A Contortionist's Entire Routine, From Waking Up to Training (2024)

Hey, I'm Sofie Dossi.

I'm a professional contortionists

and this is how I work it.

I'm gonna take you through 24 hours

of my beauty and wellness routine.

I started doing this when I was about 12 years old

and I saw a YouTube video of a contortionist,

I was like, oh this is cool,

and I tried it and I realized,

oh, I can do contortion.

I started teaching myself at home

by studying the YouTube videos

trying to get every pose right.

I basically train at least an hour a day

or until my arms just get really exhausted,

and I just can't do any more handstands.

I'm always trying new tricks and new transition movements.

I couldn't tell you how many poses I do,

I do a lot.

Probably one of the best moments of my life

was probably when I got the Golden Buzzer

on America's Got Talent.

I was so shocked and just never expected that at all.

That was the craziest thing that has ever happened.

On my YouTube channel I do my contortion tricks

or just funny videos.

I think I have 400 videos on my channel.

I've been making videos every week

for about three and a half, four years now

and never skipped a week which is crazy,

but it's what I love to do.

People think with contortion,

it's a lot of just being flexible,

but there's actually a lot more strength

and core work to it than just being flexible.

I'd say what makes me want to do this

every single day is just loving contortion,

loving the creativity of it.

How you can just express yourself through your movement.

It's like dancing except my own version.

Good morning guys.

It's currently nine o'clock right now.

I normally wake up around the same time every day,

no matter how late I go to bed.

Oh my God, I'm half asleep right now.

I was up late editing a video.

I'm just going to stretch to wake up a little bit more.

For me waking up in the morning,

and a morning stretch is me doing contortion.

So, I just roll around.

It's really I can just stretch.

I can't just like be like hmmm.

I just gotta bend in half.

Yeah, I just do that for a little bit.

And then I probably get up, shower, get ready.

So I just got out of the shower

and I just put on some clothes.

My hair is wet right now

and I just brush it out while it's wet.

I'll put some leave-in conditioner mixed

with regular conditioner in my hair.

Scrinch it up with my hands.

Looks like all the curls are coming back.

Then I'll diffuse it to dry it faster.

I'm just gonna do this for awhile.

[soft music]

And now it's dry.

After that I'll have breakfast.

I make myself this, it's kind of a salad.

I take some spinach, cabbage,

smoosh this avocado.

Take a lemon and I'm gonna squeeze it on the avocado.

So, then I'm just gonna mix it in,

like it's a dressing to my salad.

Bon appétit!

If I know I'm going to do hand balancing,

I'll normally just eat fruits or salad,

so that it's very light.

I normally make sure before I do hand balancing,

not to eat at least an hour or two before.

For a performance I'll not eat

for like at least four hours before it.

So I eat breakfast after that.

I'll normally go and do a little bit of makeup.

I'd say my camera makeup,

I always like to keep it natural.

I don't really like too much makeup.

With my performance makeup,

I do a little bit more,

just like a little bit more of everything.

The first step in my performance routine

for makeup is I just take a little bit of concealer

and I just put it spots that need it.

This one used to be a pimple.

I like to blend it in with my fingers.

I feel like it comes off better

than if you use a beauty blender.

With my nails, I normally don't have them too long.

Doing hand balancing or aerial hoop or things like that,

you can easily break a nail and that hurts.

I normally do gel nails 'cause they stay on longer.

If I use just normal nail polish,

it'll chip and break off.

But I like doing my nails because in performances

normally they always zoom up on my hands.

So if your nails aren't done,

it's not gonna be pretty people [laughs].

People think it's mainly arm strength.

But it's actually more finger strength in balancing.

When I first started hand balancing,

I was like why are my fingers getting sore?

It's this part of your arm and then your fingers.

I'm gonna take a little bit of powder,

just so I don't shine.

I'm just gonna dabble around.

And then blush.

I love blush.

Sometimes I put a little too much on,

but I feel like I can't go without blush and lip gloss.

If I have those things, I don't need anything else.

And then I'll normally take some highlighter,

'cause it makes you just pop out on performances

just a little bit more.

I like sparkles, but less dramatic.

And sometimes I'll put just a little bit on top of my lip

and then some on my nose.

And then I love to put highlighter in the corner of my eye.

I think it makes your eyes pop out a little bit more.

The next thing I'm gonna do is lashes.

For performances, a lot of the time,

I'm really far and high up on a hoop in the air.

So people aren't gonna really see my face as clearly

especially if I'm spinning a lot.

So I normally do lashes just 'cause it brings

out your eyes a little bit more.

What is up everybody?

So I've been getting a lot of these questions.

Do I have a spine?

[suspenseful music]

So long time ago, a YouTuber had asked me,

Do you have a spine?

And I jokingly said, no, I don't have a spine.

And from there it just took off

and I never actually answered.

As you can see, it doesn't really look like I have one.

So who knows if I have a spine

and honestly I don't even know the answer to that, you know.

So now I'm gonna put on [speaking faintly off mic].

It's really difficult to get it to look natural-ish.

[bell ringing]

I actually haven't put my makeup on in contortion.

I've done other people's makeup with my feet before.

[giggling together]

I'm actually trying to make it good.

One time, it turned out not horrible,

but most of the time it turns out bad.

But I mean, it's not bad for doing makeup with your feet.

[harp music]

I've gotten really coordinated with my feet actually,

which is scary at times 'cause I'll be out

with my friends and I'll just do random things with my feet.

Like things you would do with your hands

and then they get weirded out about it.

And they're like, what?

And I'm just like, oh, this is normal for me.

So I got the first lash on.

Now, I just gotta put the second one on [laughs].

I discovered lashes when I was on America's Got Talent.

She was like, Oh, would you wanna put lashes on?

I was like, lashes, what's that?

And then she put 'em on me.

And I was like, oh I like these.

AGT got me into it [laughs].

I've gotten really used to leaving my hair down

and doing a bunch of poses.

I actually practice doing aerials with my hair down.

It gets difficult at times because when your hair is

in your face, it's hard to like focus

on one specific spot to balance.

A lot of the time, it ends up getting in the way,

like if you're going to do a neck hang

which is when I hang on the back of my neck, on the hoop.

My hair will sometimes get in a away.

And it's such a difficult pose,

any little sweat on your neck

or anything that could go very badly.

So normally aerials I put my hair up because of that.

So then for the next part,

I'm basically just going

to brush up my eyebrows just

to make sure they're straight.

And then I'm gonna put on my lipstick.

So basically, almost done.

[upbeat music]

And then I just put on gloss and then I'm done!

That's it!

That's all my makeup.

Definitely put on too much blush,

but that's okay.

[bell ringing]

Cool!

After that, I'll go with my brother

and talk about ideas for YouTube videos.

Okay, so then what's the concept of it?

Like what's the intro?

It's a weird to say,

I think better upside down?

I don't know.

Even if I'm not training, I'm upside down a lot.

Not even doing contortion.

I'll just either be on a couch upside down

or on a chair and like sit upside down.

Yeah, I'm upside down again< deal with it.

People say there, the blood rushes

to their head when they go upside down.

But I think I've been upside down so much that,

that doesn't happen to me anymore.

So I can be upside down for as long as I want.

Me and my brother, we're very close.

I enjoy working with him.

We worked really well together.

And-- I have a spine Sofie.

Zach, calm down.

Yeah, we both help each other in different ways.

After we up with a YouTube video idea,

we pretty much start almost right away.

What's up guys?

It's Sofie, welcome back to the sixth video!

Unless for some reason we took too long

to come up with the video idea

then we'll just film it up the next day.

My favorite videos are my dance videos.

I've done dance videos with Matt Steffanina,

who's this amazing choreographer.

I love doing videos with him,

'cause we always add a contortion

into it and make it look trippy

which I haven't done with other people before.

It's really fun to create them,

and also to create a story to them.

It's almost like music video theme.

I'd say contortion for me is a lot like dance

where when people express themselves with dance,

it's me expressing myself in a different way

with contortion, but doing more creative poses

with it and telling a story through that.

I cook with my feet sometimes.

Yeah, I'm making a pizza with my feet.

The food normally doesn't turn out that great.

So we're gonna grab the flour.

Ohh!

The fact that I'm not that great of a cook,

and then I cook with my feet.

It kinda doesn't work well together, but you know

I do it anyways.

I did wash my feet before.

You're like, oh, you did it with your feet.

That's gross.

[Zach] This looks God awful!

It's actually not that great.

Normally afterwards, I mean, I say

that in my videos, it's not that great.

This sucks.

But you know it's something.

Who else can say we made a pizza with their feet?

So, then we'll start filming together,

and depending on the video,

it'll either take a full day

or maybe it'll even take just a few hours.

Anyways guys, thank you so much

for watching this video.

[Zach] Yeah.

Love you guys, peace.

After that, I'll normally start warming up.

I'm just gonna stretch my toes a little bit first.

Stretching my toes and my splits.

And then I'll go run on the treadmill

for about five minutes to warm up your body.

I mean, that's the perfection in me is I always

make sure everything looks like I'm not trying at all.

And it's just coming super easy to me.

Oh, look how easy a one-arm is.

Look how easy me twisting this direction is.

That's what I try to master when I'm training.

From there I'll start doing some press handstands

to warm up or just one arms on each side.

And then from there I start trying new poses

and either creating the videos

for Instagram or just trying to come

up with new poses or new routines.

To be honest, I don't have a list of how many,

I just know them in the back of my head,

because there's probably

millions of movements you can do on contortion,

which is why I love it so much.

You'll think you hit a point where you can't come up

with anything and then something will pop in my head,

that's super beyond crazy.

And I'm like, oh, there's some more stuff [laughs].

Every move is really hard.

I have to keep repeating it over and over

to get it super perfect.

A lot of people ask me if it's painful

and I wouldn't be doing contortion if it was painful.

If anything, it's more fun for me.

The only difficult part with contortion

is making sure you're doing it the right way.

And if you fall to fall in the correct way.

Basically make sure you know your body

so that you don't hurt yourself.

People think getting into a pose is really hard

but sometimes it's getting out that's even harder.

Depending on where your body's twisting and stuff,

it's harder to use your back muscles

to lift yourself up back from it

and to control yourself down

to where it doesn't look like,

oh, she fell out of that pose

versus being super controlled

and slowing yourself to come down onto the floor.

I make up the names for my poses

because I don't know the actual names.

'Cause I'll just either see them online

or I'll create a pose.

And so then I'll just like make up a name.

I do have a favorite pose.

I call this one, the suspended chair.

It's where I'm sitting in a back bend

but my legs are lifted off the ground,

so it looks like I'm a suspended.

And that's a really hard pose

that very few contortionists can do.

So I really like that one.

I'll normally have the rest of the day to train.

I'll just take my time on that

and basically do it till I just get super tired.

Sometimes I'll finish off by doing aerials in my backyard.

Even though aerials are hard,

it's a little bit less difficult than hand balancing.

My dad helped build all my canes

and my rig in my backyard.

We just make a bunch of things together,

whenever I'm like I feel like we should

make up a new apparatus.

We'll both design something at home

and see if we can make it.

So hand balancing for me is like a workout in itself.

But a workout basically for me,

it's not like contortion and hand balancing.

I'll normally go for runs a lot.

I actually enjoy going on runs.

It makes me feel good.

I'll normally work out my abs, crunches, things like that.

I'll even work out my toes.

It's kind of a weird thing to say,

but it helps you for your points

so your point's nice and pretty.

Just little things like that.

Normally after I train,

sometimes I'll go in the studio with my brother.

We made the garage a studio.

My brother does music producing.

So sometimes I'll just sit in there

and hang out and listen to beats he's making

and things like that.

Actually, when I meditate, I'll normally meditate

when I know I have a performance coming up that week.

I'll normally meditate almost every night.

What I'll do is I'll visualize my performance.

I've always done that since I did competitive gymnastics.

That's always helped me be more confident performing,

just knowing I'm not gonna make a mistake.

Well, if I'm sore or my body's really tired

I'll either go in my hot tub in my backyard

or yeah, I'll take a bath and put epsom salt in it.

Just relax.

From there then I'll just get ready for bed,

put on some pajamas.

So I'm just gonna take off my makeup and then go sleep!

This sounds funny, I use hand soap for my face,

like bar soap.

You know, I've actually never used lotion

like on a daily.

I feel like I've never needed to.

But, I don't know [laughs].

After a day of all that I always feel accomplished

and I feel like ooh, today was a good day!

I love doing contortion.

It's my way of expressing everything,

and it's my biggest passion.

It was more of a hobby when I first started

but I fell in love with it.

[soft music]

And I'm so grateful,

that I was able to make this a job

and be able to do this every day.

So goodnight guys!