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Aerial Teachers: Save Yourself! Don’t Demo!

Long time no write! A lot has changed in my life, and yet, at the same time, I’m back to the same ol’ same ol’ stuff of studio ownership and teaching aerial. The biggest difference between the “then” and “now” is that I have downsized dramatically. When COVID and other things changed everything, it was too much to go big, so I’ve gone small. I reopened my studio this year at a new location in Castle Rock, Colorado.

The space I found was small, and so I put up a truss system that was designed by the amazing Vertical Arts Dance company. (I highly recommend them for helping you set up a truss system and all the rigging that goes with it.) My truss comfortably fits 4 points, so I have up to 8 people in each class, and I teach all the classes! yikes!

I decided to scale back my program to teach just sling and silks. I used to teach pretty much anything and everything, but that was getting overwhelming, so now it’s just sling and silks. We do throw in the occasional trapeze or hoop into a show, but I don’t hold any major classes on these apparatuses anymore. And I still teach random things in private lessons like cloud swing or gasp–flying pole! (Ok, I don’t actually teach flying pole, but I have a student who comes in and I give artistic coaching as she moves on the pole. It’s really fun to work with!)

My aerial life is pretty simple, and I’m grateful because I have a lot to balance as my kids grow up. I teach sling on Tuesdays and fabric on Thursdays. On Fridays and Saturdays, I teach a blend through private lessons, open gyms, and foundational classes.

Generally, I teach about 20-25 classes/week, which I consider full-time in the land of aerial! (For comparison, a therapist generally sees clients for this same amount of time, and it is considered a full-time load. The rest of the week is spent in preparation for those hours: writing emails, managing payments/scheduling, etc.) If I were to demonstrate all the skills in all these classes, I would be at a major risk of injury which would jeopardize my entire career at the moment since I am the sole teacher at my little studio, so this article is actually to come on and tell you what is saving my career: NOT demoing anymore!

At a recent teacher training, I was talking about how little I demonstrate when I teach, and the participants couldn’t believe it! They couldn’t fathom how my teaching was still effective without showing all the skills, and I get it. It helps to see the skills done, and see the skills done right. In my demoing days, I enjoyed demonstrating all the skills slow and perfect. It kept ME in pristine aerial condition! I liked going through all the skills and when I walked through the skill myself, I was reminded of all the cues that I couldn’t remember off the top of my head. “Oh yeah, the silk does go around your back here…”

But I am now almost 20 years into this teaching gig (yes, I’m that kind of aerial dinosaur) and it is my sole profession. My body cannot handle the demo-all-the-time routine, but I am SO not ready to be done teaching. At first, I felt like I was going to be a worse teacher because I wasn’t going to demo, but I think I have gotten to be a BETTER teacher. I’d like to share what I’ve learned for all your hard-working teachers that find yourself wanting to teach full-time and know that your body can’t handle demoing that much day in and day out for years on end.

Lesson #1: When I say I don’t demonstrate, this is a general rule. I DO get up in the air sometimes, so it’s not like I am never in the air ever, but it is rare, and I always have the option to not demonstrate depending on how warmed up I feel that day. I have learned that if my body is not properly warmed up, I will have consequences that are not healthy for my body to endure, so I make sure to have “totally grounded” OR “totally in the air” days. The WORST thing I can do for my body is try to half-and-half it. I end up in the air not really warmed up, and, I don’t know about you, but this just wrecks me.

Lesson #2: Floorial is better than you give it credit for! Most of my teaching, especially for silks, is done from rolling around on the ground, walking through the skills. My students know that I’m not going to get up in the air and demonstrate so they listen really carefully. It’s true that sometimes it is very confusing as to what I am trying to convey. And yes, it may be easier to just show the skill, but we get through it pretty darn well. And when you do this as a sole method of teaching, let me testify– you get darn good at it, and your students get darn good at paying attention to your rolling-on-the-floor shenanigans.

Lesson #3: Use your students to demonstrate skills. I love asking for “guinea pigs” because my students love being guinea pigs! When I ask for a guinea pig, it’s a special place of honor because you get all the attention and all my corrective feedback. And you get to be the first to do the skill! I love asking “who wants to be my guinea pig?” and seeing tons of hands shoot up into the air. Even if the student doesn’t know the skill, that’s okay! In fact, that’s exactly why I need strong guinea pigs. They have to trust that I will take them into a new skill that they have never done before and be safe about it!

It’s especially easy to ask for someone to show a skill that is from a previous class or ask someone to show a variation of something. I ask for the whole spectrum of ideas. Having students show me what they remember is always a great starting place for a class, and it doubly serves to demonstrate to the student-who-wasn’t-there what they may have missed.

To create a strong pool of guinea pigs who are ready to tackle new skills, you must have established a consistent vocabulary. My students are so used to this option, that frequently when I start teaching a new skill, I simply select someone and say something like “start in catchers and we’ll go from there.” They know that I will simply talk them into the skill and off we go.

To get to the point where you have the right words to be able to do this is a skill in and of itself. Many teachers aren’t ready to rely on their words currently because they rely too heavily on demonstrating, and their students have relied on visual learning by watching their teacher. My students rely on vocabulary, and as such, their vocabulary is very strong, making our communication powerful. When they are in the air, I can cue corrections with greater precision than those students who need to “see it one more time and maybe get it next time.” My students have words for what steps they are missing, and everyone in the class can help point it out to them! Example: “You got the wrap around, but not the beat after the wrap around.”

I have seen amazing results when a student is demonstrating and I am giving the words because the words tell what to pay attention to. A strong visual shows the whole picture, but students can get overwhelmed by the whole picture. Breaking it down by major cues tells them what to focus on. “This time, focus on opening your chest.”….”Now, focus on lifting your hips.” If I just say “do it like this”, sometimes students aren’t really sure what “this” is. The only ones learning with pure demo-sessions are the good mimickers, but this doesn’t cater to everyone’s learning style. By branching out like this, I have seen many students excel because they do well at other learning styles. And the mimickers can at least still mimic other students.

Lesson #4: I use video rarely. I use it more in private lessons, when there is just one person and it makes sense to hover around a screen together. But with a large group of 8 people, I don’t have a screen available for that. My largest screen is my phone. To give you an idea, in the past 8 weeks of teaching, I gathered a class around my phone one time to watch a video of myself executing a drop with the way that I wanted it to look. Everyone had already been doing the drop–they had the wrap, and they were dropping just fine, but they were floppy, and no one was getting my cues on how to clean it up. I thought that a visual might be helpful, so I had the class gather at my phone and watch the video. The great irony of it was that it didn’t change anyone’s form! In the end, I needed to find new cues. After thinking it out, I tried a new cue and it worked! The video didn’t even help, finding better cues was the answer all along!

Lesson #5: I use an aerial doll with her own silk or sling, but very rarely (even more rare than using screens). I use it more in private lessons for the same reasons as above. So far, “aerial barbie” has yet to make an appearance at my new studio, but I am thinking of bringing her in next week because there are some games that I like to play which incorporate her help. I much prefer to be the live Barbie, even if I am just rolling around on the floor. For sling, I bring in a loop and I move the loop around me while I roll around the floor, since all my slings are up off the ground. The loop is a thin piece of silks, about 10 feet long. I hold it up on me as if I am in the air, and then I show from the ground what to do.

Lesson #6: I will get up and demonstrate anything that doesn’t use arms/grip. My arms are the body part most susceptible to overuse injury, but I will typically jump in on the demonstrations that are all core, such as side back balance in sling. I haven’t gotten anywhere close to an overuse injury on core, so count me in for core! However, this is still, is pretty rare.

Lesson #7: I do tend to need to demonstrate things for classes that are full of 100% beginners, so I keep my schedule light on these classes. When I do teach them, I make sure to do the warm-up with everyone. I use my other muscles (core, legs, knee pitts, etc) as much as possible while keeping it light on the arms. Afterall, this is good for anyone starting aerial as well. It is important not to overdo it on the arm-work for a new student, so this helps remind me to keep it light.

Lesson #8: I saved my favorite lesson for last! The best thing about not demonstrating skills is that it highlights my students as the featured aerialists of the hour, not me! Oftentimes, my students will start to explore a skill in a new and interesting direction because they didn’t know what the skill was “supposed” to look like, but that new direction blooms new choreographic options! In fact, not having the “perfect” pathway modeled means that they have to trust me to say when they got the skill — they are less judgmental on themselves. When I used to demo, I heard this a lot “But you did this, and I don’t think I look like that.” They were comparing themselves to me. I was the standard. Now, the standard is when I say so, and I am actually a lot less critical than people are of themselves! I get to encourage students that they got the “next important step” and aerial is about picking it up one step at a time, not trying to pick up all 5 million steps in one go, although I know those over-achievers sure try!

Often I say this line in class: “That wasn’t what I had in mind, but please save that as another option and we will come back to that and explore it.” And we do! I don’t just say that. I follow up, circle back and explore the other options that exist within a move, and it was often something they “accidently” found on the way to figuring out what I was trying to convey. But, in the end, what I am trying to convey is that you can do a million things with a piece of cloth hanging from the ceiling, so let’s have fun exploring all the things we can fit into the classtime!

My students have far more air-time in each class because I am not taking up my own time getting up and down for demonstrations. I value their time and want to maximize use. I appreciate how in-tune my students are to my language, and they can often follow me through an entire sequence with just words! I value that kind of teacher-student relationship, and I hope that this has helped you see the value that extends beyond the mere benefit of saving your body from wreckage. If I was superhuman, I would demo more, but the reality of life is that it is better for my longevity if I don’t, and my students do gain benefits as well.

When a student, who is newer to my teaching, asks “Can I watch you do this skill?”, I politely say “I really wish I could, but unfortunately, I am not warmed up enough right now to do it. We can watch another student in the class do the skill.” OR I will demonstrate the next-best-thing from the ground. Eventually, it all works out. My studio is a thriving little endeavor, and I am really happy with it.

I absolutely love teaching. I love teaching far more than writing blogs, no offence. (Although blog writing is a lovely break from teaching and I do appreciate being in reflective-mode.) I want to continue to teach for at least another decade, who knows?! While my body may be getting over aerial now, I know that it is not the end of my teaching career. And there are days when I still bust out quite the routine, just not in class — it’s in my own time. 🙂

You can watch the video below to view a sample of me teaching a sling class. It is sad how little I move. I do feel myself slowly deteriorating out of shape, however, this has been what is necessary to trade in a longer career in teaching. It has become all the more important that I have my own practice and my own workouts because I really don’t move much in class, but it works! Happy Flying ~ Rebekah

PS: I had to turn off comments because my spam filters aren’t working. (Don’t mind the 3,000 comments I have on the last couple blogs.) I would LOVE to still hear your thoughts and feedback. What do you think about not demoing as much? Do you find it possible? Please go to our Facebook page to share your thoughts on this article: https://www.facebook.com/aerialdancing/ or drop a line to me at info@aerialdancing.com. Thanks all!

Groping in the Dark Part 2: A Case for Open Gym

This is a continuation of the previous post about the important of self-practice for students. Blog by McKell Anderson.

3 – Familiarity VS Mastery

Have you ever practiced aerial to a specific playlist? To the point where when one song ends that you know what song is going to play next? Or have you ever read a passage in a book so many times that when you get a few words in that you remember what it is all about? You don’t have it memorized and can’t recite it when the book is closed, but you recognize it.

Recognizing input isn’t the same as learning and is a far cry from Mastery. Often, recognizing what is happening can make us feel like “we already know” something, and the brain turns off. How does this relate to aerial? Have you ever started watching an instructor demonstrate something you are familiar with and stopped paying as close of attention? Or have you done a warm-up or conditioning drill so many times that you think you are a pro, only to have the instructor come around and tell you to zip up your core?

When asked to do the “hip key drill” at the beginning of class, you (or your student) fan kick like a dream with perfect execution. From the ground AND from the air! Later, when lost attempting the sequence in class, the help provided is to “find the hip key again” to restart. This tip is met with wide eyes of confusion, and the instructor must offer step by step instruction to get there successfully. This would be a sign of familiarity with one entry to a hip key, but light years away from the true understanding of the wrap and how it relates to other things.

How does one get beyond familiarity and take the next step to mastery? The book addresses many ways, but one crucial thing is this: stop repeating the same drills over and over again! Mass-practice of the same exercise will not lead to mastery, just like rereading text doesn’t lead to better recall. (I wish I had known that when I was in college.) This creates a familiarity that lets you feel good about your practice when your execution is not improving to the degree that you perceive. This leads to a thought that can be haunting:
Perceiving your practice as having gone well is often a symptom of familiarity and not mastery.

4 – Variety is the Spice of Circus Life

There are things we can do to help prevent ourselves from falling into the trap of familiarity. Learning and practice should involve varied approaches. One of the most significant issues with training is that sometimes we do the SAME drills for the skills we are learning. Lack in variation diminishes our ability to establish extensive connections mentally and physically, which results in a very shallow depth of understanding.

In the book, a study that was done tested a person’s ability to throw a ball into a bucket that was three feet away. The participants were separated into two groups. Group 1 practiced throwing balls into a container that was three feet away, just like the test would require them to do. Group 2 practiced throwing balls into a container at different distances, but never the three-foot distance needed for the test. After the practices, which group performed better on the test? Group 2. Even though the first group was doing the EXACT motion that the test would measure, their execution was not as good as the group with variety in their practice.

Thanks Sarah Andersen for the comic.

A considerable benefit of variety in training is that it develops problem-solving abilities. For any aerialist that has ever gotten stuck in the air, being able to troubleshoot is an extremely critical skill. If you have learned ten different ways to get into a hip key through variability in training, then the ability to recognize different paths to save yourself in the air is more readily at hand and in the muscle memory of the body.

This past summer I participated in the Born To Fly Teacher Training for Level 1 Silks. The week of training was very intense and sometimes a bit overwhelming. I remember us going over invert progressions for HOURS. There was a list of different drills that boggled my mind, and at the time I thought, “Do we REALLY need to do all of these?” However, when I read the section in Make It Stick about the importance of variety, I realized those invert drills are not meant to all be done together when learning how to invert but are a benefit in providing different ways to do similar things over time. The various exercises doled out bit by bit will benefit an aerialist more than the same four drills done during warm up every single week when it comes to developing inversion strength.

Some subconscious repetition I have seen with training happens when you choose where in the room you like to train and what apparatus to use. In a class, students often find their way to a specific spot in the room and never leave it. Even though six apparatuses are hanging, they never leave THE ONE. Different environmental spacing and different equipment help develop better skills. Another example from the book was when a hockey team started performing their passing drills on different areas of the ice rink in practice, and the overall cohesiveness in the gameplay improved. It seems like a no-brainer, but when we practice, we tend to all congregate to the same area we usually do. Change which points you train on in the room, try the stretchy fabric, the braided rope, the big 38” lyra, or the un-taped trapeze bar. The difference in how things feel is vital to learn.

Variety in timing is also a great tool. Not only does this help with spaced retrieval for better learning, but this also helps with execution at different energy levels. Do you always train hard skills at the beginning of practice? Just after warm up? If you only condition how to do inverts at the beginning of class, then what will happen when you need to execute one at the end of a difficult routine when your body is VERY fatigued? Choosing different times during your practice to try skills can help make you into the best aerialist you can be. Don’t be afraid to do conditioning at the end of class or training.

Open Gym Practice is a Must

To get better at anything in life, practice is a key component. We now know that what happens in class is not “practice.” That is the time that new information is going in. We need time for the brain to process and assimilate that information in our minds. After our lesson, we need to get up in the air again later to review. For a lot of aerial students, aside from the weekly classes, not much additional practice happens. This approach removes the element needed for the recall of the things done in class to make them a more permanent part of a student’s repertoire.

Thanks Pony Poison for the comic.

If the studio you attend has an open gym, make sure you take the time to participate regularly. This is the time to get the things out of your head and truly learn them. Practicing A LOT is not as important as practicing effectively. Here are some tips for effective good open gym practices:

1. Do not train alone for safety and helpful group problem-solving.
2. Make open gym training follow a different pattern than standard class structure.
3. Try different conditioning exercises or try them on a new apparatus.
4. Don’t forget about your “other side.”
5. Choose to review skills that are not fresh in your mind and harder to recall.
6. Review any forgotten things low and slow before moving up.
7. Try to connect skills, even if you fail.
8. Let yourself get frustrated, but don’t fall apart over it.
9. Do not let someone teach you something new; this is remembering time!
10. Write down any questions or things you couldn’t figure out for your instructor.

To clarify, I don’t think there is anything wrong with skill sharing (item #9), but that when it comes to learning retention, using open gym for skill sharing undermines our goal. The whole point is to add training time around the need for retrieval of skills without an instructor there to make it too easy. Plan additional training opportunities for skill sharing.
For studios and instructors, open gym is often a sensitive topic. Rules need to be established to make this type of practice a safe environment and not a liability risk. Here are some suggestions for ensuring that happens:

1. Have staff members present for supervision and emergencies, not instruction.
2. Require crash pad use for all apparatuses in open gym.
3. Wait to lower in equipment (or however your studio brings them out) until after enough time or warm up has elapsed.
4. Create a designated cell phone area that is not directly next to an apparatus but close enough for filming.
5. Display a list of any open gym restricted skills.
6. Provide “open gym homework” during regular weekly classes.
7. Ensure class time incorporates training on troubleshooting when stuck.
8. Pull apparatuses up (or however your studio puts them away) before open gym is over to provide cool down time without aerial temptations.

Many of these things are commonly part of studio open gym rules. I would encourage studios to designate a cell phone area for the sake that watching a video and immediately hopping onto an apparatus to do it isn’t a long-term learning skill. The student should have at least a little walk to forget and must recall the video content. Also, it is appropriate to decide dangerous skills are too risky for open practice environments without the appropriate instructor. Teachers providing homework can help encourage open gym attendance.

While taking time to practice skills away from an instructor can be scary and overwhelming, for the teacher as much as the student, studies show this learning strategy is sound. Ensure your learning methods are prepared to support a way for information to go into your mind and a way of getting that information back out. Without this balance, the frustration of forgetting will be your enemy instead of your guide.

McKell Anderson is currently working as Rebekah Leach’s right hand woman, creating blogs, fun newsletters, photo editing, and doing all the good stuff to make this curriculum project an aerial dream-come-true.

The Importance of Groping in the Dark: Part I

A 2-part blog by McKell Anderson.

When it comes to the aerial and circus industry, there is a giant push for safety, which is terrific! A big thing that has come up is training without an instructor is not a safe practice, specifically when attempting to learn things from the interweb. While I agree that having a qualified coach is essential to a safe aerial career, I think we place too little emphasis on the importance of practicing aerial WITHOUT your instructor.

Wait… What?!

Is she suggesting that we let beginning aerialists do ANYTHING unsupervised?! That is crazy! Unacceptable! This is nonsense! People are going to DIE!

Take a deep breath, stay calm, and read all the way to the end before you write this off as rubbish.

Have you ever had a student (or are you the student) that can execute 90% of what has been taught in class, but then has the memory of a goldfish when asked to perform a skill weeks later? Or have you ever sent an instructor a video saying, “Can we learn this in class pretty please?!” to get a reply from your kind, patient, wonderful instructor saying, “We have done this skill at least a dozen times in class before.” There is a vast difference between learning skills in class and remembering them later. I think this is a particularly common issue with complicated wraps used in more advanced skills.

This phenomenon is not unique to aerials. There is actual research to why stuff falls out of our brains and what we can do to prevent it. In Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, Peter Brown, Henry Roediger III, and Mark McDaniel shed new light on how learning works from a variety of empirical studies done over the past decade.

SPOILER: People think they are learning and retaining well when they are not.

Going through this book has completely changed my approach to learning and teaching. If you do not have time to read it on your own, here are a few of the nuggets of wisdom that apply to aerial practice.

1. The true direction of learning
2. The importance of the struggle
3. The difference between content familiarity and subject mastery
4. The importance of practice variations

1 – Better Out than In!

“The single biggest idea is that we tend to focus on trying to get new learning into the brain and we do that through repetitive reading and practice. But what research tells us is that learning really happens when we try to get new knowledge and skills out of the brain.” – Make It Stick

Qualified coaches are the best source for putting good aerial knowledge into students’ heads through lesson plans, spotting, and supervised execution. The knowledge going into the brain, while an irrevocably important part of the process, is not where learning happens. Without a situation for an individual to recall the data input and turn it back into the output, long-term retention of learning does NOT occur. If you spend three hours on Instagram watching videos, but never get up and try any of them, did you learn anything from all your aerial research endeavors? In this information age in which we live, getting information into our heads is all too easy. The learning is in the retrieval of the information you took in. You would have to watch it AND DO it.

Doesn’t doing things in class count as learning?

The short answer: No. Why not? Our in-class time is a valuable opportunity for exposure to new information but without strategic lesson design, not the place for retrieval. You recall the information too close to when it was learned. Timing is essential, and there has not been enough time for it to be moved from short-term storage in the brain to long-term storage in the brain. There needs to be enough time for the information to be processed in your fantastic head. The consolidation of new information can result in varying levels of remembering, and the ability to recall skills from long-term storage is the place where learning happens. As an aerialist you need to attend class, take in the lesson and try the skills with your instructor, sleep on it, forget it a bit, then TRY IT AGAIN to maximize learning.

2 – All Aboard the Struggle Bus!

One of the side effects of waiting long enough to forget before practicing a skill again is that it makes it hard. The longer the time that elapses, the harder it gets usually. Wait too long, and you must start all over with the data input. Unfortunately, the struggle is the process that produces the benefit you want.

“It’s a funny thing, but we, especially those of us who are in the teaching profession, think that the more clear and simple we can make new knowledge, the better it’ll be learned and remembered. As learners, when it’s clear, we think, boy, that’s great. I get that.

“In fact it’s the opposite that is true, that when you have to struggle with the new knowledge a little bit, if you hear a lecture that’s very clear but it goes in a different sequence than the text you read, and you have to think about how to reconcile those — that way of engaging with the material enables you to get it to stick.” – Make It Stick

This is a difficult concept for me to swallow because of who I am as a person. I LOVE mapping things out in clear, concise ways. When a progression is organized linearly I get a satisfaction that I cannot describe! When teaching, I love having a lesson planned that sensibly guides students to their destination with as much ease as possible. I do not want them to get discouraged, be upset, or get confused. If I see a student struggling, I try to immediately step in to help. I want it to be simple, and the idea that I have been shortchanging students by making it TOO easy is giving me an identity crisis. I want students to succeed; however, short-term success can come at the expense of long-term learning.

Why is struggling important? This is where the book got very detailed into the functions of the brain, which I will botch if I try to break it down. The central concept describes how the brain retrieves memories and ideas. When we struggle and take the time to pull things out of deep forgotten places, it changes where and how the brain stores those ideas. When I thought about the aerial concepts that I understand like the back of my hand, I realized it was because I sat down and mapped out the theory on my own. I was given the pieces, but by assimilating them into the big picture is what embedded those concepts. This never resulted in my crying in class because it was hard, but the struggle of connecting things outside of class drove them into my mind forever.

Embrace the struggle. If you are in class learning a new skill, try to connect it to other things you know. Try to create relationships in the information that are not being PROVIDED for you. If you are a teacher, make a lesson plan that includes areas where students have to problem solve or remember. Since reading the book, I have made a habit of making students do what was taught the previous week without me saying or showing it again. This action alone has resulted in considerable improvements in student skill retention from week to week. The first week I tried it, it was ROUGH. It took almost ten minutes of precious class time for students to remember the full sequence. During the discussion, I wanted to jump up and show it to them quickly about a hundred times. The process of them figuring it out made it a sequence they haven’t forgotten since that recall exercise.

I made it through my identity crisis, but it wasn’t by abandoning all the lesson plans or careful progressions. I still use those when I teach and try to construct those as I learn. To facilitate more effortful learning, I now try to create opportunities for problem-solving. Sometimes I will show the final pose and give the class time to try and find different ways there, make them create a way to mimic it on the ground, or with a partner. Simple difficulty can be added by having them ask you questions about the skill WITHOUT actually speaking. Now I use my structure to show clear steps, but only after encouraging opportunities to make connections first. When the answers are provided after, the ‘AHA!’ seems a bit more resonant.

There is most definitely a balance between beneficial struggle and leaving class in tears. I challenge all aerialists to make sure that each practice involves a chunk of time where a battle is felt to a reasonable degree. Try a new way to get into something, even if it doesn’t work. Embrace frustration as your long-term learning companion.

Keep reading on our next blog post for points 3 & 4.