Exercises to get consistent, straight arm inversions every time!

Drills to get your arms straight in your inversions!!!

Welcome to the FINAL step in our series of blog posts for everything about straddles – drills for straight arm inversions! We have gone over drills for straight leg inversions and getting the perfect technique – now its time to build endurance to straighten your arms during your straddle ups! Wherever you are in your straddle inverts, we are happy you made it here and hope you’ve learned alot along the way. With the drills we will go over in this article, you can start putting all the pieces together to get CLEAN and CONSISTENT inverts every time – with perfectly straight arms and legs!

Straigh arm inversions don’t come overnight, it takes A LOT of strength and knowledge of technique . You can do these excercises in sets, and you will feel, little by little, how you gain strength. With these excercises, it is okay to feel a little bit sore in your shoulders, but it should’t be super intense. Keep this in mind as we get ready to begin training our straight arm straddles!

Start with getting your straddle nice and warm

prior to jumping into these exercises. You can find my straddle warm up video here

Make sure you are doing inversions with great technique.

Check out my straddle inversion technique video to get all the great pointers!

Once you are warm

we are ready to drop into some drills. Follow along with this video on my Youtube. We will be starting on the floor!

  1. Name of excercise
    • Lay on your back with your feet all the way on the floor
    • Keep your knees and feet together
    • Imprint lower ribs into the floor and stabilize the pelvis
    • Engage your lower abs and life your knees to your chest
    • Lift as high as you can without lifting your pelvis
    • Then lift your booty off the floor, keeping everything squeezed together bring your knees to your chest
    • Bring your feet back down to the floor
    • Repeat 5 times
    • On your last set of 5, hold for 5 seconds
  2. Name of excercise
    • Stabilize your back and lift your knees up again
    • Lift your butt up and HOLD! and lift your arms above your head
    • Tuck your arms behind your head and do 5 crunches (bring your face to knees)
    • Make sure you are still holding your pelvis above the ground!
    • Hold for five seconds on your last crunch
    • Arms reach over your head and HOLD! for 5 seconds
    • Make sure your booty and shoulders are off the floor
    • Release, take a break, and windshield wiper your legs side to side

The floor work we just did is SO important in order to make sure you have the core strength to do a straight arm invert and that you aren’t overexerting the muscles in your shoulders and back. These drills also help to ensure you have the active flexibility in your spine and pelvis to do a clean straight arm inversion BEFORE you start engaging the shoulder when hanging from straight arms. This is SUPER important for injury prevention! Now let’s move on to the aerial portion of our drills

  1. Shoulder Shrugs
    • Start with split fabrics and wrap your wrists
    • Take a step froward so that you can sit into your wraps with your arms straight
    • Keep your knees together andyour feet together on the mat in front of you
    • Externally rotate your shoulders, straighten your elbows, pull the belly in and stabilize the pelvis!
    • Let´s do TEN shrugs!
  2. Shoulder Shrugs with Knee Lifts
    • Lift your knees up off the floor
    • TEN more shrugs!
    • Hold and do FIVE pulses to bring the knees up to the chest
    • On the last rep, HOLD your knees to your chest for five seconds
  3. Piston Shape
    • With your hands still wrapped, invert and bring your feet to the silk
    • Slide your feet all the way up until you are in an inverted pencil/piston shape
    • Slide your feet down, bend your knees to your chest, and bring the feet down to the floor again
    • Repeat one more time remember to ENGAGE your core!
    • If you are not yet ready for the piston shape, stop when you bring your knees to your chest until you build the strength to bring your legs all the way up
  4. Piston Reps
    • Slide your feet up and down the silk for FIVE reps!
    • On the last one, bend your knees to your chest and slowly roll dow

Remember that if you have any painful clicking in your hips while doing these exercises, stop doing it! Work with a professional coach to figure out why your body is experiencing this pain.

For more straddle inversion drills, see my straddle inversion technique videos:

Wrapping it up

Straight arm inversions are an advanced skill and require very hard work for any aerialist to achieve. These drills will set you up for success, but there needs to be consistency for you to truly advance and achieve the coveted straight arm straight leg straddle up! The biggest take away from this video should be to do these excercises regularly and keep the mindset that practice makes IMPROVEMENTS. Meet yourself wherever you are with these excercises, you can take what works for you – even if it means you only do the excercises on the ground. Remember to not rush and be patient and diligent with your progress – you WILL get there.

I hope to see you soon at one of my Sweet Retreats live aerial intensives at Casa Chango Mexico.
Enjoy the process!