To build a human towers, some people need to climb other people to get on top of them. That is no secret.
Climbing people might be challenging at the beginning, and of course there are different techniques for such thing. It depend on two factors basically: the kind of human tower we are building (you will find more information about what types of human towers we can build in a previous post that can be found here: Types of human towers) and the position you occupy on them.
Even though climbing people seems to be quite easy, it is actually quite demanding and requires some technique (we have a bunch of newbies that can certify that!), but after a proper explanation and some practice it becomes easier and much funnier.
Our friends of Castellers de Barcelona, who are the oldest team in Barcelona and one of the biggest and most important in Spain have translated a video for us showing how to climb each different human tower. You will find the video here:
With that you get an idea of the theoretical part, but we can tell that the practical part is MUCH better, so we highly encourage you to give it a try! You will learn how to climb, you will have a lot of fun and you’ll meet amazing people! You can find us every Thursday at 6pm in Hyde Park practising, but you can also sends us an e-mail to sydneyhumantowers@gmail.com, follow us on Facebook and join us in our Meetup group!
The base is one of the most important parts of a human tower. It is the responsible to hold the structure together, make it more lightweight, increase its stability and, in case of failure, mitigate and minimize the consequences.
In the base we can find 2 main parts: the core and the rest.
In the core we can find the bottoms (the guys touching the ground and on top of which sits the whole structure), the crutches (people that will hold the arms of the bottom), the needles (in front of the bottoms they will hold the knees of the seconds) and the counterforts (behind the bottom they will ensure that they don´t move and that the base does not open by the center because of the weight).
As the rest of the base, we have the first hands (that will hold the butt of the seconds to avoid them to fall backwards), the laterals (that will hold the knee and the lateral of the leg of the second) and the winds (that will position its hands on the leg of two different seconds to avoid them to move sideways)
Our friends of Castellers of London have shared with us an amazing document that will allow everybody to learn more about it and see all the details of it. Take a look at it in the link below!
And of course, if you are a “learn by doing” kind of person, we’ll be delighted to teach you in person while building this amazing towers with us. So don´t think twice and JOIN US! We rehearse every Thursday at 6pm in Hyde Park.
Don’t forget to follow us on facebook in our page: https://www.facebook.com/Sydney-Human-Towers-kangaroos-Castellers-de-Sydney-732644160172044/?fref=ts
and in our meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/es/Sydney-Human-Towers/
or send us an e-mail at: sydneyhumantowers@gmail.com
Human towers are very complex human structures that can have many levels and involve a big amount of people.
In this article, we are going to learn how to classify and what are the names of each of these structures.
First and foremost, there’s not only one way to classify human towers, so we’ll see a few classifications (according to CCCC, the maximum authority in the human towers world).
By height
This is a simple one, you can classify towers by how high they are. Human towers can have 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and even 10 levels! As we can see in other articles (what are human towers?), theres a bulk at the bottom of the tower that holds the weight and the structure of the tower, the main structure of people that shapes the tower and go on top of the bulk and the crown, that configures the three top levels of the tower, and belongs to the smallest and fastest people in the group.
Towers with 9 floors are extremely difficult and only a few groups can achieve them (roughly 10 in the whole history of human towers).
And structures with 10 levels are very rare, and only 4 groups, in more than 200 years have been able to achieve them.
By people by floor
This classification makes reference to how many people we can find at each level of the human towers and defines its final shape.
Normally there are two, three, four or five people by level, but exceptionally we can find seven, nine or even twelve!
There’s another type of tower that has only one person per level, and it’s called pilar. This kind of structures are built only at the beginning or at the end of each performance. Frequently, when a group enters to wherever it’s performing, they enter making a walking pilar, which is a pilar formed by the bulk and three more floors that literally walks from somewhere to the place the group is performing.
Now that we know how to classify human towers by height and shape, it’s time to introduce how the towers are officially called. That is a combination of its shape and height. For example, a tower with 7 levels and 5 people per floor will be called 5 of 7, one with 3 people and 8 levels will be called 3 of 8.
Learning this is very important, since no “casteller” (human tower participant) calles them different. This will actually differentiate yourself from the rest of people that just like to watch them, but don’t really know them.
Now that we have learned this, we are going to complicate it a little bit more. There are towers that are quite “special” for some reason such being a little more complex or by its technique. There are some human towers that, besides the main structure, the have a pilar built inside. Those pilars are called needles. So, a human tower that has 4 floors, 8 people per floor and a needle, will be called 4 of 8 with a needle. Easy, right?
About the technique used, there’s a special group of towers that instead of allowing castellers to climb to make their way to the top, they are built from the bottom, raising the whole structure to add one more level. Those are called towers raised from the bottom. So, a tower with 7 levels of 3 people each using this technique will be called 3 of 7 raised from the bottom
As we learnt in previous articles, a human tower can have a bulk on top of the main bulk (called cover) and another one on top of the cover (called handcuffs). So, how does it change the name?. If a structure has 3 people per level and 9 levels, but also have a cover, we will call it 3 of 9 with cover, and if we have a tower with 2 people per level, 9 floors high and with cover and handcuffs, we will call it 2 of 9 with cover and handcuffs
If you want to learn more about human towers, watch them live and even participate and you are in Sydney, drop us a line at sydneyhumantowers@gmail.com and we’ll get in touch with you!
