There's been so much snow lately, nothing to do but embrace it! This was the result of me training for a couple of hours in the snow on Saturday. Precisions became much more daunting and one new jump I'd found plagued me for a while but thankfully I managed it in the end despite the icy conditions, lots of fun!
Monday 20 December 2010
Wednesday 8 December 2010
Parkour Tour
I've really enjoyed following the Parkour Tour videos and seeing the beautiful flow of Daniel Ilabaca's movements and seeing the different communities across Europe. I was there for the London jam and really enjoyed the day and highly recommend everybody watch all of the videos from the Parkour Tour's Youtube channel, here's one of my favourite videos from the tour:
Setbacks
So... it's been nearly six weeks now of having my badly sprained wrist and it's been a real problem so far. I have been unable to train properly at all but have managed to work on plenty of things including one-armed variations of various moves and once the initial pain of even swinging my arms had started to fade I was of course continuing my usual training of precisions/strides etc building more strength in my legs.
To aid in the recovery of my wrist I've just bought an NSD Powerball, which is a handheld gyroscope exercise device so I'll be using this hopefully on a daily basis to strengthen my wrist(s). I'll keep you posted on progress :)
I've decided to definitely not let my wrist stop my training; there are plenty of things I can still train and it keeps my mind open to looking harder for more imaginative and creative ways of interacting with the environment around me. The cold weather and snow has also had a negative effect on motivation but I've still been out there finding things to do and on the days where the ground is too damp I can always train one handed things indoors on the other side of London:
To aid in the recovery of my wrist I've just bought an NSD Powerball, which is a handheld gyroscope exercise device so I'll be using this hopefully on a daily basis to strengthen my wrist(s). I'll keep you posted on progress :)
I've decided to definitely not let my wrist stop my training; there are plenty of things I can still train and it keeps my mind open to looking harder for more imaginative and creative ways of interacting with the environment around me. The cold weather and snow has also had a negative effect on motivation but I've still been out there finding things to do and on the days where the ground is too damp I can always train one handed things indoors on the other side of London:
Tuesday 23 November 2010
Bliss
One of my favourite aspects of parkour is that it helps find joy and beauty in the simplest of things, in the case of parkour this is through human movement which is available to anybody which it why it so easily breaks down any barriers of class or wealth, race or gender by practitioners.
One aspect that I most enjoy on a similar note, when training alone, is simply shutting out the world with some music (of any description, gentle or engagingly upbeat) and focusing on my movement. I enjoy this greatly when balancing along rails: walking backwards and forwards in populated areas along a rail requiring some level of focus to manoeuvre with the buzz of life around actually helps to emphasize the beauty of parkour. The feeling when training alone amidst a sea of people deep in chaos is a surprisingly liberating feeling. This to me is bliss, finding beauty in the simple act of balance.
One aspect that I most enjoy on a similar note, when training alone, is simply shutting out the world with some music (of any description, gentle or engagingly upbeat) and focusing on my movement. I enjoy this greatly when balancing along rails: walking backwards and forwards in populated areas along a rail requiring some level of focus to manoeuvre with the buzz of life around actually helps to emphasize the beauty of parkour. The feeling when training alone amidst a sea of people deep in chaos is a surprisingly liberating feeling. This to me is bliss, finding beauty in the simple act of balance.
Thursday 18 November 2010
Storm Volume 1
Not sure why I didn't post this yesterday considering I was constantly refreshing the Storm Facebook page throughout the day until it was posted, I've just watched it for the seventh time and realised it wasn't posted here yet. This is Storm Freerunning's first video and is undoubtedly the best parkour/freerunning there is out there yet, high quality editing and filming and top of the game freerunning. Amazing.
Tuesday 16 November 2010
Update
No posts for a while for plenty of reasons. I've sprained my wrist recently so training has been quite limited although it has forced me to vary my training to attempt to work around only being able to use one arm during any motion at all! It turns out that it is _very_ limiting having a painful left wrist, at first even swinging for jumps was too painful so I couldn't even work on precisions but since slight healing general jumping and strides have been my focus (in keeping with the training for most of the year which I was hoping to move away from being the entirety of my training) and I've been attempting some other movements using my right arm so have had some tough attempts at climbs and cats using just my right arm.
In other news I've put together a video with clips from June and July, definitely not truly representative of my parkour but I thought it would be good to mark progress and at least give me something to look at in the future to feel good about my progress, and hopefully over the next few months will put some other video together because it turns out to be quite fun remembering the days each clip was filmed but also it will mark my state at the end of my first year of parkour when February rolls around.
Anyway, here's my first video:
In other news I've put together a video with clips from June and July, definitely not truly representative of my parkour but I thought it would be good to mark progress and at least give me something to look at in the future to feel good about my progress, and hopefully over the next few months will put some other video together because it turns out to be quite fun remembering the days each clip was filmed but also it will mark my state at the end of my first year of parkour when February rolls around.
Anyway, here's my first video:
Sunday 24 October 2010
Saturday 23 October 2010
Just another youtube link...
Just a quick post showing another video, this time of a Lithuanian traceur called Tomas, demonstrating a high level of flow and control that I aspire to reach. One thing I especially liked about the video is the quantity and quality of flips; throughout these movements the flips don't interrupt flow and he continues to move after them allowing them to act as I believe they should, an expression of movement but not at the expense of control and continued movement. I usually am very focused on pure parkour and have yet to really begin training flips (although I will be doing so in the future) and yet seeing this inspires me to train my parkour as well as still being open to more. I think I see similarities in this video with my own (perceived) motion and style so gives a good view of how I may progress as time goes on.
Love the video Tomas, I look forward to seeing more in the future!
Love the video Tomas, I look forward to seeing more in the future!
The rain
Like many days in England, today was a day filled with rain. Rainfall throughout the night left walls and rails slippery and potentially dangerous when I set out this morning and almost stopped me even leaving the house this morning. Thankfully I decided against giving in to my lazy side and instead still met with a friend and decided to show the areas near me as well as doing a bit more exploring. As is usually the case, I saw new things including several potential new routes and movements in areas I already was somewhat familiar with, and it reaffirmed the importance of exploration as well as the great diversity between the parkour eyes of different people.
During the day the rain had cleared so I set off out to the Vauxhall walls and after a nice warm up and some good feelings of flow a friend arrived (amongst a big crowd of people, great to see) just in time for rain to stop play. I decided again to take this as an opportunity to explore, the aim to be to find an area under cover or potential new spots for dry days.
After limited success we made a few discoveries, I now at least have a place to practice on rainy days movements such as: sizable precisions, finger grip traversing, very odd angled cat landings, miniature (so currently perfect for me) 360 precisions / anything between tiny parallel walls, and of course anything else I hope to do with the obstacles around.
Next time it rains, I'll still head out, even if just to explore. I've found that it's been helpful to see new things when purely viewing areas, even if it's just because of never being on the ground at certain points to see things from that angle, always choosing the route atop a wall or rail.
Despite saying all this, I very much still hope it doesn't rain tomorrow...
During the day the rain had cleared so I set off out to the Vauxhall walls and after a nice warm up and some good feelings of flow a friend arrived (amongst a big crowd of people, great to see) just in time for rain to stop play. I decided again to take this as an opportunity to explore, the aim to be to find an area under cover or potential new spots for dry days.
After limited success we made a few discoveries, I now at least have a place to practice on rainy days movements such as: sizable precisions, finger grip traversing, very odd angled cat landings, miniature (so currently perfect for me) 360 precisions / anything between tiny parallel walls, and of course anything else I hope to do with the obstacles around.
Next time it rains, I'll still head out, even if just to explore. I've found that it's been helpful to see new things when purely viewing areas, even if it's just because of never being on the ground at certain points to see things from that angle, always choosing the route atop a wall or rail.
Despite saying all this, I very much still hope it doesn't rain tomorrow...
Thursday 14 October 2010
'parkour' added to Oxford English Dictionary
http://www.oed.com/help/updates/latest-additions.html
'parkour' now has a place in the Oxford English Dictionary as it was included in the 16th September 2010 additions to the dictionary, along with 'free runner' and 'free running'.
'parkour' now has a place in the Oxford English Dictionary as it was included in the 16th September 2010 additions to the dictionary, along with 'free runner' and 'free running'.
Monday 11 October 2010
ow!
One of my abs is currently in extreme pain, today was a very painful training session indeed!
Tomorrow: balance work.
Tomorrow: balance work.
Sunday 10 October 2010
My next aim: split footed kong / cat pass
As people that know me may realise, my strongest point is definitely the power in my legs; I have a large, especially given the amount of time I've been training, standing precision (broad jump) due to it being one of my main focuses over the months since beginning parkour. This has paid off very well with this distance translating into higher available power for other moves such as wall runs, running jumps, and anything involving distance using my legs, and another reason why I'll continue to train hard jumping distance at points close to my limit.
An area I'm lacking in the skill to exploit this power and maintain flow is when attempting kongs over obstacles. I feel I'm at the limit of the distance I can attain from a kong because of being very limited by still performing the move with a double footed technique. Though trying in the past to split my feet for takeoff this has always amounted to performing a two footed take off with my feet mere centimetres apart, so my aim now is to work on my technique and get two footed kongs as a comfortable move in my repertoire upon which I can work on building distance to link to other moves across larger distances.
Over the coming weeks I will be focusing on this, and started to do so today. This has been at low speed and I feel I'm slowly getting into the swing of the motion, beginning to successfully be able to stride slowly and launch from a stride over the wall through my hands as a normal kong, bringing my legs together.
Time and practice will undoubtedly improve my technique, and working on different height walls with different run up conditions will increase my confidence so I can remove the barrier created by fear and inability to commit to the move at any great speed. In time I hope to be able to perform this move well, and amongst other things should be improving on this as the weeks go on.
The main purpose of this post is to serve as a reminder to my future self that I was once very limited by just two footed kongs and should serve as good motivation to continue training when I read this in a few months time reminded of the progress I have made, for I am positive I will succeed in working this technique and this should open up a whole new world of motion as my distance is vastly increased from a vault, as any reading I do on the subject implies that a kong is the best way to precisely and safely get large distance from a vault.
I'll try and keep posted on my progress in my kong, and my other general progress, including posts regarding moves and techniques that I am still UNABLE to do, to serve as a reminder to myself as an aim for my future self, as well as improving my sense of creativity around by still attempting to visualise that which I still am unable to do as well as those moves within my grasp.
An area I'm lacking in the skill to exploit this power and maintain flow is when attempting kongs over obstacles. I feel I'm at the limit of the distance I can attain from a kong because of being very limited by still performing the move with a double footed technique. Though trying in the past to split my feet for takeoff this has always amounted to performing a two footed take off with my feet mere centimetres apart, so my aim now is to work on my technique and get two footed kongs as a comfortable move in my repertoire upon which I can work on building distance to link to other moves across larger distances.
Over the coming weeks I will be focusing on this, and started to do so today. This has been at low speed and I feel I'm slowly getting into the swing of the motion, beginning to successfully be able to stride slowly and launch from a stride over the wall through my hands as a normal kong, bringing my legs together.
Time and practice will undoubtedly improve my technique, and working on different height walls with different run up conditions will increase my confidence so I can remove the barrier created by fear and inability to commit to the move at any great speed. In time I hope to be able to perform this move well, and amongst other things should be improving on this as the weeks go on.
The main purpose of this post is to serve as a reminder to my future self that I was once very limited by just two footed kongs and should serve as good motivation to continue training when I read this in a few months time reminded of the progress I have made, for I am positive I will succeed in working this technique and this should open up a whole new world of motion as my distance is vastly increased from a vault, as any reading I do on the subject implies that a kong is the best way to precisely and safely get large distance from a vault.
I'll try and keep posted on my progress in my kong, and my other general progress, including posts regarding moves and techniques that I am still UNABLE to do, to serve as a reminder to myself as an aim for my future self, as well as improving my sense of creativity around by still attempting to visualise that which I still am unable to do as well as those moves within my grasp.
Saturday 9 October 2010
Friday 8 October 2010
Training without an amazing area (continued)
In the spirit of my last post, here is a video of Minh, a German freerunner, showing what can be done with just one rail demonstrating that even at a higher level things can be practiced in locations such as this:
How to train in areas without amazing spots
It's a common problem: the known and best training spots are miles away from your house or you're in a new area and don't have time to travel, and you're left in an area without a great place to train. Often on videos you see people commenting that they wish they "had places that good where they could train" but it doesn't have to be a problem.
When I was first starting out, I looked for areas near me and the place I ended up spending most time training was actually a lone low short wall which looked to have very little potential but still allowed me to work on controlling my landing to be as soft and quiet as possible on simple jumps as well as it being a good spot to test out my jump distance from a wall, aiming for random spots on the ground (my thought process usually along the lines of wanting to land as if balancing on 'that tiny black piece of dirt by that piece of rubbish lying on the floor') and although it wasn't as exciting as the amazing walls of vauxhall to practice these things, it still allowed me to practice and improve my control and overall intuition about the distance i can control my body with jumps and was definitely worthwhile.
What I now appreciate and would encourage others to do is to see the potential from any obstacle around them, even just flat ground gives the ability to practice rolls, aiming for set distance and landing, working distance in strides and single/plyometric two footed jumps, aiming for 180/360 precisions and a horde of other movements which all improve through practice. A single rail can open up practice for every type of vault, balance work, various spins, landings, take off, the list goes on. By practicing attempted to make use of every obstacle, not just practicing the movements themselves, one can improve their parkour vision, helping every other element of the traceur's ability.
There really is no such thing as a bad area to train, although admittedly many places lend themselves naturally to a series of movements with obstacles located at suitable distances apart to help train close to the limit and link a wide variety of moves.
What there definitely ISN'T is a place where it is impossible to train. Conditioning with the body alone can take place anywhere so even somewhere confined should never stop progress.
When I was first starting out, I looked for areas near me and the place I ended up spending most time training was actually a lone low short wall which looked to have very little potential but still allowed me to work on controlling my landing to be as soft and quiet as possible on simple jumps as well as it being a good spot to test out my jump distance from a wall, aiming for random spots on the ground (my thought process usually along the lines of wanting to land as if balancing on 'that tiny black piece of dirt by that piece of rubbish lying on the floor') and although it wasn't as exciting as the amazing walls of vauxhall to practice these things, it still allowed me to practice and improve my control and overall intuition about the distance i can control my body with jumps and was definitely worthwhile.
What I now appreciate and would encourage others to do is to see the potential from any obstacle around them, even just flat ground gives the ability to practice rolls, aiming for set distance and landing, working distance in strides and single/plyometric two footed jumps, aiming for 180/360 precisions and a horde of other movements which all improve through practice. A single rail can open up practice for every type of vault, balance work, various spins, landings, take off, the list goes on. By practicing attempted to make use of every obstacle, not just practicing the movements themselves, one can improve their parkour vision, helping every other element of the traceur's ability.
There really is no such thing as a bad area to train, although admittedly many places lend themselves naturally to a series of movements with obstacles located at suitable distances apart to help train close to the limit and link a wide variety of moves.
What there definitely ISN'T is a place where it is impossible to train. Conditioning with the body alone can take place anywhere so even somewhere confined should never stop progress.
Thursday 7 October 2010
Injury and the return.
A few weeks ago I managed to land short on a landing and mess up my ankle (the "ankle thing") which meant I was out of training for weeks, during which time I found myself so busy with other things I avoided all training at all, including upper body strength, a particular weakness of mine. After these weeks away healing I was still unable to get back in to training due to commitments to studying outside my job and the weeks away were becoming more miserable without training, but now I'm finally back!
This week and my return to training has been beautiful and it's just been a brilliant feeling. On Monday, exams finished allowing me to have a 7 hour session (lots of aches and pains followed due to my forgetting to stretch), Tuesday involved training near me including new areas found in my eternal search for new spots within short distance from my house. Despite illness and lack of sleep last night I still managed some Parkour around various spots in the city and near my house, and this evening was the return of Thursday night training at South Bank, a regular fixture with some friends of mine. However, after the usual IMAX training and getting back into the swing of things and remembering the capabilities of my body... the ankle thing struck again.
A landing onto my toes onto a rail as it was getting dark led to a lot of pressure brought back the pain I was feared would return. I do worry that my ankle is in a damaged state and will take some months to heal but this time I won't let it get me down if it turns it out that tomorrow that the pain persists; my training will resume avoiding anything of high impact and still containing on my journey towards natural flow. The second day of Rendezvous this year for me was a similar situation to today and so I spent the afternoon hopping any exercise I could and focusing on improved control or single footed landings, because every situation is still potential training and it ended up being a fantastic session!
A quick reminder to myself that most of these injuries are minor setbacks in the grand scheme of things brings back my focus to the journey instead if the goal, and there will always be things to improve.
If I don't heal soon enough, look out for me working my balance or generally hopping around!
This week and my return to training has been beautiful and it's just been a brilliant feeling. On Monday, exams finished allowing me to have a 7 hour session (lots of aches and pains followed due to my forgetting to stretch), Tuesday involved training near me including new areas found in my eternal search for new spots within short distance from my house. Despite illness and lack of sleep last night I still managed some Parkour around various spots in the city and near my house, and this evening was the return of Thursday night training at South Bank, a regular fixture with some friends of mine. However, after the usual IMAX training and getting back into the swing of things and remembering the capabilities of my body... the ankle thing struck again.
A landing onto my toes onto a rail as it was getting dark led to a lot of pressure brought back the pain I was feared would return. I do worry that my ankle is in a damaged state and will take some months to heal but this time I won't let it get me down if it turns it out that tomorrow that the pain persists; my training will resume avoiding anything of high impact and still containing on my journey towards natural flow. The second day of Rendezvous this year for me was a similar situation to today and so I spent the afternoon hopping any exercise I could and focusing on improved control or single footed landings, because every situation is still potential training and it ended up being a fantastic session!
A quick reminder to myself that most of these injuries are minor setbacks in the grand scheme of things brings back my focus to the journey instead if the goal, and there will always be things to improve.
If I don't heal soon enough, look out for me working my balance or generally hopping around!
Wednesday 6 October 2010
I'm here / I'm back!
After a few weeks away due to injury and general life, I'm back to training! I hope to be starting some more serious training now and to be updating this blog with comments on my progress and general thoughts as I become more experienced and try new things!
I leave you with this:
I leave you with this:
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