ROH May: Suspension Bootcamp
To ensure everyone gets the most out of this session, the format will be different from our usual ROH crew-led lessons. There will be two sessions running alongside each other throughout the whole day, one for beginners and one for intermediate students. When booking, please let us know by emailing ropeofficehours@gmail.com if you have any accessibility needs you need us to take into account. We usually go out for a meal after each event. This month we will be going to Rosa's Thai in Leeds Trinity. It is wheelchair accessible and has vegan and gluten free options. ============= Beginner Stream ============= The beginners stream will open with our usual rope 101 syllabus, designed to teach you rope handling, basic skills and communication. You'll leave this part of the class being able to tie a body up and glean some starter tips on how to be tied. This class is suitable for people brand new to rope, and those who've been to a 101 before but still have some more questions around the fundamentals. In the second half of the session, the beginners stream will move onto learning some of the fundamental building blocks of suspensions by learning a simple hip harness, alongside learning flyline handling drills to build muscle memory and understanding on the ground, to make any future classes that include suspension skills less daunting. That said, suspension is edge play, and this part of the class is not intended to get beginners to rope suspending - but to give them the language and fundamentals they need to get the most out of future suspension classes. Pre-requisites: none ================ Intermediate Stream ================ This class aims to take folks with a couple of decent harnesses in their repertoire, and either get them airborne for the first time, or build their confidence in the fundamentals of suspension to make the process smoother. We will spend the first half of the class polishing and refining an upper-body harness and hip harness, running flyline drills, and attempting to take these two elements into a simple, static suspension. To ensure the class is safe and enjoyable for all attendees, we recognise that this goal can be extended to take the full runtime of the session. For those comfortable with achieving a static suspension in the first half of the class, we’ll move onto the theory and practice of altering ties in mid-air: experimenting with how harnesses load differently as we alter the position of the body in the air; active bottoming skills that allow the bottom to intentionally pass weight to different parts of the tie; tips and techniques to aid confident, automatic flow when adjusting fly lines and adding single-column cuffs to suspension. The aim of this portion is achieving adjustable suspensions that can change to fit bottom’s feedback with minimal additional rope while already airborne. Pre-requisites: People tying: a solid single column of your choice, familiarity with half-hitches and munter hitches, good tension and rope handling, preferably a hip or chest harness that you have tied before. People being tied: Good communication from inside rope, ability to identify nerve and circulation issues.