Defying Gravity - Introduction

Prerequisites.

Ariel training involves a lot of positive psychology, physical preparation to avoid injury, and repetition.. Secondly it requires having reasonable functional strength, co-ordination, elasticity and acceleration.

Flips and jumps are easier attained with either being young, and/or having a high strength to weight ratio. To some extent being shorter helps as it reduces the gap between someone's functional strength to bodyweight but regardless of what body your parents gave you, a high strength to weight ratio is what you are aiming for.

If you want to start to learn this in your twenties, thirties, forties or beyond you will need the right level of strength-to-weight, elasticity and explosive acceleration. It might also help your body if you eat plenty of collagen and omega-3 oil based foods!

Understand what you are doing

Your body and mind must understand the mechanics of the set-up, take-off and mid-movement timing.

THE SET-UP - what you do before to lead into the movement; a chasse, a turning step, a kick, a cartwheel, a round-off.

THE TAKE OFF - what we do mechanically to leave the floor . We must have enough strength to accelerate within a short distance. Often the take offs require us to move our limbs with explosive force, while being relaxed. We need to learn take-off techniques; compressed legs and jump, flat footed push jump, ball of the foot rebound jump, swinging one leg through, kicking one leg through, one-footed jump, double footed jump.

TIMING - There is a critical split second after jumping - how long do you wait between taking off and the second coordinated movement (a tuck, a twist, a kick etc) be it a tuck, leg raise, side twist, bridge shape, hollow shape etc.

THE FINISH - With ariel sense, you can keep a sense of where the floor is, through keeping eyes fixed on it; to avoid over/under rotation. The finish with two or one foot opens up a junction to enter a following movement into a combination of moves - or combo.