My first post at Flying Circus featured a Pom Pom Q* involved flipping coins, ball toss, card decks, disc throws, and ring of fire burpees. So when asked to Q, YHC wanted to do something inspired by games. While crawling the interwebs for ideas, I came upon a video of a PT tailoring a stretching routine for Cirque du Soleil performers, and an idea was formed.
7 showed up for a fast, sweaty 5k EC †.
Warmup
Grab a towel to serve as a circus bar, and mosey to the baseball field.
- 31 SSH IC, just because people were giving me grief about my age
- Standing chest and calf stretch with arms pulling the towel
- Still with towel, arm extensions
- Standing rotations IC
At this point, Beignet showed up late, but Garden Nomad had already wrangled a promise for no burpees. So we did 31 mountain climbers IC instead.
- Superman with towel, 10 IC + half-minute hold
- On six, knees-to-chest and roll back and forth on back, then side to side
- Knee lunges, then side lunges
- Extend leg to side, reach out arms, hip thrusts
Workout
Thang 1 - Ascending the trapeze
Oddly, a pax asked if we were going to scale any walls just before Thang 1. Yes, yes we shall.
At baseball outfield fence:
- Starting in plank position perform 5 merkins
- Walk feet up the fence to about 10 degrees and perform 5 merkins
- Walk feet up to about 45 degrees and perform 5 merkins
- Walk feet up fence to full BTTW position for a 30s hold
- Walk feet back down to 45 degrees for 5 merkins
- Down to 10 degrees for 5 merkins
- Down to plank for 5 merkins
Form turned in Carolina dry docks at times. Also much slipperier than anticipated. The life of a circus performer is never as one expects.
Thang 2 - Tightrope
Sprint to home plate. Then, partner up for tightrope.
- Partner 1 holds Partner 2’s feet so P2 can wheelbarrow to first base.
- After arriving at first base, P1 does 10 merkins while P2 does 10 star jumps.
- Switch and repeat to second base.
- Switch and repeat to third
- Switch and repeat to home.
Wall sit for 1 minute.
Sprint to the outfield fence.
Thang 3 - Handstands
Also known as “Balls to Y’all,” even trickier than Thang 1.
P1 gets into a handstand position, P2 assists
- P1 hold, P2 counts 30s
- P1 rocks back and forth, alternate lifting right then left hand for 10 count
- Switch
Thang 3 - Intermission
Sprint back to home plate.
At the fence, calf raises:
- 20 IC regular
- 20 IC toes pointed in like a pigeon
- 20 IC toes pointed out like a penguin
Pivot informed us that, in the circus as in ballet, this series of poses is called relevé, which was a quip most en pointe.
Thang 4 - Laying down the safety net
Should we have started with the safety net before climbing the trapeze or tightrope? Maybe.
P1s in one line, P2s in another
- hold plank
- person at the end jumps over each to the front
Repeat until the outfield fence.
Then with safety nets in place, we repeated Thang 1, to see if we’d improved any. We had not.
Sprint back to home plate.
Thang 5 - Ring master
Entering the ring: P1s and P2s form two teams to do a Barry Sanders weave around the outfield.
In center of outfield, the P1s and P2s form two teams.
Each team:
- Everyone except one person interlocks arms in a big circle
- One person in the circle slings towel over shoulder
- One person, the ringmaster, starts outside circle across from the towel and tries to grab towel
- Circle shuffles to right or left to prevent the person from getting the towel
- When the towel is snatched, everyone start over with new people
Closing ceremonies of Mary
Return to where the flag would be, letting towels stream like flags behind you.
With the towel:
- Low, slow flutters IC
- Hollow-hold, feet at 90- and 15-degrees
- Single-legged H2M IC x10 each side
- Toe reach
NMS
COT
7 for EC and 14 for ME: mostly meh’s but about one-third respects and even a hate! Weather was 77F, Humidity 89%, Wind Speed 4.4 mi/h, partially cloudy.
- Tclaps to Geek Squad for staying on theme with the Las Vegas shirt
- Nice to meet some new people and see some I haven’t in a while!
- Strong options all over Carpex today like Half Dome, BH’s quarterly Sharknado, Hot for Teacher site anniversary, T2I, BO, MOIB, and of course the MOAB hard launch
‡ - Thanks to everyone for the privilege of leading and for getting after such a très étrange workout
Footnotes
* - Alas, no backblast I could find from that Pom Pom Q.
† - Meseemed that South Cary first became a bunch of runners, and then became their own region. And with 7 people at EC today, West Cary seems to be on a similar path. Scary. Be Wary.)
‡ - Although I must point out, with everyone sharing their heart rate maxes on the MOAB thread, haven’t seen one over 204, which was my max during this workout ;)