Barkour

Best. Dog. Ever.

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!

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...

'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'.

ow!

One of my abs is currently in extreme pain, today was a very painful training session indeed!

Tomorrow: balance work.

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.

I can't wait..

... to see the final video: