The strength of your foundation determines the strength of your structure. In this case, the aerial foundation you build for your body, determines where your aerial journey safely takes you. It is easy to look ahead and want to do the next cool trick as quickly as possible, and then the next and the next. Wanting to speed through the conditioning, or skip it all together. Getting frustrated with reviewing a move or being asked to do it again to work on cleaning it up. While we are all about progress and not perfection, we are also about safety, proper technique, and improving even our most well known moves.
While you are becoming frustrated about not having your handspring yet, or not advancing to the next level yet, those moves and that conditioning that you don’t want to do, that you rush through, that your cheat yourself out of a few of during class because you want what’s next, those are the moves that get you where you want to go.
At times, life happens, and we find that we are less able or unable entirely, to spend time at the studio. Sometimes this is short lived because of work, other obligations, or illness, and other times this is because of a pandemic. Whatever the reason might be, if you find yourself here, it is easy to become frustrated with the situation, with life, or with yourself. It is also easy to worry about your aerial journey and your progress. This is where your foundation and maintaining its strength comes in. You might not be able to participate in pole or aerial, but you can work on much of the conditioning work you experience in your classes. If you happen to have a home pole, but are frustrated with your ceiling height or other limiting factors, you can and should revisit your pole conditioning, climbs, and spins and poses. While doing the most difficult and awesome tricks you know is so tempting, and you miss that and worry about being able to do it again, remember that your foundation is what got you there in the first place, and it is a wonderful place to return, to build, to reinforce, at any time.