Wisconsin Life

A daily trip to the dog park is routine for Carly Schuna. Ready? OK.

dog barks

As a freelance writer, she comes here to clear her mind. Good girl. At the same time, Jeremy Perkins arrives for work at a medical software company. When most people are getting out of work, Jeremy and Carly's work outs are just beginning. Work it Jeremy. You've got it. Wooo. I thought it looked really interesting and I gave it a spin. I find I'm completely in another world when the wheel is moving. I had never seen one before. I was fascinated so I stepped on and I never wanted to get off. I usually describe German Wheel as a human-sized hamster wheel. It was invented in 1925 by a German railway worker named Otto Feick. He became a prisoner of war. And he had these ideas when he was sitting in prison about this new gymnastics device that he could roll along the railroad tracks. When he finally got out of prison, he built a prototype and it caught on. It was premiered at one of the Olympics in I think the 1930s in Germany. It has stayed as kind of a niche sport ever since then. And has also spread into the circus world as a performance art. This art form spread in Wisconsin when it rolled into Madison only during the last decade. We found this place which at the time was a used car dealership. It became the Madison Circus Space. This space set the wheels in motion to make Madison a mecca for German Wheel in the United States. There are really less than half a dozen places in the country where you can even train German Wheel. We have one of the most popular German Wheel programs in the U.S. We have many more participants and classes than Chicago. There are probably fewer than 300 people in the U.S. who are wheeling. Whereas there are thousands and thousands in Germany. Jeremy trained at the Madison Circus Space and won his first U.S. men's title in 2016. That felt great. It was a blast. I love competing and performing German Wheel. And winning the United States competition gave me the opportunity to compete in the World Championships. I am a performer. When the actual competition comes, the adrenaline is pumping. You go out. You do your thing. Carly is a three-time national champion and has other motivations for competing. So I'm just trying to get through it, trying to not freak out, trying to stay focused and trying to enjoy as much as I can. I hate competing. It's very stressful. Honestly, the main reason I do it is because I get the best coaching from the best coaches around the world as a competitor. Jeremy and Carly make it look easy but the sport can be dangerous at every turn. The more daring the trick, the more risk involved. It can be really dangerous. It's very different from a lot of circus arts because you can't use mats because it's a dynamic apparatus. You kind of get into the danger zone when you're at a point where you can do some tricks that involve inversions and flips by yourself because you can get into some pretty hairy situations that way. Carly hopes to forgo freelance writing and to turn the German Wheel into a teaching career. Pull up, good. Well, it's kind of changed my entire life. Extend, good. Tuck, nice, yes. I love everything about German Wheel so to be doing what I love and getting paid to do it every day is just awesome. I feel so lucky. At the end of the day I would really like to have been a part of starting a community that will exist long after I stop doing German Wheel. Like I had finally found this thing that I had been waiting for my whole life that I didn't even know that I had been waiting for.