Trust the hammock AntiGravity workout an exercise in feeling light and unencumbered Jen Tries
By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 1:07 PM CDT Friday, Aug. 18, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/08/2023 (1075 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Welcome to Jen Tries, a semi-regular series in which Free Press columnist Jen Zoratti tries something new and reports back. In this instalment, Jen Tries… an AntiGravity Fitness workout.

‘Trust me. Trust you. Trust the hammock.”

Lori Orchard, the co-ordinator of adult and children’s fitness programs at the Wellness Institute, is about to instruct me in AntiGravity Fitness, an aerial workout in which yoga-inspired poses and inversions are performed suspended off the ground in a silk hammock.

I will admit, there is some mistrust of the hammock, which is U-shaped and suspended from the ceiling in the light-filled studio at the Wellness Institute. The silk looks delicate, but Orchard assures me it can support thousands of pounds of weight — a fact I find reassuring when it’s time to get flipped upside down into the booty-wrap inversion, or the Spider-Man.

After creating a bikini bottom with the hammock (the booty wrap), I sit back into it, my toes pointed outwards. On Orchard’s cue, I lower my shoulders back and slide my hands up, making my body into a lever.

OK, so far so good. But then it’s time to flip over. When Orchard does it, it’s a graceful, fluid motion; when I do it, it’s not like that at all.

I get there, though and, to my own astonishment, I’m hanging out exactly like Spidey, feet together and knees splayed wide, hands gripping the hammock. I can’t stop grinning.

“Let go!” Orchard says.

“I can’t,” I tell her. I realize I’m gritting my teeth. I feel like I am perilously high up and releasing my hands would mean plummeting into a free fall. As far as I’m concerned, I am literally Spider-Man dangling from the Brooklyn Bridge.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I cannot stress to you enough how not high up I am. The distance between my head and the ground could be measured in centimetres. I am already basically on the floor.

Besides, Spider-Man does whatever a spider can, not whatever a spider can’t, so I let go. First one hand, then the other. My spine lengthens gloriously, like someone is holding each end of it like a rope and slowly pulling it taut. Somewhere, a chorus of angels sings.

“When you’re inverted, you have the tension of the hammock pulling your pelvis up towards the ceiling and gravity is pulling your head to the floor, so there’s no compression on the spine,” Orchard explains.

Then she makes me do five abdominal crunches. I have a newfound appreciation for aerial-silk-swinging pop star Pink and her core strength.

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AntiGravity Fitness was founded in 2007 by Christopher Harrison, an American choreographer, acrobat and performer, as a fitness offshoot of his performance troupe AntiGravity, Inc.

He combined his passion for aerial performance arts with yoga and fitness to create a novel — and fun — workout with plenty of mental and physical health benefits.

“There’s strength, there’s mobility, there’s flexibility and core, so it’s a total workout,” Orchard says.

“It’s a great complement to everything people are doing in the weight room, or with their cardio training, or with their yoga and Pilates.”

Orchard, 57, has been working in the fitness industry for 40 years, so she’s seen a lot of workouts. AntiGravity Fitness was something thrillingly new.

“I just fell in love with the movement, the experience and all the benefits that I felt when I came out of the class,” she says. “I thought it would be a great fit here.”

Orchard brought it to the Wellness Institute last September. It’s now one of two places that offer licensed AntiGravity Fitness classes in the city, Altea Active being the other.

For those who might be intimidated (it’s me) or fearful (hi) or think they can’t do it (I’m the problem, it’s me), Orchard is encouraging.

“We’re certified instructors who are going to give modifications and anything that you’re going to need to feel comfortable,” she says. “We’re not going to push you to anywhere where you’re not going to want to be. We have stages, we have progressions.”

The Wellness Institute offers classes at different levels. Fundamentals 1 is for newbies, while Fundamentals 2 is for people who have three to four classes under their belts and are comfortable with inversions.

AntiGravity Fitness is not recommended at all for people who are pregnant, have glaucoma or vertigo, have had recent surgery, or have had Botox within six hours of the class.

There is also a Cocooning Class that concludes with 15 minutes of just chilling out in the hammock, which is all about mental health, Orchard says.

“Because we’re attached to a hospital (Seven Oaks), we designed it originally for the hospital staff to come in the middle of their shift when they have a break and be able to just decompress,” she says.

Now, it’s become an anticipated part of Wellness members’ weeks.

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I trust Orchard implicitly. I trust the hammock eventually. All that’s left is to trust myself.

It’s time for the Flying Shoulder Stand, another inversion that resembles a suspended headstand. To get there, one must pass through Bat pose, which is exactly what it sounds like: hanging upside down, with knees bent, so you resemble a folded bat.

I need Orchard’s help getting my hips stacked over my shoulders, before straightening my legs. This one seems like it’s going to be a no-go. But Orchard encourages me to try again.

And then, I’m doing it. I’m in the shoulder stand. I can’t believe I’m doing it. I also successfully do an (assisted) Back Angel Flip, which involves drawing the hammock around your body like angel wings and doing a full back flip.

“The hammock supports and facilitates that movement and gives you the ability to do things that you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” Orchard says.

In addition to allowing you to stretch more deeply into poses, the hammock also can offer a sensation akin to a hurts-so-good deep tissue massage when you really relax into it; I had tiny bruises over my hip the next day.

Every pose feels different in my body. Sometimes I feel like a long, lean superhero cleanly moving through space. Other times I feel like a bulldog trying to climb onto a too-high couch.

At the end of our session, I’m lying on the hammock, its calm blue enveloping me. Orchard asks if I want to be still or swing and I choose swing, which I immediately regret when she launches me into the air.

I’m resisting, craning my neck in an uncomfortable crunch to keep my eyes on a fixed point, a ripple of nausea lapping against my diaphragm. I regret, too, the shallots I ate at lunch.

But when I let go — when I really, truly submit — I relax fully. My face softens. My mind wanders.

I lived on swing sets as a child, watching the horizon rise and fall, enjoying that feeling of flight and weightlessness. In the hammock, I wonder why I ever stopped going on the swings, or why I ever stopped moving my body in a way that resembles play.

Afterwards, I feel light and unencumbered but also like I accomplished something.

Orchard knows the feeling. “It leaves you in a different space than when you walked into the room,” she says.

And it’s fun, hanging upside down. Sometimes, you just need a change of perspective.

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com