Four Understandings of Acro

Author: Flosha, 28.04.2026

When someone who has never heard of acro or acrobatics asks you, what it is, what will be your reply and what comes to mind first?

I suggest that there are four essential answers and that they, at the same time, tell us something about those giving them, it tells us something about ones own perception or mental construct of acro and what it means to oneself.

I suggest that when asked, some people may say: “Acrobatics, that is a hobby.” Others may say: “Acrobatics, that is a sport”, yet others may say: “No, Acrobatics is a profession.” And yet others will say: “Acrobatics is an art / performance art.”

All these answers are correct. It can be all of that to different people. And for some people it can be several of these things, but it is not possible to be all of them at the same time.

For example, for one person acrobatics may be a hobby and it may also be a sport, but when being a hobby it can not at the same time be a profession. For an acrobat in the circus it is a profession, so it is not a hobby. And for him it is also not a sport; because a sport relates to competition, in a sport one competes against others. Yet another acrobat may not do acro as a sport, and may also not do it professionally; he may, for instance, only make shows and non-commercially so, and yet he may say: No, acro is not a hobby for me, its a practice, a performance art and way too important to me and I train way too much to call it a hobby.

A hobby is not merely every activity that one doesn’t gain money with, that would be a very wrong and arbitrary definition. A monk who doesn’t gain money and works and prays all day doesn’t consider his lifestyle as a hobby.

Different goals underlying the practice

Depending on which of these four answers one gives and would give as the primary one if he had to choose, will also show different underlying goals. It tells us something about why it is done.

If one primarily seeks fun in acrobatics, then active participation in sports may not be for him and even if he does compete, it isn’t important to him, nor may the art and the practice as such be of much importance to him. Someone falling into this category will not be ready to bring much sacrifice for the sport, he will constantly try to evade strength training and anything that is uncomfortable to him and opposed to “fun”.

If one primarily seeks to compete/win and considers himself as a sportsman or sportsgirl, then they will on their own say that the sports is much more to them than a hobby and requires more commitment and time too. They also don’t do it for fun primarily, they may do it for various reasons, but one aspect that is always there is the constant struggle with oneself and overcoming ones own limitations through training. If you do acrobatics as a hobby, then that is not much of a topic, because it is often not fun at all. A true sportsmen on the other hand likes strengh training or learns to like it, as it helps him to overcome himself. He learns to find joy in something uncomfortable because it makes him stronger, which is a basic lesson in delayed gratification.

More important for those people who practice primarily as a hobby may be e.g. the community, seeing their friends, having fun, moving a bit, doing what they like. For the sportsman that is boring and not what they are here for. Friends and community may play a role for them too, but their friends are united in a shared commitment to the sports and the struggle. Striving towards their own personal and common goals, they push each other to progress on a regular basis. A good training to them is not a training in which lots of words have been exchanged with friends, but where friends and oneself have helped each other to do better than last time.

This ambivalence between sports and hobby is a common source of conflict in acrobatic clubs. Because some, including coaches, want to put the focus on fun, while others, including coaches, want to put the focus on improving performance in the sports. In some cases this conflict can lead a club to get stuck performance-wise as the necessary discipline that some want to create as needed for progress in the sports, is constantly underminded by others; then the few ambitioned athletes may lose ambition and discipline over the general laziness surrounding them. Such a club will then also exactly not attract those kind of athletes who seek this discipline and have that ambition.

In the opposite case a heavy focus on performance and success may cause suffering to all those who just wish to have fun.

Ideally a club would offer both of these possibilities and allow athletes to choose one or the other according to their inclination with clear communication and a transparent organisation. But that requires more coaches, more training time, more space and so on and is therefore not as easy to put into practice than to just focus on one of these paths.

Different Understandings at the example of abstract pairs

Now, all these four understandings can occur in particular pairs. Possible pairs, in theory, may be the following:

(1) Hobby/Sport and Hobby/Art: The first pair I would describe to someone who does some recreational sports but focuses on acro as a hobby. The same could be said in regard to a hobby artist outside of the sport context, in relation to art instead of sports.

(2) Art/Hobby and Sports/Hobby: The second pair I would describe to someone who does some serious art or sports but still regards the sport/art as a hobby that has a lower priority than other areas of his life and will not affect ones lifestyle. This may be a recreational sportsmen or a recreational show acrobat.

(3) Sport/Profession: The third pair I would describe as someone who regards himself as a sportsmen through and through and does the sports professionally; e.g. an acrobat in the national team. He will regard himself as an acrobat and his acro will necessarily be associated with a different lifestyle, including nutrition, specific restrictions (no alcohol, …) and so on. Whereas in Profession/Sport the profession is seen as prevailing over the sports. I would describe it e.g. to some kind of professional athlete which may have performed deliberately and passionately in the past but is doing so no longer and just continues for livelihood, or may e.g. being born into this life or being forced by parents and do the sports professionally without having much passion for it.

(4) Sport/Art: This fourth pair would fit to someone who doesn’t do acrobatics professionally, is not doing it for a living, but still doesn’t regard it as a hobby and practices it with an accompanying lifestyle. He regards acro as an art but the sports takes predominance in his perception. Without the sports, without competition, he would probably stop with acro as a whole. Because as the sport takes precedence over the art, he practices acro as an art only under the premise of the sport and its goals: in the context of competing, under the struggle to win and so on. He doesn’t practice acro for the sake of it, he practices it particularly in the competition context and is thriving in that.
Whereas the opposite pair Art/Sport I would describe to myself. I do not regard acrobatics as a hobby and do not practice it like that. But I also do not practice it professionally for a living. It is of course a lifestyle with all that is regularly associated with it (no alcohol, sports nutrition and so forth), and has a higher importance to me than any other activity I spend my time with, but at the same time it is the art of acrobatics and not the sport that takes precedence for me. That means that it doesn’t matter to me whether I compete or not, I will still practice. Whether I coach or not will not affect my practice either. I will practice acrobatics for the sake of it regardless, in the same way as a weaver who loves weaving will weave, whether he is young or old, whether he sells his products or not, whether someone sees his products or not, and even whether any product is coming out of it or not. Maybe he starts to weave a giant fabric of hundreds of meters long and never finishes it in his lifetime; if so he was still a weaver and practiced weaving, nothing came out of it of use for others then, but the art was practiced and that is what a weaver does – weave. In that way I try to practice acrobatics.

(5) Art/Profession: This pair would describe the typical professional circus acrobat, a performance artist who regards the art as his profession in the sense of a calling that also provides for his livelihood. Whereas the opposite pair Profession/Art would describe, similar to Profession/Sports, someone for whom the job takes precedence before the art, that is then a performance artist who performs for a living but has no (or no more) passion or not much (anymore) for the art he performs.

(6) Lastly, a combination of Art, Sports and Profession would describe some of the world-class acrobats of today. They are professional sportsmen but they also regard acrobatics as an art that they practice for the sake of it and will most likely, if their body allows, continue to practice it beyond what one calls the “sports career”, be it in the circus or as coaches.

Summary

As you see one can have a very different understanding of what acrobatics is and it can be worthwile and revealing to reflect about this personal understanding of oneself and of ones companions, maybe of the coaches of ones team and ones athletes, in order to see how well these understandings match. Because if I have a very different understanding of it than my athletes, we either may in fact not fit or someones understanding may have to change or to develop. In the same way, if the understanding of a team of coaches doesn’t fit together, this may give rise to conflicts and it may be better to either separate or to find a solution by which one can follow these diverting paths without causing trouble to each other, by e.g. dividing the training in groups that fit these different goals and understanding of what acrobatics is to them.

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