Today we started off the class with our typical warm up, with across the floor exercises and then some stretches once our body was warmed up. Last week we did not have class because most people cancelled due to the snow. That meant we are pushing classes an extra week. However today we started silks, which I am so excited about!
As we began class a lot of the movements came back to me with muscle memory regardless of the fact that physically my body was very out of shape from where it used to be when I did Silks in high school. We started off with learning a basic climb which came back to me very quickly but my upper body strength however is still lacking. The one thing I definitely found interesting was how there were some moves I knew but they just had a different name to them. After talking with my instructor about it she said it is very common practice for most moves to have different names from one place to the next as there isn’t really a book saying what is what. We learned a move called tootsie roll, which is very similar the same move we learned on the Hammock, the only difference is they are done in a foot lock, (which was also taught during this first class). We also learned arabesque, double foot locks, split roll, mermaid and russian climb.
A lot of what we learned felt very familiar, comfortable but a bit awkward with my hands. At the end of the class I found out that we were learning on non stretch silks and that there’s also stretch silks which at the end of class we were able to give it a try to climb up. It felt like home, I realized that in high school that was the only type of silks I used. The biggest difference between the 2 was instantly noticeable when climbing. Non stretch is almost double the size so when grabbing it in your hand can be quite difficult. Stretch silks are far thinner making it much easier to grab, especially grabbing into 1 hand.