How to Recover After Circus Class

Hello everyone and happy Sunday!

Are you ready for this week! Classes at Akrosphere start back up tomorrow! Can you tell I’m excited? A break is nice and all, but I can’t wait to start teaching and training again! Not sure how many of you know, but I started learning cyr wheel this year, and I haven’t touched the wheel in two weeks. I expect my first day back will be disastrous, and I’m sure many of you might feel the same way, but I promise it won’t be that bad! Last week I talked about how you quickly lose strength and endurance if you don’t train for a while, so I hope you all did the exercises I recommended! If you didn’t, you can still do them today!

So, we’re all starting back up, and we might feel a little wonky, so I thought I would talk about some important things to do after your circus class! The first thing is something we do together at the end of class: the cool down. Doing a good cool down after a class is a way to show your muscles a little love. One thing you might experience after not training circus for two weeks is having sore muscles. A nice cool down will help with this. If you are sore the next day, stretch those muscles out for a quicker recovery. (For more tips on recovery, check out my Recovery and Rehabilitation blog from a few weeks back.)

The next helpful thing is to eat some protein! Protein builds and repairs muscles, which your body will be craving after a hard circus workout. Eating protein speeds up recovery and can help you gain strength faster. Some great things to eat are eggs, lean meat or fish, and greek yogurt. If you’re not into these, there are also some vegan options, like quinoa, lentils, and peanut butter!

My last tip is to go over your notes after class while the skills are still fresh in your mind. I cannot emphasize this enough! We make you take notes, so why not make sure they are helpful? I know that sometimes during class, you are so excited about learning a new skill, that you just want to get on the apparatus to try it over and over again. Your coaches encourage you to write very detailed notes, but we know that doesn’t always happen. Instead of waiting until the next class to open your notebook and think “what did I even write last week?” go over your notes right after class and write down any additional helpful tips. This includes little things that you wouldn’t normally think about, like a hand position that you later realized was helpful, or even what conditioning exercises might make you stronger and help you get that new skill. That way, when you come back into class, you can quickly review and move on to learning some other cool stuff. It’ll also help you work on everything successfully during open gym!

The first week back might feel a little rough, but hang in there! You’ll be back to where you were in no time! And if you’re new to Akrosphere, also hang in there! Circus will make sense before you know it! See everyone very soon!

Catch you next week!

Mar