Acrobatics: Building Core Strength

Ed - take up bouldering. You've got an awesome indoor centre in Brizzle as well as real rocks - good for core and forearms. Might chap your dainty little hands a little but I'm sure your mum will enjoy the friction.

Hes right you know (well, I have no proof on the mum bit, but the rest is sound), be careful though you might get hooked!

Yeah.

Climbing in general is a good workout. Hard bouldering is a really good workout....

Well if you want to do all the flips, flings and stuff, besides toning up and building muscles, might I advice some yoga to help you be more agile. On the other hadn, you said you danced, so flexibility might not be an issue.

Something I found quite helpfull: when praciting your spinning punt some weights on your ankles and wrists. First of you might feel of balanced, but when you get used to this, and you go spin without them you feel much lighter. and it might help you shake of the feeling that you are to heavy to do a cartwheel or whatever. (it's mostly psychological) most people can do these things, they just have to want to enough to go for it.

I do Wu Shu to improve my core. It's amazingly good at it, tai chi also works, in fact for core exercises it's even better.

Wu Shu has also given me a really helpful stance basis which allows me to move in between stances, sides, and motions with ease and through areas that a lot of people don't utilize often. I think I have a very martial style of poi which i like, it helps to add discipline to your training.

Wu Shu also includes aerials at later stages. I'm just getting into this and hope to be able to do full on aerials (cartwheel with no hands) by the end of the year. I was about to start doing an acrobatics course (which i would certainly recommend you do if you want to get serious about throwing your body about) but unfortunately i dislocated my shoulder a couple of weeks ago. So no i'm back to rebuilding it slowly... but don't worry, I'll be doing flips and stuff in no time!

Hope that helps and if you are actually serious about doing flips and stuff I would highly recommend Wu Shu.

do you know my girlfriend gwen?
she lives round the corner from you, and also helps run the albany, ( the albany has hoist-type things to help practise flips etc)
she is an old school circus performer and has lots of of no-nonsense knowledge about such things, she also goes to spin jam fairly regulary and would be very happy to give you some tips, just keep your eys of her spandex!!!
i train in a judo dojo, the judo players use medicne balls and arm-only rope climbs as a small part of their core strnegth work and the are seriously stong chaps!

one of the easiest ways to help core strength is sex and enjoyable to!

One of the best things to build strength for acrobatics is, Acrobatics.

Lots and lots of basic acrobatics.

Handstands
Tuck to Handstand straddle to handstand pike to handstand.
Forward and backward rolls
Handstand forward rolls
Backward roll to hand stand
Cartwheels both legs.
Headsprings

There is different type of musculation...
If you want to do acrobatics, you must to have dynamical muscles and not pure strenght and enduring muscles like weightlifters muscles. So do impulse exercices and don't forget stretching. The strechtching is your assurance into acrobatics, if your are flexible your have less chances to injure yourself.


Dynamical muscles is a combination of strenght and flexibility to have enough amplitude to do the acrobatics. There is also different kind of training for different kind of practise. Handstadn needs a good upper body strengh and flexiblity. aerials acrobatic needs to have very good impulsive thighs.

I disaggre with electricblue... It's very important to muscle and stretch your body before starting acrobatics. An another point is that's not a good idea to do core yourself at home... Because you will certainly do mistakes and mistakes with your body... like in french " Je n'ai pas besoin de vous faire un dessin " ( I don't need to do a draw to explain it )

But i agree with electricblue with starting acrobatics with a lot and a lot of basics.

hula hoop, the heavier the better, great workout, just spin like hell for 20mins each day and you'll soon have abs of steel

I found an awesome exercise for building up my lower abdomen

Muscle isolation.

Basically, relax everything, and contract only what you want to build up. Having a comfortable posture helps though.

Lay on your back, with your spine long and as flat to the ground as possible. relax completely into this position. then, lift your legs by contracting only your lower abdomen.

when you contract a muscle, breathe in. when you relax and return to the start position, breathe out. Legs can be bent or straight, the important thing is feeling comfortable. Slower the better.

anyway. that's what I'm currently doing. may not work for all posture types, but it's working for mine at the moment

did I mention Capoeira? Its a very good way to build up the muscles you will need for alot of Acro, without jumping straight into doing things that could cause injury. If you stick with it, it often builds into actually doing Acro style movements anyhow. Although the style is a bit different to gymnastics tho (circular momentum vs linear).

LTC, be careful with that exercise, its really easy to $%&* your lower back, if you start getting any pain stop straight away. It works great though if you don't overdo it.

The same movement but hanging from a bar works really well too

A variation on that exercise that works great on the abs is lay flat lift your legs (not with your abs) 20 degrees off the ground, hold with your abs for a minute or two, drop your legs and rest for 30 seconds, then raise your legs 15 degrees, etc.

Do this in 5 degree increments. Doing this on a regular basis will definitely strengthen your abs.

I've been using a load of the exercises in this book for the last few months: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Guide-C...4029&sr=8-1

I've found it really really useful, highly recommended.