I did do well – but only after putting in ten times as much effort as I thought I would need. Circus training is about taking all known physical limits and then radically blowing those limits out of proportion. When I entered the circus school, I thought that doing a handstand was a sizable achievement. I quickly learned that it was only a basic movement for the rest of my training, much like the letter “a” is to an entire paragraph. It was only the beginning.

Circus training is by far the most intense and effective exercise form I have ever encountered. It sculpts and shapes your body, drastically improves your ability to balance in any position, increases your power, flexibility and coordination – all without the use of weights, machines, or fancy equipment. Your movement becomes efficient and effective. You don’t develop extra muscles just to look good – you develop them because they help you achieve a specific move. Everything serves a purpose.

A few years ago, I was inspired by the idea of combining two complementary movement disciplines: acrobatics and yoga. In acrobatics, you develop power, speed, coordination and balance. In yoga, you develop flexibility, calmness, and awareness of breathing. The genesis of the two forms became “Acrofit Power” – a class that combines explosive plyometric exercises with the calming and meditative spirit of yoga. Since 2009, I’ve had multiple teacher certifications and hundreds of students experience Acrofit.

AWAKENING
The Acrofit Power class begins with a centering breathing exercise called “Ying Yang Centering”. Students empty their minds of daily distractions and focus on drawing in full, deep inhalations since the ability to control and expand breath capacity is key for any aerobic activity. The next few sequences warm up the arms, neck, shoulders, and legs in preparation for the first of the acrobatic movements.

SUNRISE
The first acrobatic exercise is called “Candle Series”. From a seated position, you roll backwards, extending legs vertically into the air, drop and roll forward, and hop into a mini-handstand. It’s a move that teaches you how to use existing momentum and gravity to facilitate the move. It’s a typical example of what Acrofit training is all about – using existing forces like body momentum, gravity, or counterbalances to make your movement more efficient and effortless. Acrofit is not about blindly pushing or muscling through a move. In advanced acrobatics, that generally results in injury, because coordination, body awareness and appropriate power, not ballistic power, is required. Correct power levels, timing, and speed are more valued attributes.

POWER
The Power sequence focus primarily on basic acrobatic moves and core strengthening exercises, like cartwheels, forward rolls, and a deceptively simple, but challenging core training routine called “Breakdance Basics”. It’s the piece de resistance of the class with five separate movements that combined, radically increase your aerobic and plyometric capacity.

We also practice a concept called “Active Resting”. Active resting is the practice of gaining maximum recovery while maintaining a posture of readiness. Typically, athletes will collapse in exhaustion after a demanding exercise. You’ll see the tired pose: hands on knees, body hunched over, heaving gasps for air. In active resting, you kneel, sit, stand, or even go into a headstand and manage your recovery in that position. You deny yourself the tendency to show fatigue and in doing so, strengthen your psychological will to continue. Acrofit, despite its unique physical demands, is a practice more for the mind, than for the body.

SUNSET
Headstands and child’s poses follow to bring down the pace of the class. Headstands allow you to develop balance, and internal awareness of core positioning – is your body straight, curved, piked? Highly oxygenated blood comes rushing to your head, rejuvenating, refreshing, and invigorating your brain. After another core training exercise, the class re-centers with a adapted deep breathing exercise and wrist and forearm strengthening sequence.

MEDITATION
Following in the structure of a yoga class, you return to a state of savasana or lying down position. By lying down after a workout and intentionally calming your mind and breath, you allow the accumulated lessons of the training to integrate into your body. It’s allowing your unconscious mind to assimilate the movements by relaxing the controlling aspect of the conscious mind, and removing it from the learning process. Ultimately, movement becomes natural, spontaneous and most efficient when it becomes unconscious and instinctive.

Meditation is one of the most overlooked components of a well-rounded, effective training routine. By relaxing your body and mind before completing your practice, you are associating relaxation with training. The state in which you leave your training is the state in which you’ll enter your next one. Maximum learning, progress and physiological efficiency is best achieved in relaxed states. Acrofit Power, which demands high levels of coordination, balance, and induces increased levels of stress because of the acrobatic exercises, is best approached from a calm, focused and relaxed mind and body.

***
Acrofit Power is a combination of the best acrobatic exercises I learned through the National Circus School of Canada, Cirque du Soleil and the many other tours, projects, and workshops I participated in throughout my career. It’s designed to be tough enough for the seasoned athlete, but accessible for the complete beginner. It’s also not a watered-down version of acrobatic training for the general public – they are exact exercises that I practiced amongst professional acrobats to prepare for our routines. With Acrofit Power, you can expect a fun, challenging, authentic and highly unique practice.

Many exercise forms focus on technique. Yoga focuses on postures, bootcamp runs you through circuit drills, and swimming makes you do laps. In most classes, you follow the instructor move for move, copying as closely as you can the form of the exercise. You imitate the placement of the toes, the fingers, the arch of the back, and depth of the squat. Unfortunately in many classes, it resembles a factory production line where student after student forces herself into a carbon copy of the instructor.

Learning technique is important but only if it is accompanied by principle training. Learning the principle of a movement frees your mind from training by rote and teaches you to develop self-awareness and creativity. Here are a few examples of the principles behind the technique:

Technique            Principle
Handstand            Placing your center of gravity over your foundation
Tree Pose (yoga)        Placing your center of gravity over your foundation
Warrior Pose            Placing your center of gravity over your foundation
Punch                Generating power by rotating your center of gravity
Kick                Generating power by rotating your center of gravity
Running            Off balancing your center of gravity
Squats                Compressing and expanding the body
Crunches            Compressing and expanding the body
Back flip            Compressing and expanding the body

There are thousands and thousands of movement techniques but only a few principles. Once you begin to understand how the body moves, you can begin to apply the principles across multiple exercise forms. For example, my two main movement specialty areas are acrobatics and martial arts. How do principles cross over between the two?

Martial arts is based on two primary principles: generating power by rotating your center of gravity and compressing and expanding the body. The speed and power behind any punch, kick, knee, or elbow comes from rapidly torquing your waist – your center of gravity – and extending a limb. As you extend your punch, kick, knee or elbow, you expand your body, then quickly compress it again.

Acrobatics is based on two primary principles: generating movement by off balancing your center of gravity and compressing and expanding your body. A back handspring requires you to fall off balance first, then rapidly expand your body backwards in an arch, while firing your legs. You expand to your maximum range and then return to a normal range, standing.

Other exercise forms may have only one main principle. Running is the act of constantly falling off balance and catching yourself.  You move your center of gravity, the waist, forward and wait for your feet to catch up. Then you repeat over and over again – and suddenly you’re running. Your speed is not determined by how quickly you move your feet, but by the degree to which you’re willing to be imbalanced.

Benefits of Principle Training

When you begin to actively seek to understand the principle behind all your movements, you increase your body awareness. Instead of being distracted by techniques, you become much more in tune with what you are doing and if you are overdoing a movement, or if you can go further with it. You learn faster because you see the similarities across multiple moves and you become more creative as an athlete because you can make up exercise routines instead of following rigid programs that lead to boredom and chronic injury.

Once you understand movement based on principle, you also learn faster. Instead of dissecting a technique, you seek automatically to understand the physics and dynamics of the movement. The technique happens to be the specific requirements of that sport or exercise form, so your learning accelerates because you already understand what 90% of your body has to do.

Spiritual Parallel
On a spiritual parallel, principle training is like having a clear set of values versus a rulebook to dictate your actions. For example, you might value kindness, courage, and community contribution. All your actions stem from these simple values. You’ll choose to help people instead of hindering them, encourage others in need, and volunteer your time, money, or expertise to your community.

On the other hand, if you haven’t identified your values, you’ll struggle with your daily choices because you won’t have an internal compass to guide your actions. You’ll rely instead on a rulebook, which by its very nature is inflexible and can’t adjust to new circumstances. For every new situation or variable, you’ll need a new rule. That’s why life gets laborious when you don’t have clear values – there are too many rules to remember and some of them will end up contradicting each other!

For example, I used to have a strict rule that I should never drink alcohol. It was a belief I inherited from my upbringing, and I applied it dogmatically to my life without question. I thought I valued health but I was really locked into a rule that I had never thought to ask it if served me.

My non-drinking rule probably saved me from a lot of heartache, nights of regret and an overtaxed liver. On the other hand I missed out on a lot of fun as well. If I had defined my value as enjoying life through healthy moderation, then I would have made choices that allowed me to drink when I wanted to, but not overdo it to cause long term damage. I finally replaced this rule with a value at the age of 33, when I finally had my first hangover.

So any rule, when not backed by a value you truly care about, results in rigid, robotic behavior. You end up enforcing your rule with aggression because you don’t really have options, unless you write more rules to accommodate a changing situation. Then you end up with a personal rule book thousands of metaphoric pages long, and, instead of aggression, you experience exhaustion.

***

Physical training is the same. When your mind is flooded with thousands of techniques without principles, you become overwhelmed with the choices and you simply shut down. Perhaps you stop training, or resort to the boring forms of training, like watching the same video over and over again because your entire program is dictated to you and no thinking is required. Without principle-based training, the attrition rate on an exercise program is high because you don’t have variations – you can’t slow down on a long day, or speed up on an energetic day. With principle-based training, you have the knowledge to show you how to make a movement easier or more challenging, apply it to another form of movement or another sport, and even create your own form of exercise.

But I was not healthy, despite my fit appearance, acrobatic agility, and intense physical lifestyle. I’d start the morning with a chocolate muffin and milk and finish the day eating instant Ramen noodles. Most of the week I was in pain – a rotating kind – where each day the suffering would migrate to a new part of the body. I had severe back issues for most of my second year in training, sprained ankles for most of my third, and uncountable cuts, bruises, bumps, and scars for the entire duration. I fought the flu at least 2 to 3 times a year. I ate randomly, whenever I wanted, and almost always the food contained sugar and white flour. I slept late, woke early, trained hard, and slept late again.

The outside projected pristine health – the glowing physical prowess of an athlete in training, full of youth, well-oiled body parts, and a fully revved engine. I was hitting red line RPMs with a smile on my face and eagerness in my heart. The totality of training was a way of being extreme, young, and fully alive.

I was definitely in shape but not healthy. Slowly, my body was falling apart. This youthful race car was starting to hiccup and limp to the finish line. By the time I completed my training I was strong, skilled – and injured. My grand denouement or final act at the circus school was a pulled rib cartilage that rendered me incapable of even sitting up on my own. I was condemned to four weeks of shallow breathing, slow walking, and much time to reflect.

There was a gradual dawning that although I could make the packaging look good, the contents inside were rotting. I needed to invest in better foods, wiser training habits, and more sleep. Health was an elusive benefit that not even a professional acrobat was privy too. You had to work for health too.

Although today I may not be doing the same number of flips, jumps, and spins as I did during my training, I consider my current state as one of the healthiest ever. I am mostly without pain, with the exception of the occasional intense workout. I eat well and allow myself to be indulgent when I want to be. When I’ve had enough of Thanksgiving turkey, apple pie, and cider beer, my body tells me and I naturally bounce back to eating fresh, organic foods again. My body knows health, and is attracted to it.

I’m not at my performance weight but not far from it. I train when my body feels like moving – which is almost every day, but not always. I sit and watch Friends reruns and then get up and hike in the desert. The definition of health has changed for me over the years and it is by far the healthiest yet.

I used to never drink, fast for days, do week long herbal cleanses, and exercise religiously. It was a regiment of to do’s to align myself with what I thought was true health. I felt great for a while, but in the end, lost the rhythm of the cleanse, changed exercise programs, and gravitated to a new type of fast. It wasn’t consistent.

My current understanding of true health is the ability to carefully listen to the needs of your body and act upon them. Over-training is as dangerous as not moving at all. Severe diets, cleanses, and fasts can be as detrimental as junk food for breakfast everyday. There is only one book that can give you the recipe for greater health, and that book is written by you.

To drink in consciousness, to eat ice cream in consciousness, and to watch football in consciousness is a greater sign of health than exercising because a sheet of paper, handed to you by your trainer, tells you to do so. Developing consciousness is the greatest catalyst for developing sustainable and natural health, because you already know what you need. All you have to do is listen for it, and then act upon it.