Haha so awesome! We can’t wait to see your costume Alana!

For sure! haha 🙂

Oh darn, after looking at my Sep. challenge video again I realised that I can do way better and I didn’t have the star qualities. So I quickly removed it and hope no one reviewed it yet. 😳 I love that drop though and I will keep on working on it!…I’m also looking forward to this months challenge because I struggle with loop splits. I can never get the loops to my ankles, they always stay stuck on my knees. I suppose I need to have a deeper pike? Any other suggestions?
Mahalo!

Just saw the perfect pike workout! I will follow along and hopefully get my loop splits this month!

Thanks Susi, just posting on your profile is fine although it’s great to share here also so others can see your work more easily. We will be reviewing over the next few hours and awarding your stars!

Thanks a lot for the fantastic personalized feedback! 🙏❤️
I want to share with you a skill that I was practising this week. I believe it is called ANGEL ROLLUPS? I am having some issues with the flow when rolling up…I will keep on working on it the coming months 🙈. Any feedback much appreciated 😁

and today I started working on the October challenge. 2 small technical questions:
1. Before the knee climb I get the feeling I have extra tissue / slack, and because of it I feel I slide a bit… is it because I close to quick the legs in the straddle up and the extra tissue remains in my belly? Or is it just normal / acceptable? Should I keep the knees together before climbing up?
2. I tried a bit of spinning before the splits… tricky and worth sharing… not sure what to think about it yet…
Thanks! and please feel welcome to point at further technical details you spot

https://youtu.be/RmX5ppE7urM

Hey there 🙂 Question about the slack drop at the end….would this be considered a short drop or longer drop (I honestly have no idea where the line between the two is)? I know that the rig I have says short bomb drops are ok, but not crazier stuff, so I want to make sure I’m staying safe. Thanks!

I have been having a lot of trouble getting the loops to slide to my ankles despite trying my hardest to sink as deep as possible into my pike. I finally made some progress today. These are the things that helped me the most, other than, of course, sinking as deep as possible into my pike. Not sure if these will be helpful to others, but thought I’d share just in case.
1. Slippery pants – I definitely notice a difference between fabrics. With a more slippery fabric, the loops are more likely to slide down my calves.
2. Having a slight bend in my elbows and then allowing my arms to straighten as I sink my bootie toward the ground helped me to sink deeper into the pike. I could allow my whole body to sink as I straightened my arms.
3. Actively trying as hard as I could to pull my toes/knees toward my face the entire time I was sliding down. (Hellooooooooo hip flexers!!)
4. Shorter loops. This is the thing that actually helped the most. Once I shortened my loops I could make them slide every time and managed 4 or 5 consecutive run throughs without the loops getting stuck behind my knees or calves. To make the loops shorter, I just grabbed higher up on the tails after diving through the poles – just enough fabric to pass around my thigh and reach back for the poles. This still left plenty of slack for the drop at the end.

I still have a lot of work to do but the loops/ankles issue was becoming quite frustrating so I am happy for today’s break through! Progress video:
October Day 6

Training for October challenge

I’d appreciate feedback about my Training today for the October challenge (video link attached). See my struggles where I’d appreciate tips and techniques to overcome them:
1) Ugh those beats! I can do it with bent arms but not with straight arms. When I make my arms straight, my grip weakens after the beat backwards
2)My legs are not straight during skin the cat
3) The roll after making the loops (before the pike/split) …. it is not a smooth move for me
4) I am able to put the loops to my ankle after I do the pike but with my feet around 2 feet apart (instead of together)
I’d appreciate feedback on how to improve.

Working on the October combination. Thanks for the live q&a yesterday! Totally helpful…Double knee climb getting slightly less elusive for me 🙂

Thanks guys. I tried to submit a practise video on this forum in above post but I am a technical noob….I put it on my profile instead.

Here is my latest attempt (Link). A leap from my previous attempts, but nevertheless a lot to clean up still.

I finally found out how big my loops should be for it to slide to my ankles (been struggling with it as well!) after trying out the double knee hook per Rachel’s suggestion at the Q&A. So when I tried the combi, after flipping over I always find that my loops are too big. Here I was kinda trying to keep the tails short, but it results to having to bend my arms, which makes flipping over a bit of a struggle. Also, I tried loosening my grip to make my loops even smaller (because it was still too big even after gripping with a shorter tail) before going to the split since I do feel that’s the only way I can get the loops to slide to my ankles, I wonder if that is ok..I’m terrified I might lose my grip here and fall, so I still practice low.

Going back from the splits to the pike before getting to egg beaters is precarious as well. I really want to brace my arms to my chest without my elbows flaring in order to have a stronger pike, but I’m kinda having a timing problem here, because the only way to doing that is to make the loops closer to me, which means doing the pike (or in the video ended up doing a straddle) anyway in a much weaker position, does that makes sense? Do I simply need to strengthen my grip?

XOX Eiza

Aloha again! I really enjoyed watching the live session for this months submission. A lot of important things there, so thank you! However, I do have another question. I’m struggling a lot with the beats into the straight arm invert so for this months video I will have to invert from bent arms and own that I guess. But I would like to continue to work on beats into the straight arm invert. What exercise/aerial warm ups can I do to help me get this?

Kia ora from New Zealand. I’ve just uploaded my first recording for October. I’ve been having problems with the beats. I’d been working on a new silk with SO much stretch (we use the stretchy type at our local Circus Hub) but for this recording used one that had a bit less stretch. The beats and invert were more successful with the slightly less stretchy silk but revealed terribly bent knees! Any hints on the beats and keeping knees/legs straight? And any other things to work on apart from giving it a bit more personality? Thanks! I should also say I’ve found last months core exercises and this months pike exercises wonderful. I’ve also been using the exercises from the micro-bend link you sent.
October First Recording Video

Hi Kia! Good effort here! Your deep pike was great and the sliding of the loops to the ankles nice and smooth. For the beats, try to think of the hips/pelvis initiating the beat rather than the toes, this will help give you momentum without needing to bend the knees. Try to smooth out the transition between the poles (strands) before making the loops also. Eggbeater drop looks great and i love the ‘flair’ at the end 🙂 Great work! – Rachel

Wishing you all the goosebumps and happy halloween! This is my October combination:

https://www.silksstars.com/community/yvanlp/media/

Hi! Here I am on the smallest rig EVER because Italy is going towards a new lockdown and all gym, studios, dance school are closed. I’m sad because I already knew this combo and I could have done way better with proper height. Anyway I’ve tried to make it as fun as possible with some choreo improvisation. No costume here, but I bet I’m scary enough ahah.
I did this combo yesterday for about 15 times in a row to perfect it, never tried a thing so much and I have to say it works.. practice has helped me adjust a couple things I did really bad. It’s far from perfect, but the best I could do.

my video

October Silks Expression
Hi! It’s been so fun trying to get expressive with the sequence. It’s a new thing for me but I really enjoyed it. Quite a challenge too. I noticed small movements didn’t really show on the video and I needed to do much bigger than I expected for it to work. I’m going to try and go in tomorrow morning and do a run through with a costume of sorts. Any feedback at this stage would be great before the final recording – especially on the expressive stuff – I’m not sure how much I can improve the technical stuff before tomorrow! I also seem to have gone backwards on the beats invert but I want to keep it in because I love it and the straight arm hang that precedes it.

Hello silks stars! Rachel, this combo is awesome! For me, working on beats has been a beast and is a skill that I’m excited to continue improving! 🙂 The costume challenge was super fun to work on combining music, theme and costume. I pulled out my old unitard from a contemporary solo i did high school! This was really fun to take the same theme to the silks which was a blast from the past for me. Here is my October Halloween Challenge submission!

Halloween Frog Routeen

https://www.silksstars.com/community/mayas/media/199/

What a fun and challenging combo! I know I said that I probably wouldn’t do beats, but I tried anyways! Also, I fell this past Saturday and got a concussion. I’m okay, but I wanted to give my back and neck a bit of a break so I didn’t do a full blown drop…Happy Halloween everyone! 🤗🎃

October Combo with Costume
Made it in with a costume! Music by the wonderful Reb Fountain.

I had my first performance all year on October 17, so most of this last month was spent working on that routine. Right after that, I changed jobs and worked 10 days in a row, giving me one free day to work on this before the end of the month. I was being hard on myself at first for not putting more into it as far as the costuming, makeup, and set building (like I had just done for my performance). I did have a witch hat that matched the socks, but it just wouldn’t stay on and I didn’t have the time to figure out a way to make it stay haha. With all of that being said, what came out is something I’m very proud of, and I can’t stop watching! I’m so happy to say Rachel and Brett even awarded me 5 stars for my efforts, and I couldn’t feel more awesome right now! Loving this virtual community and our aerial mentors more than I can even say!

October 2020