ice water and ocicats

Oh, gosh. *blush* I am blushing at your use of the word "awe". :)

I've always always always wanted to do a back kickover, but never had the strength to get my second leg over. To be fair, though, I haven't tried this since I was in college, so

Did you try it? How'd it go? It's still quite difficult for me. I seem to succeed if I shift my weight over my hands a couple of times, and kick on the third one. Also if I pick up my second leg as well as the first leg, pull in on my abs and claw down into the ground with my fingertips.

Now that I'm on the road to acro/circusness with regular trips to the gym and circus classes, I wanted to ask you about your schedule and your diet.

Sure! I feel like we have similar goals, so I don't even feel like I'm leading you too much astray by recommending doing sort-of the same things that I do. :)

My workouts:
~4 mornings a week and aiming for all 5 weekdays, between 20 and 30 minutes on the elliptical machine in the morning before breakfast (not before water though, a big drink of water really helps).

Weekends are for weights. Saturday is upper body and Sunday is lower body. This is halfway around the week from when I do most of my higher-impact acrobatic stuff. In the gym after lifting, I sometimes play with acro or advanced yoga moves, but not always. Sunday after the leg workout is always dedicated splits-stretching time. More details on weight workouts are available on request. :)

Tuesdays and Wednesdays are acrobalance/tumbling and acroyoga lessons, respectively. Like circus, both of these are more like strength training or at least intervals, less like cardio. This is when I get most of my upside-down time. :)

Mondays I do 90 min of vinyasa yoga (vinyasa = strong cardio component) and Friday I do 75 minutes.

Thursday is my rest day (the elliptical doesn't count).

Lastly, for the last couple of weeks, on Mon-Weds-Fri I've been doing some pullups in the work-gym with my friend rifmeister. For that, we do a pyramid, trading off sets... 1, 2, 3... up to failure and then back down... 3, 2, 1. It's really helping me get my pullups back and feeling good again. Yesterday I did a set of eight for the first time in quite a long while, which was awesome.