8 posts tagged “ow”

In hindsight, my wrist might have been sending me a warning sign when, for the past three weeks, it hurt every time I put weight on it.  Possibly that was not something I should have ignored.

But, in my defense, putting weight on a flexed wrist (like the top part of a push up) is very different from holding a trapeze bar, a rope, or basically any part of a hoop.  As far as my (limited, mostly apocryphal*) knowledge of anatomy goes, my hand should not have freaked the heck out during hoop class on Friday night merely because I pulled up on the top part of the hoop.  But there you go.  Color me bewildered.

So I took about five days off to deal with the fact that my right hand seized in pain whenever confronted with such everyday objects as doorknobs and sink handles, much less trapezes, and to try to figure out if I could train myself to write with my left hand (answer: not legibly, not in five days).  I have basically no idea what I did to it or what's happening under the skin, but it never swelled.  Since swelling is my only red flag to go to the doctor--barring such subtle indicators as major blood loss or loss of limb--I have not gone to the doctor.  The doctor would probably tell me to quit monkeying around on trapezes.  Therefore I have resigned myself to living in ignorance.

Five days felt like an extremely long break, especially since I haven't quite gotten to the end of my post-Showcase high, so last night I went back to hoop.  I only irritated it a couple of times--and it was for a really cool new skill, which I feel should balance it out.  (My wrist feels otherwise.)  It helps that I just now discovered the power of two incredibly simple things: tape and icy hot.  Taping my wrist makes it roughly 100% less tweakable than it would be without (possibly because I can't flex or twist my wrist significantly).  And icy hot is friggin amazing.  I have no idea how some menthol has given my wrist full, painless range of motion mere hours after I made it angry by hanging from a hoop.  Magic, probably.

After being nice to it and judiciously applying magical icy hot, my wrist is more or less functional, although pens continue to thwart me.  I'm realizing, however, that this may be one of those things that never actually goes away: my right wrist, after all, is both my dominant wrist on trapeze, and the hand that uses the mouse/track pad and all of that carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing stuff.  It gets the worst of all possible worlds.  

I'm now making a concerted effort to use my left hand more for trapeze, but I'm also reconciling myself to the fact that I may have a cranky wrist for a good long time.  And as with any injury, I have been given many opportunities to reflect on the marvelous fragility and complexity of the human body.  You only get one.  I mean, I do have another wrist, in this particular case, but it can't write its way out of a paper bag, so I had better start taking good care of the right one.  I have a long career of awesomeness ahead of me (if I may freely toot my own horn), and how am I going to accept all those congratulatory hand shakes and high-fives with my left hand?  Now you see the full extent of the problem.

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*So excited that I got to use "apocryphal" in a sentence.

Daniela set me some homework for the week.

First, I have to practice running my act start to finish, because I haven't managed to get all the way through it since we started adding things.  It used to clock in at three and a half minutes, more or less on the nose.  But now there's a whole swinging section (though both Daniela and I are somewhat baffled as to what I will actually do once I'm swinging), and hip circles, and a back balance, and this twisty thing that's halfway between unicorn and candlestick (trust me), and god only know there's probably going to be a heel hang added in pretty soon-- so that now my act is actually longer than my music (by about ten seconds) and is more like four minutes long.  And boy howdy, does that extra thirty seconds ever knock the wind out of me.

Second, I have to break the act up and work on it in sections, being extremely particular about being clean but not sterile.  I have to find interesting things to do with my legs and arms, and extend, and breathe (details), and in general start to work up the story/character/dancey-bits.  This is always the hardest for me, especially when I don't have anyone watching and telling me whether or not it looks stupid.  (But I think my biggest problem is that I assume things look stupid when they don't, so maybe I should just pretend there's someone to answer that question, and that the answer is always "no.")

Third, I am to do my first heel hang of each training session without ropes-- that means nothing but my delicate heels between me and the mat.  Yes, I haven't been using the ropes when they're there; and yes, when I do it in lines Daniela is taking none of my weight.  But it's reassuring to have the ropes/lines THERE, even if I'm not using them.  Conversely, it is deeply unsettling to do a heel hang without any kind of fail-safe.  I'm not looking forward to trying it out for the first time, which would be tonight.

I have my work cut out for me.

Also, I have crazy burns right now on my outer forearms and inner elbows.  Daniela taught me iron cross to knees, which is a recipe for burning your arms-- you wrap the ropes around your arms and then slide down about a foot and a half.  Afterward, when I stopped to think about the skill, I wasn't so much surprised that I burned my arms (I was wearing sleeves, too) as that it took me three attempts  to do so.

It's not all bad news, though: on Tuesday, I managed to do two consecutive hip circles, which means I'm well on my way to doing nineteen in a row.  (Right.  Sure.)  Exciting as this was, it was hard on my clothing: my shorts usually get wrapped around the bar doing one hip circle, and they got EXTRA wrapped doing two.  So I took off the shorts (I was wearing leggings underneath) and my shirt decided to wrap itself.  So I took that off (I was wearing a leotard underneath that-- have I ever mentioned how long it takes me to de-layer myself when I have to pee?).  My leotard and leggings were plotting fiendishly to get themselves wrapped around the bar and so make me practice naked.  They failed, thank goodness; imagine the burns...  It does make me think about what to do costume-wise, though: I need to find something moderately interesting to look at, that preferably covers my arms and some part of my legs, but which won't wrap itself around the bar.  Tricky.

I may need to find a costume (if only an interim costume) sooner rather than later, because there's going to be another mini-open house on March 8th-- 4:30 to 6:00, I think, in the big gym.  I don't know much about it, but I think I'm in it: me and my act which is in four or five pieces-- and some of the pieces have holes in them-- and my lack of a costume, and my burned arms...  Yes indeed.  I have my work cut out for me.

This has been an exciting week in trapezedom for me.  I have managed to either whack myself with the bar or... um... fall off the trapeze three times in the past seven days.

I think I have met my quota.

Incident #1: Bar pass arabesque while spinning, resulting in me getting whacked in the nose.  I realize that my previous illustration of this skill was... less than clear (not to mention that it's officially "bar pass arabesque" not "arabesque bar pass"), but happily I just found a video via the lovely new Troupe Développé in which there is a very similar skill, which is executed without injury.  The whole video is, in fact, delightful:

Okay, look at 2:09.  It's not exactly bar pass arabesque, but it's bar pass arabesque-esque (I just wanted to say that).  You're upside down, you drop the bar with one foot, you catch it with the other-- all these things are the same.  Also, note the swinging bar.  Swinging, metal, surprisingly heavy bar. 

I can do this skill just fine on static trapeze.  I always catch the bar when it swings forward, and I usually even catch the middle of the bar with my toes.  It is magical to behold.

But things get weird when you spin.  I'm yet to find a single point video that includes this skill, so I'm not 100% sure what is supposed to happen, but when I did it last Monday, the bar hit the top of my foot when it swung forward (instead of landing neatly beneath my awaiting toes) then ricocheted into my nose.  The resulting sound is most often heard on football fields.  Daniela was rather alarmed by it, and offered me ice, and made me sit down until we were sure nothing was bleeding.  Nothing was: my eyes watered up and I had a weird sinus headache for the rest of the day, and my nose is still slightly tender, but that was the worst of it.  I popped up and did it again without a spin, and it was find.

Incident #2: Bar pass arabesque on single point but not spinning, resulting in me getting whacked in the jaw.  I don't really know what happened.  I wasn't spinning!  It should have been fine!  But my foot caught the bar in the corner (where the bar attaches to the rope) and the other end smacked me?  I had a witness and even she didn't know what I did, but it hurt.

Increasingly, I believe that I have never seen a video of this skill on a single point trapeze-- spinning or no-- because it is not done.  And increasingly, I fear that I will have to set aside this rather cool and impressive-looking skill for a theoretical (and frankly unlikely) static trapeze act.

Incident #3: sitting drop to angel, resulting in me falling off the bar.

For real.

I'm yet to find a video that includes this skill.  This is the final position.  The starting position is just sitting on the bar.  How hard is that, right?  I think I did this once in lines before I was okay'd to do it on my own.

I didn't do anything wrong when I fell off.  The hand that was holding onto the bar just slid off.  Fatigue?  Slipperiness?  Maybe I was over-gripping and my skin got pinched and my hand instinctively let go a little bit, which was a little bit too much?  Daniela said something like, "I've seen people fall off doing that skill before, but never when they were doing it right."  That's what makes me special!

Here's the strange thing, though: look at that picture.  See how she's facing down?  I landed face up.  The bar is hung about five and a half feet above the mat (because I'm short).  By the time I was under the bar in angel-- however briefly-- I would say I was maybe four and a half feet up.  But I somehow managed to rotate 180 degrees in the time it took me to fall that very small distance onto the mat.  It happened so fast that when I landed on my back, Daniela hadn't had time to process the fact that I had fallen, and my first thought was "why is she just standing there?" (Immediately after, of course, she went "oh my god!  Are you okay?!")

So I take back what I said about mats not saving me.  Mats are friggin amazing.  I want to buy the mat that caught me a drink.  Also, I retract any criticism of my own reflexes.  Granted, I was already rotating as I dropped from sitting to angel, but still: I'm like a cat, you guys.  Except I always land on my back, not my feet... this is questionably useful.

I was fine, incidentally.  The brain damage, in all three cases, obviously precedes the injuries.

P.S.  November is almost over!  I swear I'll be back once I've kicked my novel's ass!  And I will have videos, because the fabulous Diane filmed my act over the weekend.  Sadly, none of my pratfalls have been caught on film, but it's merely a matter of time...

You guys!  I have this killer-awesome bruise on the back of my ankle, today, from doing heel hangs.  I would show you, but I'm going on a trip tomorrow (wedding!) and it's already packed.  Oh, don't look so disappointed.  There will be plenty more where that came from.

Daniela had me go up and do my toe and heel hangs (refresher) at the very end of class, while in lines.  When I practice on my own, I hang two ropes from the trapeze and hold onto those for dear life, so that not all my weight is on my feet.  In lines, Daniela is holding me up (to varying degrees), so there are no ropes to ease the transition.  Heel hang went well, though I needed Daniela's assistance in getting my hands back to the bar.  Toe hang... is kind of a mess.  Imagine touching your toes while upside down: gravity is working against you (but, like, when isn't it?)  and whatever part of your body-- hands or feet-- isn't holding your weight wants to flop right down.  Hands on the bar?  Good luck getting the tops of your feet to stick.  Feet on the bar?  You have to climb back up there somehow, and hurry, because apparently humans have not evolved much in the way of tough top-of-foot skin.  The hearty stuff is all on the bottom for some reason.

I'm not exactly bummed, though: toe hang is impressive, to be sure, but I find heel hang more aesthetically pleasing (other than unsightly bruises), and I'm okay if I get one sooner than the other.

Oh, that reminds me: I went to class this morning trying to remember to minimize the number of unsightly bruises-- insofar as it's in my power-- because I have to get all dressed up for this wedding.  And I doubt the bride would appreciate it if I showed up accessorizing with open sores.  But then all my brainpower went toward not falling off the bar and I completely forgot my own prohibition against bruising.  Possibly I will be dabbing my ankles and triceps with foundation before the ceremony.

But it's not all fun and bruises.  No!  So, Daniela and I have been building a combination (routine, whatever) almost since Day 1.  At last count, it's about two and a half minutes long, and I've done is about sixty times so it's fairly seamless.  Every lesson, we run it several times with music, and Daniela typically asks me to do something extra with the music-- find a scene or character or emotion in it.  Or just find a character outside of the music: maybe I'm having some sort of conversation with the bar, or with someone watching me, etc.  The idea is that I'm not just stringing together a series of poses, but telling a story through those poses and making them look like... yes... a dance.

She is ingenious with her suggestions, but we have basically stumbled upon my kryptonite.  I am Very Bad at Dancing (it gets capital letters because it's been proven beyond all reasonable doubt).  Poor Daniela spent most of last lesson trying to coax me into some kind of character while I stood there, drawing a mental blank and feeling like a trapeze robot.

But I'm not!  In fact, I have a rich imagination: whenever I'm cleaning or cooking or walking to the bus, my brain is feverishly making crap up.  I tell myself little stories while I'm on the bus (silently; I'm not "that person," with whom you determinedly avoid eye contact).  In fact, I have written an entire novel about a guy whose rich imaginative life takes over his real life.  Do you see what I'm saying, here?  My imaginary friends have imaginary friends.  I should be really good at this stuff.

Alas, when I step up to a trapeze, it's like I spend all that time twiddling my mental thumbs.  Totally blank.  The best explanation I've been able to give myself is that I'm not trained as a dancer or an actor, and so there are substantial barriers between my internal world and my external behavior.  In general, I think this is a good thing; people who lack such barriers, not to put too fine a point on it, act crazy.  But now it would be helpful to have some sort of training and practice in acting slightly crazy in well-defined situations.

Oh well.  I can't exactly blame my past self for not being interested in dance or acting.  I'm still not, or at least not directly.  But I have to learn to act and dance for the purposes of trapeze, and I expect it will be a long uphill slog with Daniela dragging me all the way.  If nothing else I have to learn to act like I'm dancing and acting.  One of the laws of circus, I'm finding, is that if something isn't easy, painless, or beautiful, you fake it so that other people think it is.  That, at least, is the kind of make-believe I can do.

In case you were under the impression that my feet, these days, are whole, painless, and free from unsightly bruises and scrapes:

Toe hangs hurt

And I stand very carefully.

I've become a practicing junkie.  I have class twice a week, and ever since getting my permission slip signed, I've been coming in on my own for three of the other days. I'd like to say that this has resulted in sweeping improvements, but it hasn't really.  I'm just enjoying the honeymoon period.  A day will come, not that long from now, when I have to scrape myself off the couch to go practice.

In the mean time, I enjoy being able to come in and work at my own pace.  I am even easing my way around my trepidation/chagrin at stretching, practicing, and conditioning in front of other people who might happen to be in the gym during the middle of the day.  When there are no classes in session, the gym tends to be populated by people who already know what they're doing-- people who are in the Professional Aerial Program, people who are putting together acts (and some of them are impressive).  I admit to feeling slightly intimidated when I have to stretch in front of contortionists or get up on the bar and work through my little routine, which has "baby trapeze artist" written all over it.  But we all start where we are, and I'm pleased to report that I no longer stretch back behind the trampoline, but have boldly moved to the mats, where someone might actually see me.  Like they care, I know.

Up until yesterday, I could also happily report that my hands were rip-free.  A half hour private followed by an hour and a half private (the slackers in my class didn't show!) accompanied by inadequate hand maintenance has put an end to that.  The tear is right under my pinky-knuckle, and it is gross and painful.

(If you find talk of skin and calluses nauseating rather than fascinating, you can go ahead and skip the next paragraph.)

So, I seem to have the "kind of hands" that build up enormous calluses, which either have to be trimmed down or which will build to a certain point and then rip.  And by "trimmed down," I mean, "go to town with the nail clippers and the pumice stone."  Because I did actually trim the spot that ripped: on Wednesday night, I took one layer off and then thought "hm, it still looks angry."  But I couldn't get through any of the sixteen other layers of skin, and that's what tore.  As the teacher and I tended to it (I got a little one-finger tape wrap to get me through class) she suggested that I try using a razor on them.  I'm okay with the nail clippers, but I have to say, I'm a little squicked out by the idea of taking a razor to my hands, even if it's just for dead skin.  And you're squicked out, too, probably.  Sorry.  I warned you about this paragraph.

Anyway, the good news is that I learn a little bit more every time this happens.  For instance, the teacher mentioned that the "hot/cold treatment" (dunking your hands in very cold and then very hot water, back and forth) is intended to build calluses, which means that I should have nothing to do with it.  My body's all over the callus-building (dear body: between this and the allergies, I'm starting to think you need to relax.  Trapeze bars and dust mites are not the end of the world).  And now I'm all over pumicing my hands in the shower every day that I fly.

And it's not as though the pain is for nothing: I learned three new skills between the two classes, some of which are rather fancy (and difficult to describe).  I'm taking a day or maybe two off to let my hand get its act together-- the alternative would be to fly with pinky extended, which might be entertaining and dainty but not especially advisable-- and then I'm back in the ring to practice.