ihung.org

A good friend of ihung, Melissa, contacted us somewhat out of the blue a few weeks ago, wanting to do a calf suspension. She loves knee suspensions, but they no longer seem like a challenge to her, so she wanted something similar, but new. Calf suspensions are a rare breed, partly because they don’t tend to be terribly comfortable, and partly due to the high risk of tearing. Initially, she wanted to do a two point suspension, with just one large hook in the back of each calf, but upon speaking with some of my colleagues, it was decided that we should try a four point, with two hooks on the sides of the calves, to disperse the weight and ideally lessen the risk of tearing.

I’ve seen several calf suspensions in my day, and to my recollection, they seem to be a 50/50 gamble insofar as tearing is concerned. I like to play things extremely safe, especially when working on someone outside of our group, so facilitating this suspension was tough. I was constantly paranoid of tearing while simultaneously needing to reassure her that things would be fine. It’s a tricky dance which all practitioners have to learn well.

The day of finally arrived so Dave, Melissa and I went out to the tree in the park which we’ve used quite a bit this year and got down to rigging and setup. Rigging could have gone better, but we eventually got a safe setup for her, which I tested by swinging aggressively on in a harness. We discussed where to put the hooks, which direction, what felt best, etc and then got down to business. One suggestion, from Håvve was to stagger the hooks so they aren’t at the same level, so as to not create a band of pressure to cut off circulation. We tried to accomodate that plan, however once the hooks were in, it was apparent that although they were staggered, it was only by maybe an inch. Once pressure was on them, it was nigh unnoticeable, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves. We inserted the hooks so that the outer hooks and inner hooks were in different directions, which was probably not necessary, but made sense at the time.

Now that Melissa was hooked and rigged in, we discussed how to get her off the ground. With a knee suspension, it’s common to just allow the body to drag along the ground a bit before being raised, but we didn’t totally agree on that. What we ended up doing was having Dave lift he via the rigging, while I held her hands and lifted her torso up and then slowly, gradually lowered her until she was perpendicular. It took a minute for her to acclimate and release my hands, but once she did, the suspension went amazingly! No tearing, no problems at all. I think the pics speak for themselves.