Slowly but Surely

Slowly but surely has long been my credo for training, as my friend m1l3s put it so well "you always have another day, but you only have one body". I see lots of people pushing Parkour in lots of different directions and I just wanted to express my goals, my mentality, my direction and my methodology.
Slowly but surely doesn't mean that you shouldn't be training as hard as you can, because I absolutely think that you should be pushing yourself as much as you can towards your goals. It's more an agreement with yourself to build a strong foundation and to continue to build on it through your training. If you only do things that make you stronger you don't need to worry about many problems that seem to plague the Parkour community.
Now I've had my fair share of injuries, and while I wouldn't attribute any of them to my training they are relevant to it. Treating your body with respect after an injury seems to be something that a lot of people have a problem with, starting over, doing lots of rehabilitation and prehab to help make sure whatever happened doesn't happen again. With parkour that means giving your body ample time before getting back to the level you were at something, because while you may still be physically able to perform, you no longer have the foundation necessary to do so without further injury to yourself.
I see a lot of people with the mentality, especially at jams, to do the biggest thing they are capable of, regardless of experience or their level of conditioning. These same people will make passing comments about their health, say that their joints hurt, but make no correlation of this with their actions. I think that any time you encounter joint pain or muscular discomfort you need to take a step back and reevaluate your training. Responsibly and correctly putting more emphasis on becoming stronger and better conditioned for Parkour will translate not only to fewer Parkour related overuse injuries but will help phenomenally in your mastery of the art.
When I train Parkour I train for kinesthetic awareness, I train for repetition, I train for life. I train for small movements done perfectly, and as my skill and conditioning level increases, so too does the size, the speed, the accuracy, the power, and the control of the movements I am capable of.

PKNY Friday we had a big BBQ and plenty of jamming in my backyard.
People came from as far as Michigan, Colorado and Atlanta. Several
visitors put a lot of hard work into building a precision garden,
something I’ve thought about since I first heard of plum pole
training. Between plenty of food, great weather, and a customizable
setup people were jamming well in to the night, with some people even
going out for a circuit at 4am.
At 6 the following morning Zac, Bryan, and I woke up to start
breakfast, though admittedly I didn’t play a very crucial part. By 7
we had pancakes flying off the griddle and a short blast of my stereo
had the whole crew up and at em. We were able to get out early and
head over to Central Park where we would be starting the days jam. We
met up at Heckscher with everyone just coming for the day, played
around on the fence there for a while, then started a huge game of
Zombie Tag, to great success. Once nearly everyone had arrived we got
up on to the rock for a group picture and split up into groups.

My group headed out for some training in the ramble, but not before a
good warm-up on the way. A short jog brought us to the gravel along
the path to Bethesda Terraces where we started a session of Indian QM.
We began by demonstrating several different methods of QM that we
train, and then explained the concept of Indian Running. Everyone QMed
along the gravel in a designated fashion while the person in the back
of the line would make their way to the front, at which point they
would decide a new designated fashion to continue along with. We kept
it moving and finished off the last 50 feet of gravel or so with
inchworms, Bryan pushing through them with just one arm.

From there we went down into the terrace and I introduced a shortened
version of a circuit that we do there frequently. Once everyone got a
little comfortable with jumping between the pillars and traversing
along the walls we set the rules for the circuit. You could do an
inchworm between the pillars instead of trying the jump, if you tried
the jump but failed you would have to do an inchworm and 10 pushups or
20 squats. If you fell off at any time during the circuit you would
have to do 10 pushups or 20 squats. We started by QMing down one set
and traversing around the wall, where many people continued to fall
off throughout the Bethesda session, resulting in hundreds of pushups.
Others were able to climb along the wet sandstone and jump along the
pillars, QMing up the stairs on the other side and coming back around
for another pass. Once everyone felt thoroughly warmed up we headed
over to the ramble.

We started by just wandering a bit, rambling if you will, it seemed
like a normal session in the Ramble might be a no go with mud and wet
rocks and trees, not to mention that several in our group that made it
this far had not had previous experience with training parkour. We got
to the waterfall we often train at and after a short bit of messing
around, Sky began carrying logs down the hill. From that we all began
carrying two large logs up and down the hill, passing off at the end.
Between various methods of carrying and the differences between
traveling up and down hill, along with the added difficulty of
navigating through mud and rocks made for a pretty intense session,
not to mention the hilarity of seeing Rob and I slipping in synchrony
time after time. We finished the session up with a swift pace
traversing through the ramble to Belvedere Castle, where we worked
flow a bit in the heavy rain before heading over to the subway to meet
up with the rest of the group.

We ended up at the banks after a short stop for a meal at about 3:45,
where everyone met up and dispersed along the rails to train their own
thing. Chris Price and I had a nice session of untrained and
underappreciated movements, with some races to prove at least decent
effectiveness. Nikkie started a nice session with several traceurs
holding a bar for others to vault. From there we all headed back to my
place for another BBQ, where people ate and hung out into the night,
outside despite poor weather, and inside playing cards. An early
morning diner run replaced last years light conditioning session,
which is unfortunate, but we can always make next years twice as
light.

On Sunday we started off by heading to an amazing castle playground
near me around noon. Just as we were setting off someone mentioned
Chinatown Park, and I said in passing that if this park got torn down
I would probably cry. We were woefully greeted at the park by a pile
of rubble, and after messing around for a bit at a stream nearby we
grabbed some of the old playground and headed off to another park
nearby.
We headed to a park near me that has some amazing trees to climb and
play around in, but were unfortunate enough to get there the same day
as a massive crafts fair. From what I understand the group that went
to play in the trees was not able to do so for very long. My group had
gone over to the track and put together a pretty good little workout
that we didn’t get the chance to add upon. Along one side of the
track, about 100m or so there are thick green rails, about 7 feet high
or so to the side with the track and a little over three to the side
with the stands. There are a couple gaps about five feet wide along
the rail for stairs that run up the stands. We decided to run a mile
and balance the rail each time we passed it. Going from the elevated
heart rate from running to trying to calm and focus for balance proved
a good challenge. Once we weren’t able to stay in the park any longer
we headed over to a school with some nice rails and a decent
playground to play around on. After a couple hours we headed back to
my home for a bit of a smaller BBQ as people headed back to their
respective homes. We made a bon fire, had reeses s’mores and enjoyed
the feeling you can only get after a great jam.

Flow Jam

Hey just wanted to talk a bit about a great training session we put together in NY. A little over ten people came out to train, a few of them doing parkour for the first time but had trained extensively in other disciplines. and a couple completely new people. We started it all off with a proper warm up and it was great to see some of these new guys trudging on right behind me on all of this QM they hadn't tried before. Everyone managed to push out every step and everyone ended it off feeling satisfied.
From there we broke the big group down into 3 smaller ones led by Nikkie, Irish, and myself. Nikkie led an extensive railwork section teaching people how to flow and weave through rails. One of the guys there would have no problem doing muscle up after muscle up, but when it came to those underbars he was working up a sweat. Irish led a section on vaulting, teaching people to keep tempo and to transition well between vaults. He put everyone through some time trials on some circuits he made up. I led a section on plyometric work, teaching people to better bound and rebound through their environment and of course stressing to always use proper landing technique and never train plyometrics too frequently. To finish it all off we broke down in to two groups and each set up their own circuits incorporating what they had learned.
It was a really positive experience, it's great to have new people coming and training hard and striving for self improvement.

The parkour community is really fantastic. I've been so many places now because of it and there's always been an open couch for me. It's great to head out there to some place you've never been, train with lots of new people and hit all the cool spots. Of course this goes both ways and anyone coming in to NY knows that there's a place to stay at my house. When Martin Heinrich of Parkour Stuttgart contacted me a couple months ago through TK17, I was happy to see how enthusiastic he was, after a few exchanges of messages I was definitely looking forward to his stay here.
He came to NY first for a couple weeks for Model United Nations, he was able to come out a couple times to train but I wasn't able to make it to any of the same sessions. When his stay there ended I picked him up in Times Square and headed down to the Brooklyn Banks for some light training, it wasn't too intensive, it was a drizzly day and we both wanted to get back to my house kind of early. I was a little disappointed that work had come up during his few days here, but figured we'd make the most of it.
After our first day of work X and I had loaded up a truck with 20,000 pounds. We g

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ot home around 8 and Martin who had been eagerly wandering around my neighborhood was excited to go out and train. We grabbed our longboards and headed a few miles out to a nice park near me with some excellent trees to play around on. After a bit of that some discussion of PK Gen led me to try and emulate one of their warmups. This quickly became Martin leading us through some pretty fantastic conditioning. After some railwork and a supermarket run we ended up getting back home around 2, eagerly awaiting waking up at 5 to unload the truck into a house.
On Saturday we held a beginners jam in Central Park. We had around 25 people show and there were a lot of new faces. We did some light jogging followed by a warmup led by Martin which knocked a couple out but the troopers went on to a rotation of three stations, precisions/landings led by Pyro and myself, balance led by Nikkie, and cats/climbups led by martin. Afterwards we headed to Bethesda but as it was crowded decided to finish it up with a bit of a workout there. After a fun pushup circle with all sorts of new torture methods implemented the beginners jam was declared a success.
From there we headed into the ramble for some natural parkour and general monkeying around. Pyro and I got a few jumps we've been eyeing and Martin tried some things we hadn't looked at before. After an good game of follow the leader and some limbless climbing everyone had headed out so we headed down to the East Village to grab a delicious burger at Paul's Place. Nikkie and Bestchester headed out after dinner and Martin and I headed over to the Hudson to walk down to World Trade. We balanced down along the riverside, a good way to calm down and relax and clear your mind, cool wind and the Jersey Skyline accross the water.
On his last day we headed in to the city with a forecast of showers through the day. Drizzle when we got there and confusion between the guys we were meeting up with led to full on rain before we could train. Our pals were out of commision so Martin led me through another kickass conditioning session. After somewhere around a mile of QM we headed to grab some food and were off to the airport, which he got to with -2 minutes to spare.
It was definitely an excellent experience and I can't wait to be able to get over to Germany to train with him again. It's always great to train with someone you haven't before. Whether your spots or theirs they always have new ways to move, to train, things you wouldn't see for yourself or think to do. I encourage you to open your house up next time someone says they are coming in to your town, and I hope you start watching videos like a kid in a candy shop just trying to decide where to go next. And of course, if you come to NY, you've got a place to stay.

Keep Chill
Train Hard
HCT