Look mom, no hands!

Last year I received a non-monetary award at work for “Exhibiting exceptional teamwork, innovation and creativity in the course of completing daily work.”  Instead I received a gift card from Excitations.com.  Excitations has a variety of packages at different price points, and the recipient can select their own “experience”.  The most interesting experience in my award package was a 2 hr session at Trapeze U.

I would have redeemed this award a long time ago but we had the foster girls for 9 months, took multiple trips out of state, and other life events, so the number of available weekends over the last year has been few and far between.  Besides the recent normalization of our lives, I had two other motivating factors to take this class now. First, it was soon going to expire.  Second, I had just finished Insanity for the second time so this seemed like a good time to try something new and enjoy the fruits of my labor.

The conditions were perfect.  Cloudy, cool breeze, fairly low humidity, family watching, class size was very small.  Classes are capped at 12 people and website says you can expect about 8 swings in 2 hrs based on average class size.  With only 3 people in my class, I easily had at least 12 swings, probably more.  We were rotating fast enough that I wouldn’t have wanted to go any faster or any longer, it was the perfect number and frequency of repetitions for me.

Physical Factor

Surprisingly, Trapeze U says they can take people up to 300 lbs, but now that I’ve experienced Trapeze 101, I’d say it would have to be a 300 lb person in good shape, such as a football player.  Actually, I was surprised by how easy and fluid most of it felt.  Nothing we did really required any strength, just a bit of courage and the clarity of mind to listen to the instructors over the sound of your pounding heart.  But you do certainly need to have enough strength in your hands and hamstrings to have confidence in your ability to hang from the bar by your hands or legs.  But other than that, if your timing was halfway right and motions halfway smooth, it didn’t seem to require much strength or cardio endurance.  Of course I say that but I do have some sore muscles in my back that I haven’t noticed in a long time.

Physically the most difficult aspect for me was the pain of staying on the bar.  The website recommends no baggy clothes, and no jeans.  All the pictures show people wearing calf-length spandex, which makes perfect sense to me to help protect the back of your legs.  I don’t have calf-length spandex, but I was confident that surely they would provide some to wear for the class, or I would just tough it out, or it wouldn’t even be a problem because I hoped the trapeze bar would be padded.  I hang upside at the playground on a semi-regular basis, so I was familiar with level of discomfort and thought I could handle it for 8 swings regardless of the situation.  What I didn’t count on was how tacky the bar would be, being covered in athletic tape for good grip.  I had no problems holding onto the bar, but my leg hair apparently didn’t like to let go of the bar either.  The back of knees are now bald, and later either due to friction, strain, or stickiness, I lost a fair amount of skin on the back of my legs too.

When the coach asked for my feedback at the end of the session, I explained that I really liked it but was surprised that we were not given some long spandex to help protect our legs.  I was disappointed to learn that they do have pants available, but most men do not take them up on their offer so they’ve just gotten out of the habit of asking.  I also got some minor blisters on my hands, those are easy to deal with.  The skinny little ladder made my feet tender, but listen to me whine.  (You can see the ladder on the right side of these pictures.)

Mental Factor

In fact the hardest part of the whole thing was just making the climb up the skinny ladder to the platform.  The combination of the climb, the relatively exposed height, and the idea that your about to swing out on a high bar, and then let go…upside down; those factors combined definitely spiked the heart rate every time.  I really had to be intentional at the top, prior to starting the swing, to take deep breaths, recollect myself, and listen to the different instructors.  There were at least two times when I know someone spoke to me, I heard them, but I didn’t listen to them immediately.  It was only thanks to our auditory memory that I was able to recall and process what they had just said.

This is my best impersonation of superman.  I’m doing what’s called a falcon-off.  While swinging upside with your hands and legs both on the bar, when you reach the apex of the swing you let go first with your hands, then with your legs.  This is a very unnatural feeling to let go of the bar upside down, 25 ft in the air?, looking straight down at the ground, spread eagle.  If there had been someone on other side pushing the bar towards me, this would be the move I would use to leap from one bar to the next.  However, I don’t think they normally teach that much in the Trapeze 101 intro class, and our time was up.

 Conclusion

A great time was had by all, especially me.   😀  A big thanks to my family for being there, and my wife for taking excellent pictures and videos.  You can see the rest of the pictures in our gallery here, we haven’t processed all the video yet.  I would definitely recommend this to anyone with an adventuresome spirit.  It’s not as hard as you think it should be, it doesn’t require you to be in great shape, and it’s way fun.  We were swinging in a matter of minutes and we got our money’s worth!  (However, I strongly advise against wearing shorts.)