore them for about one class, one session, then I stopped.
Or I wore them in lines, but as soon as I did anything OOL, or went to catch, I didn't wear the dowel, but went back to my little gauze grips.
Certain days, I switched from dowels, to leather Palm grips, to gauze, all within an hour.

So 6 weeks ago, Pedro Farfan came to visit us.
For those of you that don't know him, he is the catcher at Mystere, Cirque du Soleil show and one of the best coaches in the world. I have seen him coach 3 of my friends in to amazing flyers.
He started laughing when he saw my grips. My gauze grips.
In a nice way. They man is super nice and funny.
One of the things he told me is that the sweep back and the break are almost the most important parts in the swing, and to sweep hard it is easier if you have a good grip. (With regular Palm grips they move a little when you break, the dowels barely move, they are stuck on the bar. This is my own note)
I understood in my gut, that I had to learn to use the dowels, if I wanted to reach my potential as a high flyer.

I am at a point right now, Friday, February 26, 2016 that I have committed to wearing the dowels all the time when flying.
So far, I don't think the dowels are helping me sweep back any better of the take-off as I haven't "gone for it", as in actually tried to sweep back hard. I am still too scared of falling off.
Yesterday, I went up on the trapeze and flew by myself, in my dowels.
It got easier and easier.
I stood on the board, and as I was going to serve myself the bar (which I hate and don't like at all - another phobia of mine)
I thought to myself: I am not going to fly, I am just going to serve myself the bar and see how that goes. Then I thought: I have to believe they work, I have to believe & trust that I will not fall. I "know" logically in my head that they work. And then I just did it. I went for it.
I flew. I flew and flew and flew and flew.

Today I will go up again and try harder.
I will also post videos for you.
Have a happy Flyday.






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Location:Cotton Candy Club

Fear

Today was hard. I had watched a movie 2 days ago about a flying trapeze accident in which the female flyer takes a bad return bar and flies out of the net, to the side and lands on her head. I was going to catch today and I got scared. I said, I don't want to go to catch. Then we took a break and I went up again, this time I said: I go to catch but I don't want a return bar. I will just practice the return from the catcher, going to the net (clam for right now). And after a few tries I got the return bar and went for it.
It was hard though. It was hard to make myself do it. It was hard to make myself go to catch. My friend Carol told me: just do it, it will feel easier afterwards. I figured going to catch with a gazelle (one leg knee hang) is basically like bridging it, going from bar to bar with no air time.
It really hit me though. How I still have this illogical fear of height. How an image on my retina can cause me to fear the return. So I started reading about it, they say it is really hard to fix. It is a lot about desensitization which I am doing every day I go up, and about breathing exercises and cognitive therapy etc.
I can't wait for Dylan to come here and hold his "skills to the net" workshop. To feel liberated, and hopefully confident and able to go to the net better. I would never want to miss the net though. There is still that thought.


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Location:any high location

Failure versus Success

I don't know what failure is exactly, or success, but for the sake of argument,
I am saying that failure is not achieving your goal, and success is achieving your goal.
My flying trapeze goal has been very small these last 2 months. My goal has been to return to the board.
My favorite trick in the world is the layout but I am not always high and it's hard to get good return bars on a layout cause it comes back really low.
So I had been doing my splits, which I hate (for many reasons.
1. that I couldn't get into them during a performance and
2. cause I hit my toe on the steel bar many times to make the nail brake and bleed &
3. cause I don't take it to the net and we catch out of safety lines here so I don't want to go to the net in a position I don't do.)
Instead I started doing the "gazelle", potentially the most gorgeous looking easy trick there is in the world, for a woman, especially with long legs. And it's an easier trick to get return bars and good returns.
Eventually I got to the point where I made it back to the board and my goal was accomplished, so success.
But 2 days after

I decided to throw layouts instead cause they are still my favorite trick, and now I am faced with failure again.

In the end I have succeed, and what I did learn is that I have to work harder.
As simple as that. My old couch was right all the time when he was screaming at me: "harder, faster, stronger"
and we should include "tighter"
Here are 2 videos. In the first one I made it back to the board with my gazelle. In the second

one I am loose and low in my layout return and don't make it back.



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Location:Tierra Rejada Rd,Moorpark,United States

Grips & Bars

Hello everybody. I have not been writing for a while. The reason was that I was going to write about the evolution of my layout, and I had all this video footage, and the story of my journey, from starting to do a layout to where I am right now, which was supposed to be with a perfectly beautiful layout.
But that is not what happened so I gave my layout and attempts to perfect it a break.
I promise I will continue and I will re blog about this.
This is about something I keep on being disturbed about. My hands.
I started using wick grips circa 15 years ago until 2 years ago when I started using leather palm grips. Either way, there was something wrong with it. Whether or not it was that they were only perfect the first day I used them, or whether it was that they hurt my hand or did not feel secure on the bar etc.
Then I attempted the dowel grips cause they are made for you to stay on the
bar when doing giants etc. Think BIG HIGH swings. But they made me too scared to get used to. They take a while to break in and get used to cause
you have to grip the bar a certain way (really over grip and pull back on the
bar, with the material of the grips placed close to your fingers, not your
wrist). I still keep these in the back of my mind to use in the future.
In the end I gave regular Club Med gauze grips a try. They barely protect your
hand but they do give you a good feeling of the bar and not much bulk
between hand & bar, and the gauze sticks to the gauze on the bar. Kind of.
At least they don't require me to believe in magic, which is what the dowel
grips demand of me. "Believe that you will stay on the bar with only your
fingertips touching it."
Yeah, believe that you won't peele of right now, cause you can't hold on to
147 pounds with your fingertips! Yeah, I rather believe that air planes can fly
and don't fall down. And I have a VERY HARD time believing, maybe trusting is a better word, that. Cause I know that it is true: both that air planes fly and
that dowel grips make you stick to the bar. I just don't trust it.
So I love, Love, LOVE my gauze grips! Granted they (and my hands) only last
for about 8-12 turns, but that is the price I pay for feeling secure on the bar,
no fear at all. Nada, nishta, nil, zero, ingen Fear. At. All.
I have tried to fly on other kinds of bar that don't have gauze on them, like a taped bar and a wick bar. I didn't like the taped bar cause it felt slippery to me. But that could be cause I am used to the gauze bar that no matter what is less slick than tape alone. For naked/no grip hands I would probably recommend just a taped bar and lots of chalk.
I also tried the wick bar up in Sonoma Valley and it felt good, actually it felt really good. They don't like people to wear grips up there cause I think the bar lasts longer that way. I have heard that a wick bar can last 6 months without changing the wick out, which is a thing that is increasingly irritating and time consuming with the gauze bar, the constant changing of gauze.
There is also a leather bar I know, and Dylan Ehrenburg & Steen Shoar have
been wrapping their bars with thin beach towels, which last for about a week (but that is a week full of classes). Usually you have to re wrap a gauze bar every class or every other class.
It could be that there is a relationship between grips & bars, like that the grips depend on the bar a lot. For example: no grips = taped bar.
I already see a relationship or a pattern in the material that is being used in grips & in wrapping bar: tape, gauze, leather & wick.
For right now I am trying out a new kind of grip (for me). They are Ebeth Feldman's tape grips and I will try them next time I am in lines, cause being the baby that I am (kill me!) I don't like to try anything new OOL.
In the mean, and I mean MEAN time, I will continue to rip my hand open & only take 10 turns.
I can't wait for a change to happen in my relationship to hands on bars.
Below are my grips throughout 15 years of flying, from left to right:
Richie Gaona wick grips (they are missing the wrist wrap part), leather palm grips (and I have tried a variety: 2 holes, 3 holes, home made etc.), 2 finger dowel grips, Ebeth Feldman's tape grips (I have not tried them yet, but I am very excited about them) & Club Med grips (basically a piece of gauze made into grips).


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Saving yourself

Today marks the 3rd out of my 7 days this week I get to fly, and today the Cotton Candy Club was visited by my dear friends, Adriana & Daniel. We all flew together last year in May for our found raiser and they both had been gone (work & school) and were visiting for the winter break.
Daniel had been catching up in Oakland, and Adrian's was ready to go to catch with him out of safety lines.
It was a great day with a lot of firsts: first catch knee hang & splits for Daniel & first time I had to go to the net with my splits out of lines (except for the time I took it OOL to the net without attempting to catch).
I am already "not tight/confident" in going to catch to this new catcher with a trick I don't take to the net but I am very happy and proud of how I saved myself.
Here is a video.

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Dowel grips and how they change the sweepback

Ok, I have been flying with regular palm protective grips for 13 years or so.
I don't like change but I heard that dowel grips makes your hands stick to the bar so I decided to try it.
I always had a non-existent sweep back off the board, (but only on the first one) mainly cause I had a traumatic experience while sweeping back (I peeled of the bar) so I figured if the dowel grips can give me any help in my sweep back, I will use them.
So here is a picture of me practicing sweeping back in dowel grips and without. Which one do you think is with dowels?






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Weighing more

Good morning everybody.
I've been wanting to continue writing on my flying trapeze blog but unfortunately I haven't been doing much flying these last couple of weeks. We had a whole week (a week and a half) with bad winds, so bad that we had to cancel catching. Before the wind, we had rains so I spent a lot of time indoors, watching trapeze videos & eating up the pounds of Swedish Candy I brought with me.
Unfortunately, I gained 20 pounds since May. I'm about 5'9" and weight 128 lbs & now 148lbs.
Trust me, no flying for weeks & then yesterday I went up to swing.
I never felt so out of shape!
It didn't help that I had a cold, even if it was almost gone.

FLYING IS SO MUCH EASIER WHEN YOU WEIGHT LESS!!!

It's gonna take a New Years resolution to change this road.
From today I will start doing static trapeze & cardio.
Cause I can't work on any of the things I was going to work on and write about: like my progression of my swing, new tricks OOL & more catches/returns.
So today, I will start on my journey to get back in shape. Follow it, if you will.
I'll post a video of my progression on the static, starting today
And if anybody knows any specific exercises for the flying trapeze, please let me know.





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