You might have noticed, I spend a lot of time talking about bodies and movement. Imagine how much more time I spend thinking about bodies and movement.
It’s a lot.
I’ve been doing this work for a pretty long time at this point, and over the years the way I think about these things has changed and evolved over and over. Every time I immerse myself in something new, I add to or shift my understanding of human movement.
I gave a talk recently, and in it I talked about how one of the biggest shifts in my thinking over the years is that nowadays, I don’t think a lot about muscles when I’m working with someone. Instead, I’m thinking about creating relationships. (If you’re interested in the talk, sign up to get it here!)
Which, admittedly, is probably a weird way to think about movement.
But our bodies are driven by all sorts of different relationships. There’s relationships between our bones, between our bones and muscles, and between muscles. The way all these things interconnect and are interdependent is wild!
A fun one, especially for the aerialist or pole dancer, is the ribcage, shoulder, abdominal relationship.
Our shoulders live on our ribcage, so the position that our ribcage lives in will hugely impact the position of our shoulders and how they function.
If the ribcage is pushed forward, it might cause the shoulder blades to slide towards the spine, and it might be really hard to protract them, or slide your shoulder blades around the side of your ribs. Protraction is an important part of the upward rotation that our shoulder blades need to do to get our arms overhead into a strong hanging position.
If you can’t protract, it’s going to be hard to hang well.
The main muscle that causes protraction of the shoulder blade is the serratus anterior. But, while we usually think about that movement as moving the shoulder blade on the ribs, it can also move the ribs under the shoulder blade. Instead of pulling the shoulder blades around the ribs, you’re pulling the ribs back into the shoulder blades.
I could try to push and pull my ribs to change their position, but the act of pressing my hands into the ground, and pressing my ribs into my shoulder blades will also change their position, and it will probably feel more sustainable.
But there’s more!
The serratus anterior interdigitates with the external obliques, which means that where the muscle fibers of the serratus connect to the ribs is also where the muscle fibers of the external obliques connect to the ribs. This means that when one of these muscles is firing, the other is going to want to fire, too.
Turning on your serratus anterior helps you turn on your abs.
All of these things work together and are happening at the same time! And there is no one part that is more important than the other, because the important thing is the RELATIONSHIP that all of these different pieces have.
So when I work with students, I work on helping them feel these relationships. Shoulders and ribs. Hips, pelvis, and low back. Etc, etc.
How does it feel different, what feels stronger, what feels connected?
I very rarely find myself saying things like “engage your core, squeeze your butt”
Because when we find these stronger relationships, the muscles do their thing.
Our bodies find strong positions.
Bodies want to be efficient. And the most efficient way to be strong is to have all your parts playing nicely with each other.
Are you curious about how all this relates to being on an aerial apparatus?
Turns out, I’ve got a whole course that gets into just that!
Aerial for Nerds pulls from my personal aerial methodology, and uses curriculum that I’ve been developing for over a decade to help you cultivate awareness, strength, and connection on your apparatus.
