It was slow going at first, and we wondered if we would get any interest at all! But by the time I got on the plane to leave, I had two full trainings booked: one at Fly Girl Fitness and the other at Pole Divas in Melbourne. I laugh now when I remember how I thought this trip would be a relaxing break from “real work.” From the moment I arrived in Sydney I was writing new content for our Fly Gym programs and exercise ideas. Then, because word had gotten out that I was in the country with Fly Gym, my email inbox was flooded with emails from people wanting trainings, private lessons, classes and workshops.

The training at Fly Girl Fitness was completely booked. I had 13 students total, including 2 men and 4 students who did the entire level 1 & 2 training. I was glad that the training took place before Fiona’s official grand opening because it meant that we had three whole days to learn and play. I was impressed not only by the caliber of the instructors in attendance but also by Fiona’s new studio space and fun & inspiring personality. It meant so much to me to see how enthusiastic everyone was abou t Fly Gym, and I came away from the training bursting with ideas for Fly Gym uses. Somehow in the midst of all the Fly Gym mania, I managed to sneak in a beach day in beautiful Bondi (I had perfect weather that day too!), a few lazy afternoons in the botanical gardens, a theatre night at the opera house, and a contortion class at the infamous Aerialize studio! Not too bad for a week in one of my favorite cities in the world!

After the training in Sydney I was headed to Perth to visit a friend of mine who is also a yoga teacher, and specializes in childern’s health & wellbeing. I was really looking forward to this part of the trip because I had never been to Western Australia before and I was excited about having a week off. Well, a “week” off turned into just a few days because when I posted on Fly Gym’s facebook page that I was headed there, I got so many responses from people wanting classes that I knew I had to set something up! Luckily, one of my newly certified Fly Gym instructors, Sayshie Poynton, is from Perth and she helped me to find a studio that we could hire to teach a workshop. I also did a few private lessons for friends and other interested folks while I was there. I cannot describe much much I fell in love with WA. I went wine tasting in Margaret River Valley, I did a road trip along the coast, and I was actually staying in Freemanlte which reminded me so much of my hometown Santa Barbara that I really didn’t want to leave. I made great friends while I was there and I became so attached to the rugged beauty and friendliness that surrounded me everywhere I went! I am really looking forward to going back to WA, because I was not able to hold a teacher training this time around, and the interest there was so high I know I need to go back and do it. Sayshie, I hope you are busy teaching out there, when I left it seemed like you were already getting booked with Fly Gym clients….I will be back soon for more!!

The last leg of my tour was Melbourne. Melbourne is my favorite hipster city! I have always loved the cafes, the vintage stores, the brick walls covered in weird graffitti….this city has “fly gym” written all over it! I was staying with another friend of mine, who is also a yoga & Pilates teacher and who signed up to do the Fly Gym training at Bottoms Up! Burlesque & Pole studio. Now is that not the best name for a studio or what?? The training at Bottoms Up was so much fun! These girls were creative, high energy, and were coming up with all kinds of new ideas for moves they were going to try with Fly Gym! The training was like a big brainstorming session where fun, creative minds were coming together to figure out how we could best hang our bodies in strange shapes in the air! Bottoms Up! Is also set up perfectly for Fly Gym Pole training as well

After teaching at Bottoms Up! I did a two day teacher training at Pole Divas. Oh, what I would do to have a space like the Pole Divas studio! There are actually 4 Pole Divas in Melbourne, I was at the Richmond studio, which was honestly made perfectly for Fly Gym! The “aerial room” in the studio had a big metal truss going around the room, so that they could hang hoops and Fly Gyms easily, without having to worry about bolting into the ceiling! With the truss, it meant we also had poles and ladder bars to climb on, and as many rigging options as a girl could dream of! The question wasn’t “how can I make this work?” it was “which option for rigging do I choose?” The training at Pole Divas was the last one of my Australian tour, and the 11th training I have done since I began with Fly Gym a year ago….well 11 must be my lucky number because I felt that out of all my trainings, this one went the smoothest. I managed to get in all the information I needed to give, and we ended right on time! The girls at pole divas were kind, intelligent, and so organized! I could tell that they were instructors who really care about their students…. It was a great note to end on for the whole Australian Tour.

I was so sad to leave Australia, I was really contemplating purposely losing my passport so that I would have to stay! I cannot wait to see what all the new Fly Gym teachers come up with for their class designs, and I am excited to see how Fly Gym takes off in Oz! My goal is to go back over the summer (THEIR summer…so december/january) and offer more trainings and workshops….and even take some Fly Gym classes myself! If you are in Australia, definitely look these studios up! Other studios that now have certified Fly Gym instructors are Pole Catz (Queensland), MissFit Pole Studio in Sydney, and Fit Sistas in Canberra.

I want to give a big huge massive thank you to everyone who made this tour a success: all my friends who hosted me, the studios who hosted trainings, all the new Fly Gym instructors, and to everyone who attended my classes and workshops. It was the best three weeks I have had in a LONG time….I meant it when I left and I said “it’s not goodbye, just see you later!”

Much love to all of you,

Jehan Izhar
Fly Gym Educational Director

Fly Gym® is equal-opportunity equipment. Besides being a wonderful apparatus for pole & aerial conditioning, Pilates and yoga based fitness, it’s also a great option for populations you wouldn’t normally associate with aerial fitness.
We have flown with pregnant women, senior citizens and uniquely abled folks in wheelchairs–nursing foot, knee & hip issues or missing limbs altogether!

It’s also a wonderful opportunity for our queen and king sized friends to experience a workout that helps them feel light as a feather! Fly Gym® provides that weightless floating-in-water feeling, which inspires movement freedom and happiness!

So when folks ask if you already have to be fit to use Fly Gym®, we like to say, if you can nap in a hammock, you can use Fly Gym®. From floating pushups and supported pull-ups to realigning deep stretches and postures that put hips, shoulders and lower back in traction, everyone can lighten up!

We will be expanding our program for folks with royal proportions. Lots of other cool things are in the works, too! Stayed tuned on www.flygym.com.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for Tutorial Videos, like us on Facebook and Pinterest, and follow us on Twitter.

If you have blank wall space, you can get more mileage out of your Fly Gym by rigging your wall. The wall offers support for simple yet profoundly effective moves for stretching, strength, realignment.

The simplest way to do it is put rigging hardware (such as eye screws) 32″ apart, directly into wall studs and approx 8 – 10 feet high.

However, we recently rigged 20 feet of usable wall space in a yoga studio in an old building where our stud finder revealed the studs were NOT regularly 16 inches apart. Consistency is important, especially in a class setting. So we had to get creative.

We bought enough 1×4′s to cover the length of our room, painted them white, then screwed the first layer into the studs up against the ceiling, to look like crown moulding. Then we solidly screwed the next layer into the first. Using the thinner pieces together instead of one 2x 4 or 6 insured that our screws would solidly grab our studs and provide enough thickness to hold our eye screws.

Next we drilled pilot holes into the “moulding,” 32 inches apart, twisted our eye screws into the wood, torqued them tight with a long screwdriver threaded through the screw head, and voila…ready for lift off!

Note: when wall-flying in a group, the most comfortable placement puts a 32″ gap between swings and bodies.

For an example of Wall Exercises check out this video from our YouTube Channel:

Fly Gym started as a mere notion, brought to my attention in my pole dance studio in 2009. It is why we refer to it as “For Pole Dancers by Pole Dancers”. This is how it started…….

The first “Fly Gym” concept was was introduced to me in 2009 by Co-Founder and Master Trainer, Aruna (Karen) Andes. It was rough to say the least. We laugh when we think about it. Aruna had been creating these wonderful amazing yoga/pilates type aerial stretches and exercises that were cutting edge at her studio in Northern California. When put through the class she had created, I felt like I had a massage. We started using the “Fly Gym” concept in my pole dance fitness studio also in Northern California. With input from teachers and students we found that when you changed your relationship with gravity, you took away disabilities and increased abilities for everyone! It completely blew me away. I wanted more! We found you could use “Fly Gym” with a pole (or other fixed object) and students could easily build up core and upper body AND it was so much fun! In addition, using Fly Gym as a “spotter” for advanced poses and technique in pole is cutting edge for the us but we needed a “real” product.

After a couple of years of research and development with my firemen friends who make rescue equipment. We tried a lot of different materials and designs. I especially wanted something that was comfortable and easy to clean! We finally came up with this wonderful amazing Fly Gym Aerial Fitness Set you see today!

We were literally two girls in a truck when we took Fly Gym to a couple of conventions including the big IDEA Fitness Show where fitness professionals from around the world tried us out and loved it! It was so encouraging. It was at one of these shows we found our current Director of Education and Training, Jehan Izhar. She tried it and loved it. She helped us to take Fly Gym to another level!!

We haven’t forgotten our roots in the pole and aerial community but have taken Fly Gym to numerous other genres including yoga, pilates, sports medicine, personal training, rehabilitation and the list goes on…everyone loves it and recognizes it potential in their genres of fitness and wellness!

We now have a wonderful product and top of the line instructor trainings and workshops that include pole and aerial conditioning, yoga and pilates classes, movement therapy classes and uniquely-abled classes that include the elderly and obese. We will be working on our kids fitness program this year as well. Our training team is constantly coming up with more and more diverse trainings.

We have gone from those two girls in a truck to leaders in aerial fitness and education and we have only just begun! With our wonderful team and the amazing input we have received from you, we have no where to go but up!

Check our website for a list of trainings, workshops and other venues where Fly Gym will be! We look forward to meeting you and hear your ideas so Please send us your videos and pictures! That is how we constantly grow and learn.

Stay tuned!

With love,
Pam Carter

To bring you in to the end of the year (or the WORLD as some might say) we are offering a special deal. From now until January 1st 2013, you can buy one Fly Gym set for $289 (retail $329). Save even more when you buy four or more for the special price of $250 each! We hope you take advantage of this sale so that you can fly with us into the New Year!

To purchase go to our online store

I am not only Fly Gym’s Mother of Invention, I am one of its most devoted clients. I know I sound like an ad for Hair Club for Men! But I have scoliosis, an S-curvature of the spine and if I don’t hang almost every day, I am one grumpy mama.

When I was diagnosed at age 14 the doctor told me I could have a rod inserted in my spine and be in a body cast for a year or just workout more than other people. That was easy…exercise!! I soon also discovered that when I hung upside down my spine straightened out and I felt better.

So I used to go to playgrounds and hang on monkey bars. I used gravity boots (too hard on ankles, hips and knees and a challenge kicking legs up to the pull-up bar). I bought an inversion table (nice but limited in its usage and took up lots of room). Then in aerial dance class, I discovered inverting in a fabric sling (we used lingerie material and fisherman’s netting) and I found my happy place, I found my apparatus!
Fast forward many years, through many versions of swings and here at last is Fly Gym, the swing of my dreams: comfortable, multi functional, portable and it goes up and down in seconds…. and now I get to share the love with all of you!

It’s a simple concept. The fabric loops support you in ways that feel good and help you relieve pain, get strong and stretched out and, yes, have fun no matter what your age, shape or fitness level. How cool is that?

Since using Fly Gym I’ve grown an inch. I’ve also discovered how many folks, including those who dislike traditional exercise, enjoy the lightness of being which makes pulling body weight fun and feel good instead of a chore. And the health benefits, especially for inversion variations are abundant. (I’m not only referring to full upside down but upper body on the floor and hips elevated or the spine in a 20 to 60% head down slant).

An example of what we mean by 20-60% inversion.

Some of the benefits:

* Increased blood flow to the skin, organs, brain
* Gravity- inspired flow of lymphatic fluids (the body needs to move approx a gallon a day!)
* Endorphin enhanced brighter mood– that post Fly Gym happy feeling
* Strong core muscles, arms and legs…. and did we say core?

There’s no end to the ways to have fun with Fly Gym. Use each piece separately or create clever new combinations for what you want to achieve. Hang from the wall, hang and pull on a dance pole, a monkey bar ladder, or another person. Bring your knowledge of yoga, Pilates, dance, martial arts, rehab, circus arts, Gyrotonics, traditional fitness or good old fashioned playground fun and make it fly! Experience bodywork where instead of lying on a table, cocoon in the hammock and get worked on from below. Hang while watching a movie or and see if you don’t get what out CEO Pam Carter calls “the accidental workout.” Hang alone to clear your head or hang with friends in a new way to party.

But send pictures or video clips!! Like any Mother, I want to hear from you. Teach me something. Make me proud!