Tree Rigging – Is it really Safe? - CircusTalk

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Tree Rigging – Is it really Safe?

Ah, the weather has turned beautiful, it’s great to be outdoors, you don’t want to be stuck in a stuffy studio. Wouldn’t it be lovely to rig your aerial fabric to a tree and practice in the arms of Mother Nature? Plus wouldn’t it be so much cheaper than paying those pesky class fees?

Not so fast! There’s a lot of problems with rigging aerial apparatus in trees and before we dive in, there’s a LOT involved in this subject.

RISKS TO THE AERIALIST

When you’re climbing and moving on your aerial apparatus, you’re creating dynamic load on the rigging point and the forces can be much greater than your static weight when you’re not moving. If you move rapidly, those forces increase sharply, that’s called shock load. Just climbing onto your apparatus can create a shock load of about 3 times your static weight, and rolls and drops can be anywhere from 5- 10 times that. So if you weigh 125 pounds, your aerial movements will generate dynamic loads ranging from 375 to 1250 lbs.

In indoor rigging, industry standard is for a rigging point to have a minimum breaking strength of at least 8000 lbs, or at least 6 times your maximum expected shock load, like from one of those really big spectacular drops. In simple terms, your rigging point should be strong enough to hold up a small car. Is that tree branch really capable of doing that without breaking? Trees have evolved to handle the weight of squirrels and birds, but when was the last time you saw a 1000-lb squirrel?

 

Link to Full Article at Fitness to Free

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