Thank You Pilou

I drove down to DC today to be a guinea pig for Pilou's Herbert style training in Rock Creek Park this morning. I am not a fan of distance running, but it was good to get out in nice weather and job through the park with friends. I was particularly happy to take part in the training and listen to Pilou explain Herbert's philosophy on training to the group that had decided to come out today. Everyone seemed very receptive of the ideas behind the method, and it sounds like this training will be a weekly event in DC.

Thanks Pilou. You're the man.

SwS

What weather?

Last year, the DC community trained nearly every weekend in the winter. This year, we haven't been jamming anywhere near as much, mostly because it's been snowing a lot. Yeah, I know, there are areas of the country that get way more snow than DC, but I'd argue that maybe they're used to it?

Anyway, used to it or not, winter is often a time when people train less, because it's not as nice out. Pilou and I have been doing a lot less training than we're used to, but decided during the last major snowstorm that we were not going to sit around any more. We recorded our in-home training and made a video. We hope you're inspired to train inside and out! Check it out here: Snow day in DC

Crazy Cold

So, here in Maryland it was ridiculously could this past weekend ... like 20 degrees with a wind chill making it feel like single digits and winds that almost ripped my wife's car door off. So where was I for 60 minutes Sunday? Outside ... freezing.

I will admit that I am usually what people call a "fair weather" tracuer, as I prefer to train when the conditions outside are more favorable. There are occasions though when I look outside and it is freezing, or raining, and a voice asks me "Are you really going to let that stop you? What if you had to?" As I stated, I don't do it often, but I try to put myself in uncomfortable conditions often enough to remind me that you should be able to adapt. Adapt to the weather, the surfaces, what you are wearing, etc.

How was it? Horrible. I put on a few extra layers, but my extremities and exposed skin on my face was very upset afterward. I stuck with precisions and transitions into and out of precisions while mixing in push ups to try to keep everything moving. The training was good though, as I had to be very mindful not to become sloppy due to the conditions. I felt good afterward knowing that I was able to force myself to do something that I needed to do and wanted to do, despite the fact that ... well ... I didn't really want to do it. It was a good day.

At-home training, Hébert style

I usually train in the gym in the evenings, or outside on the weekends, but lately I've been forced to cut back on my training time. I only manage to hit up the gym once or twice a week and I'm really feeling the change. I feel slow and stiff and I haven't been sleeping as well. Some of you out there may be experiencing similar issues, now that the summer training season is over, and you're going back to school, or back to work, or having your training time cut short by darkness.

Luckily, several members of the APK community, including Pilou of DCmPK and Gregg of HIPK and others have been working on translating some of Georges Hébert's Méthode Naturelle training, and many of Hébert's stretching and moving exercises are great for working out at home. I particularly like the QM variations as a way of stretching and conditioning my hips and back after a day spent sitting at the computer, and I can do the shoulder and arm exercises while sitting at my desk. These exercises can't replace a good workout, but they do help strengthen my joints, keep my muscles toned, and make my body happy on days when I can't train. They're also a great way of recovering after a hard training session. APK put an article with a link to Pilou's PDF here and you can also read Gregg's translation here. The pictures are invaluable for understanding the movements (and some of them are pretty amusing, too), so check out the original Google doc of Hébert's book here.

Familiar Peaks

I hate it when you find truth in a cliché.

“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” “Youth is wasted on the young.” “Don’t grow up too fast.”

My life seems to have gone about 180 degrees in the last year. From October 2007 to October 2008 I was living. I was teaching martial arts, training in the martial arts, training parkour, and doing performances and traveling because of parkour. I got to go to some amazing places I had never been to before; Chicago, Las Vegas, Hawaii. I was in the best shape of my life. I got to meet and be trained by some amazing people; Bill ‘Superfoot’ Wallace, and the Parkour Generations instructors Kazuma, Forest, Dan, and the Vigroux brothers. I got married to a wonderful woman who supported all of this, even letting me train on our honeymoon in Europe.
Unfortunately, life has its ups and downs and leads us all down different paths. I ended up getting an 8-5 job for various reasons, moving and buying a house, and finally “growing up” as some of my relatives so nicely stated. Needless to say, the time I have for training has been drastically cut short.

Where at one point I felt as though I was progressing, charging forward, ever expanding and improving, now I feel as though I am merely working to maintain. Strangely enough, that is just as exciting to me at this point. Having to work so hard to constantly achieve the same thing, while frustrating at first, afterwards provides the same liberating feeling each time I climb those familiar peaks. I now treasure each true training session, as long and difficult training seems to now be a more rare occurrence; most of my regular ‘training’ has become merely maintaining physical conditioning which rarely involves overcoming the fear and skill barriers that I have yet to rise above. Each instance where I find time to revisit, I walk away thinking “You’re not too old yet. You’re not past the point of no return.” It is a shame however that I did not work harder when I had the time, because if I had, these familiar peaks that I am constantly re-visiting would be a little higher.

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.

Making Time

In February I started working a full time job (8am to 5pm) after having worked "part time" in a couple of different jobs (driving a delivery van in DC, teaching Martial arts, office work) for two years. I immediately noticed that with the time at work itself plus the communte time (about 30 minutes one way), I was starting to find less and less time to train with others. I would get off work and have to run some errands, or I would head home and make dinner and spend time with my wife, or I would volunteer to teach an hour or so of martial arts, and before I knew it I had to hit the hey or I'd hate myself in the morning.

With the sudden cut in training, I decided that I had to 'make time' for myself to work on my parkour and martial arts training. So far I have been using my unpaid lunch hour to go out and train, as I am lucky enough to work in a building that has showering facilities. This however only leaves me maybe 35 or 40 minutes to train, as changing and showering and such take up the other 20 or so minutes. This really effects the way I train, as I used to take my time warming up, and then drill something for a while with no particular rush. Now I have to get right to work and try to squeeze as much into my weekly sessions as possible. Quite often I found myself finishing a warmup and workout and not getting any time in to train specific skills.

So the question becomes, what can I cut out next? Starting next week, I'll likely be getting up significantly earlier and going to train before work. Propapby going to try to get teh workout/conditioning done in teh morning, and then just train skills at lunch. We'll see how well and how long this lasts.

What sort of things do you do to 'make time' for yourself and your training?

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.

Rain

To train or not to train, that was the question. Whether tis nobler to combat the elements and persevere in the pursuit of a thought, nay a dream.

Needless to say it was raining today, and I had to make that choice that everyone has before them at one time or another ... should I go train in this weather? I usually train for 40 minutes in lieu of a lunch break, and the thought of going out in the rain when it is 45 degrees out and then coming back to work was not an appealing one.

So I went out and trained. I remember having discussions on the internet when I first started about whether it was safe and responsible to train when conditions aren't safe. You just have to think about what you are going to practice that session and plan accordingly.

I ended up running for 15 minutes, then doing some work on nearby stairs (sprints up, QM or bunny hops down) for another 10 minutes or so, and I finished by practicing precisions on the lines in the parking lot. It was miserable while I was outside, however when all was said and done, I felt good. I was glad I went out and trained, because I enjoy knowing that I can push myself and work on something I enjoy no matter what obstacle may try to get in my way.

Now I just have to hope I haven't caught a cold.

PK Awareness Month, First Meet.

Brief review.

So our first Parkour Awareness Party meet at Kapiolani Park was a great hit. With a line that went as far as David and I could scream while going over the techniques and people from HIpk as well as others who just walked by and joined the fun (including a few homeless)

Everyone had a taste of what parkour was, JC, Ian and a few others, were active and alert to invited those who stood there and just observe. Quickly reacting and doing their best to explain what it was we were doing.

It was a great sunny day full of fun and PK, what else could we all ask for? Footage of the event will be all put together at the end of the month.

Next meet will be next Sunday the in Waikiki and we cant wait.

Thursday Training at CF.

CF WOD

"Josh"
I replace the 24" box jump with jumping onto the "tank" 40"

40 wall slam 20#
10 box jump
30 ball slam
15 box jump
20 ball slam
20 box jump
10 ball slam
25 box jump
1000mt row.

17:02

The box jump was intense.

PK class.

Free flow warm-up, did a bunch of vaults and techniques using the Tank and soft trapezoids

Double kong, kong precision, kong to cat, kong handstand and others.

Tic-Tac training
worked on tic-tacs, everyone got it really quickly.

Did a bunch of tic-tac experimentation
Tic-tac to reverse
Tic-tac to kong
Tic-tac to dash
Tic-tac to speed
Tic-tac to wall spin

During the free session I did a kong to precision and got it but the trapezoid I was precisioning onto moved and I felt back. Landing on my lower back on the big plate area above the collar bone. Same area I landed at during the BBQ. It is not something that has happened often but really didnt feel good. It is stiff and hinders my movement I nutch. It was a silly fall, but even the silliest of falls cant cause real damage. Fortunately it was nothing to bad but it did stop me for a few mins and bugged me while we were stretching.

Hopefully it will be ok for tomorrow.

HIpk BBQ

So last Sunday we had a Training BBQ as a warm to the April - PK Awareness Month that we are planning. Brought a bunch of "toys" to train and play with and it was a success, we had a nice set up and lots of food. Several people came from the community and other new faces I have not seen but were happy to participate. We got lots of footage video will be up soon.

As far as training, a did several vaulting but mainly flips. My side flips are getting better and better but need to work on step off sideflips and summit. Did several fronts which hadnt done in a while and a few back layouts. Need to work on getting more distance with my kongs and need to work on longer double kongs as well. Did some gainers, everything god but working on getting further forward. Gotta remember to throw my hips out more.

Getting ready for next weekend, that is going to be wild. Ordered a banner and some flyers to promote PK and HIpk. We are expecting great Hawaii weather and great turn out. We just hope we gets lots of attention and participation from the spectators. Should be an awesome day.

Check out the flyer.




Ozzi