Progress - it is indeed not linear

Second post. Whaaat! I thought I would write a little bit about making progress in flying trapeze. It is after all...a journey ;)
What I have found so far is that progress in indeed not linear... In your first few classes you usually learn a new set trick each class (starting with a knee hang, maybe a knee hang release after that, set split/straddle etc). And then you start to learn how to swing. Boy oh boy.. I have never felt less coordinated than when I started learning that...
For reference, here is a video I put together of my swing evolution from April to August:

And here is a swing from class yesterday:

Still a million things to work on. My force out is not fast enough and I still arch when doing that most of the time. My 7 (the body position that looks like the number 7 as you swing back and kind of lean back as you rise over the platform on the back end - mine looks nothing like the number 7 at the moment.. work in progress...) And so many other things that I won't bore myself or anyone else with writing down here, I save it for my notebook, more on that later.

One of the most satisfying things I find is when you work hard on getting a trick and then get to take it out of lines. Flying without safety lines is such a freeing feeling, however to get to that point there are many things you need to accomplish. Number one is always the safety factor - you need to be able to do the trick consistently and landing it safely and how you do that is different for different tricks - for a knee hang release you need to be able to keep rotating to land on your back, for a backend split/halfturn etc etc where the trick ends with you facing face down into the mat/net you need to be able to do a half rotation to land on your back. This is so that when you eventually go to catch that trick, if the catch does not happen you need to be able to think fast and land safely.
I now have the following things out of lines (OOL): swing, turnaround with face-off, backend knee hang, backend split and the half turn. I have also done a catch and return (a round trip) OOL. And actually, last night was the FIRST time I did that properly. I have done it but it does not really count unless you get back to the platform on your first swing - last week I needed an extra swing to get the height to get all the way back up there. But yesterday was my first one ever! It was clunky and I reached for the riser with the wrong hand (bad habit that needs to be fixed asap!) but I got there thanks to super-scooper instructor Al :D To be fair, they are all great scoopers, I am just a chicken and bail out a lot of the time...

Here is a little video of my OOL tricks ;)

So. Anyway. Back to the topic this post was supposed to be about - progress. I of course babbled myself into something else, even though it was kind of in that same spirit... So yes. Progress. It is so easy to get frustrated when you don't progress as fast as you did in the beginning. As I mentioned, learning a new trick every class feels like a huge accomplishment and it motivates you to keep coming back for more. But once you start learning the swing, turnaround, halving out of tricks etc things can seem to slow down. A lot. And that seems to be the time when a lot of times people give up because they don't see that same progression that they did in the beginning. The halving out of tricks (the face-off, halving out of the split etc) was a strugggggle for me. My aerial awareness in not great and I know it. When I am connected to the bar (or a silk or hammock) I am mostly fine. However, once I am flying through the air unattached to anything (except for safety lines) I hardly even know my own name anymore.. I worked on getting the backend knee hang OOL for weeeeeks and when I finally got it I had a couple of bad landings and got freaked out. Did not return to that trick for a few weeks... I do have to say that the new landing system they have newly gotten at Streb where i fly the most has helped me a lot with the fear aspect. Of course you should still land correctly but if I do have a bad landing I (probably) won't get a whiplash or twist some part of my body in a strange position, unless I do something compleeeetely weird. And halving out of tricks.. Man oh man.. That took me a looong time to get. And I still struggle with it. I tried to do it with another trick that I have not done in a while yesterday (a backend whip to planche) and my body was nooot on board with doing that at all. I will probably revisit it next week as that is one of my goals to get that OOL..

I have found that to get the progress I want I do need to be very goal oriented and not give up, although sometimes you just need to let a trick rest for a little if you hit a wall with it... 

Things that help me personally: 

• Video yourself doing tricks/swings whatever it is - or well, get someone on the ground to do it for you. Video buddies! Even though the instructors will tell you what you need to fix, it is always a great idea to actually see it for yourself. And then you can go back later and see that you actually made some progress even though it may not feel like you have. 
• Celebrate the small victories - Even though things are not perfect, enjoy if a part of a trick got better (yay, my sweep is consistently bigger) 
• Take notes - write down corrections (if that helps you). For me it does and I need to get back on it - have been slacking (note to self, get it together)
• Have an open dialogue with your instructors. I find that sometimes I have an idea of what I think I should work on in a class but sometimes the instructors will have other ideas - and that can lead to some really fun things and discoveries :) 
• Have fun! If you are not having fun, is it really worth it? 

This turned into a very long post so I am going to wrap this up - If anyone actually read all of this I applaud you. 

Now let's flyyyyy