Difficulty: Easy

Safety Warning: Before starting this sofa-batics 2make sure you have a clear space to work in and nothing breakable nearby. To make sure your sofa doesn’t tip over you can push it against a wall. Also check with a grown up that your sofa is suitable to use.

It is important that you have thoroughly warmed up before doing acrobatics. This is part 2 of a 2 part video. In sofa-batics 1 Rachel leads you in a warm up to begin with. To remind yourself of what to do check out her video here.

Once you are ready to dive back in Rachel welcomes you back to sofa-batics with some balances. To begin you are shown how to do a few popular aerial balances; the Front Balance and the Back Balance. You can practice both moves using the arm of your sofa. These are similar shapes to the conditioning exercises ‘dish’ and ‘arch’.

Next Rachel suggests several other balances that you can try including; a bum balance and a knee balance. Both of these can be replicated on other equipment like trapezes or even tight wire.

If you are looking for something more flexible to try then why not have a go at the Y-Stand, Scorpion, and Arabesque. Rachel demonstrates these using the top of her sofa. This also then provides a wall for her to spot herself against.

Alice just did a great tutorial on how correctly do your Y-Stand and Scorpion which you can use to practice.

Once you have mastered the balances you can move on to something more dynamic. Rachel shows you several ways that you can cartwheel across your sofa. You can use the seat cushions, or the arms, or as Rachel demonstrates, you can even cartwheel off the sofa from sitting.

Rachel finishes all this off with an example of what a sofa-batics routine could look like.

To see all our other tutorials click here.