So, i've been taking these aerial acrobatics classes at FireflyDance, and practicing on my own with several like folk in the area. But you all know that by now, because it's one of those things thats addictive and hard to shut up about.

I've come at this having a fair amount of core strength to start with, so i'm doing reasonably well in that regard. What i dont have, (and never have had, mostly) is flexibility. There are a bunch of positions on the silk that really require being able to do splits to look as good as they can. I've never been even close to "can do a split" flexibility, but it's darned time i changed this.

So just recently, (for a couple of weeks now) i've actually been working on opening up my side split. I've been making progress; i've managed to go from barely-over-90-degrees 2 weeks ago to slightly over 120 now. My actual goal, such as it is, is to be able to do said splits before W is out of office. I figure thats within reason. In doing this, i've done a bunch of searching around on the web looking for stretching resources, tips, etc. I'd like to have some idea of what a "safe" stretching program would be, what i can actually expect to see w.r.t actual progress, how to tell if you are overdoing it, etc. What i've found is that all the so-called "experts" disagree with one another, nobody has any clue about simple things such as "how long should you actually hold your stretch to be effective", people argue about ballistic vs non-ballistic stretches, etc. The best advice seems to simply be "It shouldn't hurt *too* much". Problem is, pain is subjective, and having never stressed these particular muscles/tendons/ligaments to the point of failure, I Have No Idea where their failure point is along the "well, thats rather uncomfortable" curve. Being the geek i am, though, I've Done The Math (tm), and it's fairly clear that the closer to 180 degrees your split gets, the greater the stress differential you will induce on things for a given linear increase in spread, and the curve isnt linear, its that rather daunting tan(x) curve. So it's easy to see why there are *so many* people on the various circus arts newsgroups and communities talking about how they are currently healing from ligament tears, and they dont understand what went wrong; they were just doing the same workout they've been doing for the past 3 months...

Being the geek that i am, i've considered building some sort of torture apparatus to assist in the split quest, but haven't done so yet. What i am currenly using is the space in the house where the entry to the dining room is; the stairway is about 3.5 feet from the entryway, so i'm doing my split training by straddling the entryway, with a variable pile of books against the stairway wall behind my butt. Motorola Memory databooks directly behind me, and a stack of Stanislaw Lem and Philip K Dick books behind that. As i get more warmed up and loose during a session, i add more books to the stack.

The last couple of nights i've been pushing a bit hard. Last night i added "The World Jones Made" and "A Maze Of Death". Rich Macchi once said to me "Never bicycle down a road called 'labor in vain road'. I'll now say "dont add _A Maze Of Death_ to your makeshift split-training setup". Maybe i would have done better with _The Martian Time Slip_. Anyhow, the extra .5 inch that book added definitely pushed me into "ok, thats *really* uncomfortable" territory, but i still managed to hold it for the 2 minutes that i'm using as my default hold time. But later on that evening it was pretty clear that i had overdone it; i woke up from sleep several times from sharp contractions that told me "Yo! Dude! Back Off!". I've definitely strained things a bit on the left side. Live and learn...

This weekend i've got myself scheduled for at least 5 aerials classes; hopefully my left leg will cooperate. I'm glad i've got that hot tub.

Given the varied info i've seen on the 'net, i'm curious as to what folk here have to say about flexibility training.