Flow, Technique and Feet pain

Have not posted up a blog in a while, haven't really had too much time for it over the last couple of weeks. Here goes...

I have progressed. Both mentally and physically, I have. I'll first off get the technique stuff out of the way and then a bit of other blah blah and then get to the mental etc.

Turn vaults - Originally just did the silly one where you let all your body weight sag you down once you finish the technique, now I use my upper body strength to keep my self in an upright position. I am still yet to try it out in a few situations, I might end up doing them tomorrow.

So far, I can do them very well on thick walls. Bars, I'm not too happy with yet.

Cat passes - Yeah, they're going good. Trying to increase length a bit more, will see how it continues to go.

Wall runs - Made a new record on Wednesday. Yet to measure it though.

Dash - Both types going well. Don't have that annoying thing where my legs fly up out of no where anymore. I may do it occasionally, but I some how got out of the habit.

Lazy - Fine as usual. I can clear much higher obstacles than I once could though.

Kash - Yup, fine. Happy with it at the moment.

Tic Tac - One technique I don't practice often. I'll work on it some more within the future.

Rolls - So proud of my self still from being able to roll on concrete

Dive rolls - Covered this technique on grass, gotta think of ways to work on the concrete now...

Precisions - Working on balancing them on metal bars at the moment.

Wall spin - Working on it. Can't say I'm progressing yet.

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About a week ago I had a really hard barefoot training. The reason was mainly because I had no shoes, my old dunlop volleys died after having them for 2 years (RIP). So there I was, Crawling, leaping and climbing with ripped up feet and blood dripping all over the place due to a large running precision onto a sharp wall. I had trained for around about 3 hours at home, then 2 hours in the city and south bank with Nathan, Sam and Damien. The cut has finally healed and tomorrow I am going out for another bare foot solo training to see how tough my feet have become.

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I noticed the other day I was starting to develop a bit of flow. Really fun feeling it was. The only problem is, sometimes I feel I have to be going in a straight direction instead of perhaps going forward then going back around using a different method to that of which I was using previously. I'll be able to practice Tomorrow/Sunday. I will be traveling all over the city and south Brisbane, recording for my next parkour video. During that time, I will be able to focus on my flow a lot more easily.

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I think that's about it for now, I'm going to bed.



ENJOY NAT SOC YOU BASTARDS!

Parkour - Dash and Cat pass

Did a bit of a training today. Couldn't get too much done, since half the day I had been cleaning up the house.

Started out with a good warm up starting with head to toe mobilization then progressing towards quadrupedal movements. I decided I'd focus on some vaults, the reason being that I had been practicing a lot of balance throughout previous trainings.

I had set up a routine, but it ended up being ruined because for the first time ever in my local area, the apartment owners didn't want some guy in a black tank top jumping around the place.

Here's just a couple things I managed to record:





Hopefully get some more recordings next week.

Hard out training session

Yesterday was a fantastic training session. I've missed todays unfortunately though, I just woke up then :P

Things I'm hoping to improve:

-Get that waist to turn coming out of the roll to reduce chances of hitting hip bone.
-A lot more conditioning. I'll try to implement a lot of the excercises we did on saturday into my self training sessions.
-Yesterday I realized I actually can leap pretty far in a cat pass. I'll try to do this a lot more outdoors. My height needs a bit of improvement, but length is my first priority.
-Quadrupedal more.
-Balance is coming along nicely, but I should challenge myself by precisioning onto more challenging beams.
-Increasing height in my precisions to improve the balance of the impact.


I'll try a lot of these things tomorrow because it is my monthly RDO.

Once again, a big thank you to spidermonkey and the rest of the crew for making such an excellent session happen.

ROLLS ON CONCRETE!

I can now do rolls from jobs onto concrete. Adding to this, I am starting to develop the technique for a dive roll and it is improving very fast.

LESS RESTRICTIONS FROM NOW ON! WOOHOO!

Patience, consequence and restrictions

The other day I walked by a construction site looking at all the amazing things that can be done in the area, the randomness of the environment adding to the awesome. I imagined myself swinging from each beam, doing dives through cracks in a wall and executing a saut de chat to an arm jump on a block of rubble. I looked at these things, and saw how each one could result in different possibilities. Achievement, injury, pain, accomplishment, each one depending on your experience and knowledge of your surroundings. Myself, I like to investigate the situation before training a movement on certain obstacle. This, only being done while training techniques to their full perfection but not when I am using parkour in a real life situation.

When using parkour to get from A to B, there is a lot of running but the amount is also depending on how much space is surrounding you. Something I haven't thought about much and will start considering, is how I layout how I will be accomplishing a movement without injury. This phase would be done during running. The running is not where I go through the mind block though, it's the moment you approach the object and begin to step off the ground. To help me get over these things I am going to start focusing on what I am doing, what could happen, and where each grip placement will hold me. This will also be done during the technique itself, being aware of my surroundings in one sense.

How will this help? It will reduce the amount of possible consequences and reduce likeliness of injury.

What I find saddening is looking at something you would love to do, but you are not confident enough with it because you don't have enough experience with the kind of scenario or technique used to accomplish it. The next day you see the same thing, persuading you to jump, leap and reach. And then the next and the next and the next and so on and so forth. It is sometimes hard to approach this scenario and find it easy to do it without having the experience, which is why I find it a lot easier to use different techniques with similar surroundings to simulate the technique I am trying to learn. After I do this for a while, I become confident enough to engage with the goal I am trying to accomplish.


I would love to write more, but I have work in the morning and will probably lose my trade of thought when I come back to continue this blogging.


-Sonny

Knee injuries. I require rest from constant training.

One was not parkour related (My right knee) and I'm not sure exactly how I got it or when I got it. It's a lump a couple centimeters below my knee cap and went to get X-rays about 2 weeks ago. He told me to rest for 7 Months or weeks, I can't remember. The other one (Left), I got yesterday, while performing a saut de chat on a brick wall (Oh, it had to be the one when I tried to see how far I could leap to :P). Ended up clipping the knee cap with the corner of the slab. Didn't hurt, and that's probably normal and will eventually start to hurt if I continue to practice, so I want to be careful and take it easy for the next couple of weeks/months.

Really unfortunate but these things happen. There is some good news though on my progression (A bit free running related, but some other improvements too).

Free running
So I can do a palm spin (Well, maybe not a proper one yet, but this ones still looks pretty cool if done fast) performed on a bench. Hopefully will continue to progress and get better with it over time. I am also working on my wall spins some more, starting to get it, but will see what happens.

Edit: Thought I'd also add that I'm trying to get my handstands again. I remember I used to be able to do them, but is harder to bring myself and balance than before when I used to do them. Can do them up against a wall properly and have gotten it balancing without any support a couple times, just wanna try and get it right every time ;) So will also keep you posted on this.

[Awesome]Parkour[/Awesome]
Well, been working on my dash vault some more, and can now bring my legs up to a reasonable height at the end and then push myself off further, giving me a bit of a better length. Same can be done by doing a Kash vault, but my Kash still needs some work on the proper technique. Wall runs are same as usual. Noticed some brilliant progression though, compared to a while ago. Like, when you look back at the things you had trouble with, are as easy as shit now ;D. Judging by this, I've noticed my conditioning and as well as some solid wall run and climb up training, have helped me gain a brilliant amount of strength compared to when I first started off.


Well. Loving parkour so far, fucking excellent stuff. Expect me to be posting back in this blog section in a while guys.

Another edit: Should I be completely resting? I know I can still do conditioning etc. but do you think there are any other things I can do which don't involve use of my legs that much?

Sonny out ;)

Operation: Night training

That top post will be updated later. For now I have a new entry.

Dear diary,
She looked at me again today....

Oh wait....wrong one


MARCH 19th 2008. Monday.
Operation: Night training.
Time: 15-20 minutes.
Injured civilians: 22
Caliber: Barefoot, Special BPK shirt, Blue fancy pants

Unlike my last training in night, I had no blindedness from a cars front lights causing me to suddenly screw up the vault I was performing which just so happened to be a dash and the split second it happened I slipped and I got a scaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarhuuuuughhh.... *Inhales*

So it was a good start. Found some new interesting places which was not something usual to happen in the night time. I kind of set up a course and continued doing the drills to have both an increased amount of balance and strength. I think I ran through it 4-6 times till some old guy told me to bugger off.




(Double click images to view the text)

And repeat...

Google sketch up is handy, so I will use it to show you some of the environments I train in here at Brisbane.

Couldn't be buggered righting much more but I guess I learned that I can now do wall runs properly and another thing I noticed 10 many training sessions long ago I wasn't getting the scar/scratches from the climbup.