Take an aerial silks class

“We began with warm-ups, which included jumping jacks and high knees. It was my first hint that the class involved a lot more athleticism than I was expecting. After warm-ups, we lined up at the silks—which, it turns out, aren’t actually made of silk. “That would hurt really, really bad,” Torres says with a laugh. They’re a billowy, slightly stretchy nylon tricot. The silks are tied to hooks on the ceiling, providing two tails for climbing. [...] The standard climb took me a few tries. It involves raising one knee high, wrapping that leg around the silk, flexing your foot to lock the silk into place, then holding yourself up with your arms while you lift your other leg and “smash” the fabric on top of the first foot to hold it in place. You then pull yourself up, stand up straight on the silk and continue climbing that way. Sounds easy, right?”

“My first class was surprisingly hard. I went in feeling pretty confident that my flexibility and years of playing sports would help me not struggle too much. Since it was a Level 1 class, I was expecting everyone to be fairly similar beginners, but some of the others in the class had been there for at least a year. At first I was intimidated by everyone doing these incredibly hard skills, but then I realized how cool it was to see the progression of skills in people who had been there for different lengths of time. We started off the class with a warm up that included lots of core work, pull ups, and silk climbs (basically a rope climb) and I realized just how weak my upper body was.”

“After filling out some paper work, we began the most unconventional warm up which consisted of using a hula-hoop in ways I didn’t know I could! After that, the four of us that were first timers were led to two pairs of silks over a very sturdy, yet cushy looking mat. Our instructor skillfully demonstrated the first move we would be learning with ease, which I knew would not be duplicated on my part. Initially, I was shaky just standing on one foot, much less attempting to wrap my other leg around to pull myself up into the silks. After a couple tries, I progressed and was able to somewhat stand up in the silks. The patience and guidance of the instructors made me feel safe despite being really scared at first.”