The Fat Guy Project: That Time We Tried Aerial Arts
March 04, 2020
For those who does not know, Aerial Arts is a performance based workout which involves acrobatics, being suspended in the air, and some type of contraption, like silk, pole, and hoop amongst other things. With it’s not so recent resurgence in the Philippines, I just had to try it out.
My sister..... SHOW OFF. LOL!
My sister has always been fond of these types of workouts, like she religiously goes to aerial arts gym to master the art. With her insistence, I asked some of my best-est friends to come join me, and they were stoked. We went to Elite Aerial Arts, registered through ClassPass, and tried some of it in a span of 3 days.
Ok I’m not gonna lie, I was way to cocky going into it, but was I slapped in the face hard. Initially I thought “I’m a pretty athletic person, I work out, I indulge in sports every now and then, I survived Boracay’s UFO and Banana Boat Ride, I can definitely do this. Man was I wrong.
The class starts with warm up exercises which helps limber us a little bit and prepares our muscles specifically our core in order to manage with the actual acrobatics. Right then and there is when I realized I’m not as athletic as I thought I was, There are some stretching and strength exercises that bested me
When attending a class you are sort of grouped by your skill set and level of expertise in the art. We were taught by Teacher Bianca. She initially taught us the basics obvi, mounting and stuff like that, and we were like “oh this is easy” then we turned to our right, and the other groups are doing this super impressive and complicated stuff that made me go “OH MY GOD”
The Mandatory expectation v reality photo, The instagram photo v the photo your mom posted on Facebook
When we finally got the basics, Teacher Bianca taught us and guided us one by one the are of turning upside down while dangling in a piece of cloth.
Yaass b*tch work, BTW that's Teacher Bianca on the right
I couldn't get out of that class without doing a spiderman pose in this awesome compression pants, (Right photo) That's my sister teaching me
So literally my anxiety is spiking at this moment, I imagine my head hitting the floor and breaking it open or suffering a concussion. I imagine the silk not being able to carry my weight and it just ripping, me falling down breaking all my bones and paying some coins for the damages. But I decided to just go for it and let out my inner (like deep inner) dare devil. Me and my friends end up enjoying the entire process.
Initially, I thought that I would have the hardest time with pole (and I did) so I wasn’t as stoked to try it. I have not a single clue how you are able to mount to a vertical pole without like spiderman powers or something. My sister is a huge practitioner of this, so I kinda have an idea already of how it works, but my skeptical brain is like "hell no"
Like Aerial Hammock, the class begins with a warm up, and ends with a cooling down exercise. This time we are instructed by Teacher Angelina.
Pole dancing requires the massive use of skin friction and body control, so like my pobre skin, and stiffness finally had their time to shine. UNFORTUNATELY FOR ME, it also requires a lot of upper body strength, one which I’m sorely lacking and is currently working on.
I call this move the SHAWARMA
I was a hot mess, like seriously, I frickin can’t stay mounted for more than 30secs. I just looked like a frickin shawarma hanging on that pole with my fat ass. Our instructor noticed we were having a hard time, so she sorta focused on our beginners group a little more and made us do this drills that can help with our upper body strength and core. I have to give her props ya’ll she was hella patient with us.
JLO is shaking, LOL
She taught us this trick called the “Dream Girl” (if my memory serves me correctly) this is when things get ugly for me, as it requires you to tuck the pole between your legs and torso super tight so you wont fall, and we all know what that sensitive thingy is in between a man’s legs. Just a disclaimer if you’re a guy thinking of trying it out, you definitely can as there are men taking the class and is killing it. I don’t know maybe I’m just doing something wrong.
When you can't produce good photos on the pole, pose next to it
Out of the three of us, our friend Raf did it best, his previous experience with wall climbing definitely helped him a lot, but we nonetheless sucked. HOWEVER, we did try our best, and powered through and that’s the important lesson of the day, when things get tough, don’t just give up (char)
For the third day we decided to take Aerial Hammock again as it is something that we sorta did mediocrely well. So we were like, ok, let’s increase our level of skill. Coming to the class, our bodies were sore from our previous classes, I definitely was not in my A game that day. All my friends and Jeff did absolutely amazing work, I on the other hand did not.
We were taught once again by Teacher Bianca, who at this point, we discovered, is a professional Aerial Silk performer at Resorts World. So like the pressure was definitely on. We first reviewed what we previously learned then we headed to the next level where I struggled a lot basically out of pain
The next manoeuvre involves wrapping your thigh around the silk in a super tight manner, which is torture for me since my thigh is aching from all the squats and pole climbing I’ve been doing the night before. But still I powered through, I did it, although not perfectly, I still did it.
PS I don’t have pictures of myself to show for it cuz my face in all the pictures looked sooo ratchet because I was extremely uncomfortable.
Core and upper body strength is hella important with this art, so if you’re planning on trying it out, start with working on your core and upper body strength. Also listen very carefully to your instructors, there are plenty of you in a class, so the instructor reasonably has no time to focus on you until you get it right.
What I also find is that these activities are best done by a group of friends because you get to exchange notes, or if you’re coming in by yourself, have a great personality and make friends, the people at Elite Arts are quite helpful specially those who has a higher skill level.
We went to Elite Aerial Arts in Maginhawa, which is super awesome. They have lots of classes that you can try, from Aerial Silk, to Aerial Hammock, to Aerial Hoop they’ve got it all for you (cue SM Music) they even have dance classes.
Prices vary per class, however they offer promos almost every month that you can avail, also you can save about 100php if you reserve a slot online.
If that is too far from you, I’m sure there are plenty of studios in every city in the Metro, go check em out.
Look this article was not made to discourage everyone to try it out, I actually encourage everyone to try it, I just wanted to be real with all of you so I’m not going to be “oh I did extemely well” for the sake of looking awesome, even if I did not, and fact of the matter is, everything is tough in the beginning, and that’s normal, that is why you have to train hard in order to go further with your chosen craft.
Like any other art this would require discipline, consistency, and a will to continue. If you have none of those you definitely wont succeed. Now will I go back? DEFINITELY, it just so happens that my class schedule is in conflict with theirs for the time being.
All in all, we did have fun, it’s definitely an enjoyable activity to indulge in and the spectacle of it all and the level of skill employed is something to aspire to. We would like to thank Elite Aerial Arts for accommodating us and the ever so patient instructors that put up with my kaartehan, you the real MVP.
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