When it's your neck, experience matters.

In the past 5 days Facebook has notified me of two new “aerial studios” coming to the Fox Valley. Cool! The sport I love is finally gaining widespread interest! Does competition bother me? No. We have 6.5 years of experience over any new comers (and if it was my neck dangling from the ground I’d want to go with the most experienced) and competition only makes the best better.
But as a consumer, you need to pay attention. Is someone qualified to make sure you are safe in the air after a 20 hour course? What do you want from your instructor who is spotting you? This week we had a girl in a hoop doing a super cool trick! She was an advanced student, had been doing aerial for a number of years. And bang, weird noise, and her hip dislocated. No idea how. No idea why. No history that we know of. Not a move that would encourage a hip dislocation. So we chalk it up to freak accident. Student hears weird noise, let’s go. And Instructor Leah catches her in the split second that it matter. Leah has been catching students for YEARS. She knows where to stand. She knows what to watch for. And most importantly, she has trained for it. She reacts before thinking because she has trained for it. She trains 2-3 hours EVERY WEEK in the aerial arts with other instructors learning how to spot and getting her muscle memory and reflexes to get her to react in time to stop a true fall. This is a learned skill. It takes hours of time to internalize. Taking a 20 hour course doesn’t begin to teach you how to spot properly for the aerial arts.