A Fantasy Workout the Barnum & Bailey Way

Oh, he floats through the air

With the greatest of ease,

This daring young man

On the flying trapeze ...

I had loved this man since I was a child, just like the girl who ran away to join the circus with him in the song. Old fantasies die hard, so the other Saturday I signed up my husband and myself for a Circus Sports class at Crunch fitness club in Hollywood.

The class description said students would “fly through the air tumble forward and backward ... and spend a lot of time upside down.” Could it be true?

There comes a time when your body says it doesn’t want to hang upside down, swing from the rings or do headstands or cartwheels. For most people that occurs around age 6. But it sounded as though the circus class would let you defy gravity, age and your own diminished adult expectations.

My husband and I arrived in loose clothes, ready to tumble. As the yoga class before us ended, the three circus teachers rushed into the glass-walled classroom to unfold mats and unfurl the rings and trapeze concealed in the beams.

There were 15 of us--11 women and four men. The first 20 minutes would be warmups, the next 20 tumbling, and the final 20 would be spent--at last!--on the rings and trapeze, explained Robert Carreiro, one of three teachers for the class. Besides Carreiro, who is 60, there was David St. Pierre, 34, and Paul Naylor, 29. All three are retired national gymnastics champions.

Quickly it became clear why there are so many teachers.

We ran through a conventional cycle of sit-ups, push-ups and stretches to limber us up. Within 10 minutes they had the whole class doing backbends. Upside down, I sneaked a peek to my left. The woman beside me had her feet practically to her ears, her back arched into a perfect bend like a wishbone.

“I do contortion,” she explained during a break. I felt a pang of fear. This is L.A. Had we wandered into a class full of stunt people?

As it turned out, while there were some bolder, exhibitionist types in the class, most students were just average people with an outsize fun-seeking streak.

“Now for some feats of great courage,” said Carreiro, and we lined up, excited as circus-goers.

It started simply. We were asked to do somersaults down the mats, like toddlers. But even a somersault can be dangerous for an uncoordinated adult. The teachers stood by, ready to spot. Some students rolled over easily, tumbling at high speed down the line of blue mats. Other adults seemed to have forgotten how to bend their necks, and got stuck on their heads like inverted Buddhas. They would have flopped over on their backs if the spotters had not been there to fold their rigid bodies into submission and ease their landings. Students finished their run of somersaults looking dizzy. I almost walked into the glass wall.

From there, the class rapidly divided into regulars (acrobatic, advanced) and first- or second-timers (clumsy, timid). Newer students yelped with terror and delight as they were pulled upside down and into unusual positions.

We graduated quickly to cartwheels. Then one-armed cartwheels. Then round-offs. Then handstands with a roll-out. Always, the spotters were there to coach and to catch.

I recovered from my own cartwheels just in time to see two men hoisting my husband’s legs into the air, helping him spin onto his hands, up into the air and over. He did a cartwheel! One student commented on how amazing it was that muscles could store memories of how to do moves learned long ago. One student, Mark Workman, flew down the mat with speed and grace, intimidating many of us. The former wrestler, who refused to reveal his age, said he had learned all his tricks here.

“This class reminded me of being in third grade,” he said.

Many in the class were newcomers. Jennifer Li, 29, had never danced or done gymnastics. “It just looked like so much fun,” said the writing teacher.

The tumbling portion of the class climaxed with front handsprings. I couldn’t believe that they were going to let people run down the mat and try this without signing waiver forms. The first few people seemed to be ex-gymnasts. Then people grew more timid, more real.

One guy landed on his feet with a thud so jarring I was sure he had broken a vertebra. But he just jogged back into line. When another guy launched into his handstand, the spotters lifted him in slo-mo, like a levitating magician’s assistant, and carried him to an upright landing position. The class erupted in applause. Now, that was something that would never happen in an aerobics class. The cool thing was that with the help of the spotters, you could get the feeling of the move, even if there was no way on God’s Earth that you would ever be able to do it on your own.

Twenty minutes to go and, finally, the airborne portion of the class began. We formed two lines before the trapeze and the rings.

It wasn’t the way I had imagined it--with a tiny platform up high in a tent, a net stretched out far below, me swinging out into space, my husband swinging out on a trapeze to meet me.

Instead it was a trapeze attached from a normal ceiling. I’m tall, so when I hung upside down, I could touch the floor with my hands. Still, we were able to flip up onto the trapeze and swing there like Nicole Kidman in “Moulin Rouge.” More advanced students did routines tailored to their level.

I flipped up onto the trapeze, arched forward like a swan, balanced on my hipbones and grinned at myself, reflected back in a hundred mirrors. I grabbed the ropes and swung up, my toes stretching into the rafters, and flipped around to sit on the swing. One girl swung by one hand like a real trapeze artist. It was just a class, but the moves were arrestingly beautiful.

The rings were hardest. We vibrated like springs with the effort of holding ourselves. Again, with the help of a spotter, I flipped around, put my ankles in the rings and curved around backward so I formed an “O.”

We did a quick cool-down. I glanced at my heart-rate monitor. In an hour I had burned 96 calories and had barely crept into my target heart-rate zone. I wished the class had gone longer. We’d barely warmed up and begun to break down our fear barriers when the class was over. Also, 15 people was too many. With 10 we would have kept moving. While I definitely worked out my arm and shoulder muscles, the class felt more appropriate as entertainment and toning after a real workout. But in fun terms, the class was first rate.

We all left giggling, with tales to tell and maybe, if we were lucky, a few sore muscles as well.

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Hilary MacGregor can be reached at hilary.macgregor@latimes.com.