Circus performer fights through the pain to break two records with aerial hoop skills

A circus performer battled through pain and exhaustion to break two impressive world records with her aerial hoop skills.

Charlotte (Charli) Meath (Australia) put her abilities to the ultimate test when she took on the challenge in front of a cheering crowd.

The 23-year-old performed the most aerial hoop somersaults in one minute (female) – 53 – and the longest duration shoulder blade hang on aerial hoop - 63.18 seconds – at her gym in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, on 26 May.

“I could hear everyone cheering me on and yelling my name so I just had to keep going and keep pushing and when I got tired I didn’t think about that,” she said. “I just thought ‘go, go, go, push, push, push’.”

Charli, who has been training in circus arts for the last nine years, said she set herself the challenge of breaking records after seeing another aerial hoop performer doing it on Instagram.

She said: “I saw on my Instagram feed that someone did the aerial hoop somersaults record and it’s a skill that I’ve been doing for about seven or eight years now and they’re pretty easy for me so I thought why not change up my training, give myself a bit of a challenge and see how many I could do.

“In training I got about 45 and the existing record was 47 so I trained then went for it.”

And she did even more than that on the day.

She added: “It wasn’t a sure thing, it was tricky. My hamstrings would cramp quite a lot and there was a bit of pain in my elbow area but I kept trying.

“It was also a bit of a mental thing because one minute doesn’t seem like a long time but when you’re doing that skill it does.”

Charli says she has a technique to keep her somersaults – or elbow rolls – going for a long time: flexing her feet to avoid getting cramps in her hamstrings.

But spinning around like that poses other issues.

“I definitely get dizzy, I could barely stand up after it,” she said.

Her arms also went numb and she became “exhausted” before the minute was up.

Despite that, she actually kept going after the time had run out because she was so focussed she didn’t hear people telling her to stop.

Charli gushed: “My coach and some other people and family members came and helped me afterwards and told me how proud of me they were which was really special.

“I was just so relieved that I didn’t let anyone down, I didn’t let myself down. In that moment I felt confident that I could do anything I set my mind to.”

The shoulder blade hang was just as hard work.

It’s “just about hanging there,” she said, but whilst battling the discomfort of holding your entire bodyweight on your scapula.

Charli said: “When people saw I was getting tired they were cheering me on more and more which was lovely.

“The hardest part about these records was probably training them in my own time before the attempt because I just had myself to motivate me, I didn’t have anyone else yelling at me or cheering me on.

Charli, who performs all around Australia, first trained with aerial silks, but after transitioning to the hoop she found she loved that the most.

She said of holding her world records: “It feels pretty good because it signifies how hard I worked for something.

“It’s special knowing that perhaps I’m the only person in the world who’s attempted this record and got that many.

“It’s more of an accomplishment for me because I knew that I didn’t have to do this record, nobody forced me to train for it, I just pushed myself and showed up every day to train for it.

“Even though it was difficult in some moments, I pushed past it and I achieved that so it just added confidence to myself and my capabilities.”

Charli has her sights set on some other existing aerial hoop records but also on potentially creating some new categories with her skillset.