One word: Yasssssss!

We got a great explanation today about getting into this inversion (crossback straddle/v inversion).

Sure, you can try to just muscle it up with your legs, but that’s the hard way (and note the word try, here — many, maybe most, can’t actually invert from the upright crossback straddle just by muscling it up).

The — well, let’s be frank — the less hard way (it still requires a fair bit of strength and coordination, but feels pretty easy once you get it) is to use your abs to contract up through the hollow-body position while pushing the poles of the silks away with your hands (which should be quite high).

Basically, you pull your pelvis towards your face using the core muscles, just as if you were doing a head-tail contraction in Modern dance.

I couldn’t do this with any degree of polish before my recent break-for-illness — not because I was weaker (though I was, towards the end), but because I hadn’t grasped the point about using hollow-body to achieve the inversion.

Today, Tall C explained that, and it clicked. Huzzah! Denis didn’t hear her, and still wound up muscling through it with great struggle. A couple classmates and I mentioned the hollow-body part when he came down (we also mentioned it when he was on the silks, but he couldn’t hear us over the sound of his effort, heh).

He’ll get it next time.

Honestly, since I haven’t been doing silks, I expected today’s class to suck — but it was actually awesome.

We also have video in which I — clearly tired — basically mark my way through a bit of choreography and fumble into arabesque at the end. I’ll post it later. Watching it, I was surprised that my transitions didn’t look like complete crap, given that I was pretty cooked and really not even trying.

Anyway, it’s good to be back at it, and I think my newly-reduced schedule will help immensely.

À bientôt, mes amis.