Spotting

Spotting is such a huge part of being a good coach, trainer, fellow freerunner, or reliable friend for that matter.

Good spotting is truly an art in and of itself and one that everyone training should have a basic knowledge of.

Its knowing the movements you're spotting as well as the abilities and tendencies of the person executing them.

You have to know hand placement, timing, and how to avoid injury on for both parties.

You have to know how to spot completely for beginners, as well as how to back off your assistance as someone learns the skill on their own.

Gymnastics coaches are among the best spotters around, but often are puzzled when dealing with spotting more intricate Freerunning moves. Wall Gainers, Devil Drops, Inward wall sides, Raydens, Trinity Flips; all of these require a knowledge of not only basic tricking and biomechanics, but the timing of the moves themselves and where most people go wrong on their first attempts.

Hopefully in future blogs and videos I'll have a chance to detail my own methods for spotting each of these moves as well as others. In the meantime guys spend some time looking into spotting technigues and train safe.

Easing Back In

One week ago today I defended my dissertation and ended about 25 years of going to school. Crazy, huh? Because I've been writing so much, in the last few months I haven't been able to train as regularly as usual (see my last post in September on working out at home here).

I'm super psyched to get back to the gym, to teach and to train, but it's going to be hard, because I've lost a lot in terms of fitness over the past three or so months. Case in point: I dropped back into the gym a couple of weeks ago on a relatively free night, and jumped into the class. Travis was teaching, and we did a pretty intense workout - lots of QM, 5 minutes of V-sit, 50 pullups, 50 burpees and more that I don't remember. It was a lot, but nothing I couldn't have handled a few months previous. I was able to finish it, and though I was really worn out afterwards, it wasn't until a week and a half later, when my abs, arms and calves were *still* sore, that I really realized how much my strength and endurance has declined.

It's really hard to pace myself, because I know I used to be able to do more, and I enjoy pushing myself. But for the next few weeks I'll be doing 2 reps instead of 3, using 20lb weights instead of 30, and stopping when I start to hurt. It's hard on the ego but better on the body, and that way I'll get back into good shape without having to take another month off to recover from an injury.

Office Training

Yesterday the person I share a small office with and I decided that we were going to help each other out in terms of health and fitness. Were both getting closer to 30 (I'm 25 and he's 27) and decided we should be in the best physical and mental condition of our lives. Our first decision was relating to exercise. It's a small step, but to break up the day, and to make our desk jobs a little more physical, we decided that every hour (I am going to lobby we move it to every 30 minutes) at work we are going to complete a certain set of reps of one exercise. The condition was that we can't do anything too crazy, as we don't want to get all sweaty and then have to go into a meeting with sweat stains and red faces. Yesterday it was 20 pushups every hour. I actually got him to do knuckle pushups for the first time in his life. Congrats to him. That little diversion did a great job of getting the blood flowing and waking us up every hour.

I think we'll be OK with the physical exercises at work, but we weren't sure how to work the mental ones; trivia, quick verbal math quiz, riddles? Any suggestions?

I think I can jump farther now.

So yesterday, I got 3 wisdom teeth out. Obviously, this makes me lighter, and because I didn't lose any muscle, NOW I CAN JUMP FARTHER. This is also why I want my spleen, part of my liver, and one of my kidneys out. The more internal organs I can remove, the lighter I will be, and the more powerful I'll become!

(That is a joke. Not the wisdom teeth part though. My puffy cheeks and meals of smoothies say that those definitely are not a joke.)

More seriously though: I came into college with some extra AP credits, and now that I'm almost ready to graduate I realized that I could graduate a quarter early. Instead of missing Spring Quarter... I decide to take winter quarter off! (Seeing as the current temperature in Rochester is probably negative-I'm-going-to-freeze-your-face-off-until-it-becomes-an-ice-sandwich, this is a good decision.)

So what will I do with my quarter off? I decided to live and work for APK/Primal Fitness! All winter, I'll be spending the weekdays working at Primal, and the weeknights sleeping there! Janine Cundy, Frosti, and Justin Ganguly are also staying there fulltime/mostly fulltime. It's been quite an adventure so far, and I expect a ton of great work to get done, and a lot of late-night training sessions!