About Classes

Start teaching more than just tricks & give to others what aerial and pole gave to you. 

    

Introducing...

A 200-HOUR TEACHER TRAINING FOR AERIAL & POLE COACHES

WHO THINK TRADITIONAL TEACHING MODELS MISS THE MARK 🎯

 

An exclusive teacher training and high-touch mentorship program with a university-level curriculum spanning applied physiology to feminist theory, and guaranteed to equip coaches with the tools necessary to help their students THRIVE
I'M READY TO LEVEL UP MY COACHING👇

Brit Crumpton

Aerial Hoop Coach

"Cardinal is unquestionably the only mentorship program of its kind. Nothing else like this exists for the aerial community. Immense growth has come from my work with Jessica but this program in particular has given me all the answers I knew I needed and answers I didn't know I needed as a professional aerial coach. If you're a coach, RUN."

I started coaching well before I was ready. 

In my first aerial coach's mind, you were ready to teach as soon as you could perform certain skills. So when I achieved them, I was given opportunities to teach.

So that's what I did. I taught what I knew. I taught the way I was taught. I taught what worked for my body.

And I got injured over and over teaching. I watched my first students get frustrated and not progress.

I knew that I was not giving them or myself what was needed to succeed.

Coaching aerial was everything to me, so I knew wanted to be better at it.

Maybe even the BEST. So I began a decades-long journey to fill what I saw as the gaps in my knowledge.

I studied biomechanics, fascia, somatics, dance movement analysis, nutrition, mindset... the list goes on and on.

Each training I took, podcast I listened to, or book I read expanded the way I thought of the issues that my clients were grappling with in the studio.

That learning caused me to ask different questions and offer new solutions.

I knew I could impact more lives.

My client's were experiencing BIG wins, such as:

  • staying mentally and physically healthy while on tour with Cirque du Soleil
  • getting their first ayesha after thinking the skill would never happen for their body type
  • feeling confident enough to apply to (and getting accepted into) Ecole Nationale de Cirque
  • enjoying the training process more than the outcome of acquiring new skills, and finally enjoying mobility work
  • learning how to regulate their nervous systems to feel better in their bodies and have more productive training sessions

What I am able to offer my clients, as I guide them with compassion and tough love, is not found in any current teaching certification.

I want to share it with YOU, so that you can grow and propel the entire industry forward with you.

By the end of this 200-hour teacher training, you will be able to:

 

  • understand and relate to your STUDENTS who have full and complex lives that they don't just leave at the door of your studio
  • know how bodies work, not just the biomechanics of aerial work, but also the nervous system and fascia, when to push someone and when to back off
  • be able to evaluate clients you have never met, deciding if they are physically prepared for a skill
  • create skill progressions that are tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of your students
  • manage multi-level classes and deal with clients who do not state or even know their needs
  • get consent and create spaces that all different types of people feel welcome and can grow within
  • help people grow at their own paces, on their own terms, and toward their own goals
  • grow your classes or client lists so that you can afford to live comfortably and to keep doing what you love with clients you cannot wait to work with

If you've read this far, you know that being a great aerial or pole instructor is about more than just teaching what worked for you exactly how you learned it.

Why try to learn everything you need piecemeal, spending tens of thousands of dollars, when there is Cardinal ?

Jess Allen

Aerial Rope & Sling Coach

"I love the brave feminist space that . . . Circus Mobility is and represents. I . . . love that Jessica makes herself so available for direct communication. I find dealing directly with the coach behind the program is so important. I feel cared for as an individual rather than part of a business machine!"

IS CARDINAL FOR YOU?

This program is for you if:

  • you're a circus coach (aerial, pole, or other movement) who cares about your students and wants them to reach their goals
  • you haver a disobedient streak and like to do things a bit differently
  • the way you were coached missed the mark in some ways and you want to do better for your students
  • perhaps you have taken a teacher training or done an apprenticeship, and thought, "wait, this is it? this can't be it."
  • you have experienced misogyny and stand against all forms of hate (duh)
  • you have about time to dedicate to analyzing and improving your art (the teaching one)
  • you want to LEAD and use your positional power to amplify the voices of marginalized communities
  • you're tired of endless demoing in ways that break your body

This program is NOT for you if:

  • you're not a coach or you're a brand new coach
  • you're a circus bro who thinks you have all of the answers or has a one-size-fits-all mentality

I've handpicked the skills most essential to your success in this 200-hour teacher training.

 

These are the things that AREN'T typically included in any aerial or pole certification.

You will leave Cardinal with MORE than great coaching skills.

You will emerge as an industry leader.

👋 I WANT MY STUDENTS TO THRIVE. SIGN ME UP NOW >>

Elisa Forcato

Aerial Hoop for Beginners Coach

"I would recommend, Cardinal to any coach in aerial dance, who is really kind of feeling that something is missing and that really wants to make something more about it. If you have this kind of sensation inside yourself, do Cardinal."

 

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: THE CARDINAL TEACHER TRAINING CURRICULUM.

 

Starting on January 1st, you'll get immediate access to all 16 main modules (not including any bonus trainings).

 

MODULE 1: Feminist & Anti-Racist Frameworks to think critically about how systems and power in the coaching relationship

MODULE 2: Space Holding & Consent to understand your role as a co-regulator and your ability create brave space

MODULE 3: Building Buy-In to increase trust & belonging and foster inclusive aerial/pole community

MODULE 4: Teaching Styles & Nonlinear Pedagogy to assess your strengths and weaknesses and better serve the diversity of your students

MODULE 5: Somatic Movement to understand ways to re-educate the nervous system through movement

MODULE 6: Coaching Communication Tools to understand motor learning principles, cueing, and attentional focus and be able to apply them in the classroom

MODULE 7: Skill Acquisition Principles to learn how to apply constraints to promote skill learning

MODULE 8: Movement Efficiency to optimize biomechanics and develop movement adaptability

MODULE 9: Postural & Movement Analysis to understand how breathing patterns impact posture and biomechanics

MODULE 10: Sleep & Recovery Tools to understand sleep, heart rate variability, and other recovery strategies to improve performance

MODULE 11: Program Design to create training plans for yourself, your students, and whole classrooms

MODULE 12: Shoulder & Hip Assessment & Function to explore common compensations for foundational aerial movements

MODULE 13: Core Assessment & Function to create stability, control, and power in the air

MODULE 14: Upper Back & Neck Assessment & Function for flexibility and stability in the air

MODULE 15: Goalsetting to help your students set the right goals for them and feel more satisfaction from their practice

MODULE 16: Marketing Your Coaching Skills because even a great coach still needs clients to coach

 

WHAT QUALIFIES ME TO LEAD THIS PROGRAM?

These days I'm probably best known for my work online as an aerial technique and mobility coach. But I've been immersed in human movement and the study of people for decades.

My understanding of what moves people and how people move is a critical part of what made me the aerialist and widely-respected teacher I am today.

Here's a sampling of my experience:

  • 30+ years of teaching experience (aerial silks, rope, dance trapeze, duo trapeze, straps, lyra, duo lyra, sling, double loop, acrobatics, hand to hand, handstands, contortion, active flexibility, group fitness, personal training, etc.)
  • Taught worldwide to circus artists, recreational athletes, and physical therapy patients ages 4-80
  • Former director and performer for four award-winning professional circus companies and numerous youth companies
  • Certified Gyrotonic and Gyrokinesis Method trainer with additional specialized training for overhead athletes, dancers, the shoulder girdle, the hips, and scoliosis
  • 32+ years of ongoing multidisciplinary dance study (jazz, street jazz, hip hop, contemporary, ballet, etc.)
  • Galen Hooks Method and Jacob Jonas the Company Digital Intensive alum
  • NASM Corrective Exercise Specialist
  • Girls Gone Strong Women’s Coaching Specialist
  • Functional Movement Screen Level 1 certified
  • Progressing Ballet Technique Levels 1 & 2 certified
  • Integrated Kinetic Neurology Level 1 certified
  • Former Precision Nutrition Level 1 certified
  • Completed the Dance Movement Analysis course by Leah Bueno, DOMP, COMT, MMP
  • Completed the 3-month Empowered Performance Course on the principles of human movement by Katie St. Clair 
  • Completed Conor Harris's 3-month Biomechanics Course
  • Currently completing the Clinical Somatics Education Level 1 certification
  • An honors graduate of the Virginia Governor's School for the Arts (as a modern dance major)
  • BA from University of Colorado at Boulder in political science; JD from Boston University; and MA from George Washington University in political management
  • Former leadership analyst with the CIA for more than a decade, where in addition to living in Africa and the Balkans, I developed training programs in applied political psychology and in assessing world leaders from a distance
  • Certificate of Completion for CULTIVATE {trauma-informed space holding training} with Katie Kurtz, MSW LISW-S
  • Participant of James-Olivia Chu Hillman's 6-month Disobedience School
  • Completed Fleur Lawson's training "Power With Not Power Over: Accountability in Action for White Women"
  • Completed a 11-month feminist power-building and culture-building program We Are The Culture Makers by Kelly Diels
  • Featured in the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, and Women Fitness International magazine
  • Presenter at conferences such as the American Circus Educators, American Youth Circus Organization, and Pole Con, and symposia like Invert Bend Balance
  • Past clients have been accepted into professional training programs at Ecole Nationale de Cirque, National Institute of Circus Arts, San Diego Circus Center, Aloft, and New England Center for Circus Arts
  • Successful business owner who scaled an online circus business from $50k to $250k in three years without any outside investors

JOIN THE WAITLIST.

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS.

DON'T JUST TAKE IT FROM ME.

Frieda Austin

Aerial Silks Coach

"I learned so much about how I want to coach in the future. Cardinal gave me a community of peer coaches who are going through the same thing I'm going through."