It was suggested to me that I start a training journal here to keep track of my goals and exercises.  I was apprehensive at first, but I feel that the community here will really help me out when I hit the wall or if I need some pointers on technique or conditioning.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to post whenever I train, but I'll try to keep this updated whenever I get a chance.

Here's some basic information about my background.  I'm 19, 6 foot, and about 170 pounds (it fluctuates, but I've gained a little weight in the past few months of training).  I used to play floor hockey, baseball, and soccer when I was a kid, but I discontinued sports throughout high school.  I did some light conditioning before getting into parkour, but it wasn't anything too serious.  I started parkour in late March of 2008, and I've been training steadily ever since.  I go out with the Michigan Parkour Club 3-4 times weekly, and I do conditioning on my own on the off days (i.e. weight lifting, machine work, etc.).

Short-Term Fitness Goals:
-One strict form muscle up with kip (I want to bring both arms up simultaneously, I've been working the transition in the gym)
-Tucked planche for 30 seconds
-Tucked front lever for 30 seconds
-L-sit for 30 seconds
-Handstand for 1 minute
-5 handstand pushups on parallettes with full ROM
-1 full ROM straddle handstand press up
-1 true form dragon flag
-1 ring muscle up

Long-Term Fitness Goals:
-Multiple strict form muscle ups without kip
-L-sit muscle up
-Straddle handstand press (later, tucked planche to handstand press)
-Back lever with full extension of legs for 10 seconds
-Front lever with full extension of legs for 10 seconds
-Straddle planche with full extension of legs for 10 seconds (possible addition of push ups)
-5 Free standing handstand push ups
-One armed chinup (1 per arm)
-Chinning muscle up
-Hold flag for 5 seconds

Parkour Goals:
-Mojo kong-to-precision
-Increase my precisions from a little over 8 feet to 9
-MLB wall
-Smooth transition from climb up to top out (make it one movement ideally)
-Running precision at Dental
-Smooth rail flow and streamline movements
-Lache at Rackham
-Running cat at Rackham
-Drop cat at Rackham
-Work on reverse blocking during rolls and drill rolls on concrete
-Improve foot placement and reduce stutter steps
-180 cat at Kellogg
-Running cat at Kellogg

Freerunning Goals (not focusing on these at all, but I might as well list them along with everything else):
-5 consecutive standing back tucks on flat ground
-Back tucks from height
-J-Step gainer
-Front tuck outside
-2 foot gainer from height
-Butterfly twist
-Diving front tuck
-Palm spin on a rail
-1 handed cartwheel (eventually aerial) and round offs
-Consecutive back handsprings

Like I said, I'm mostly focusing on my fitness and parkour goals right now.  If I ever get access to a gym, I might start working towards some of my freerunning goals, but they'll still be secondary.  I'll be buying some rings and making some parallettes soon, so I'll be working on my holds a lot more.  I'd really appreciate any input or advice you guys have; I'm fairly inexperienced in lifting and serious conditioning, so I might need to ask for some help later on.  This is my initial post to list my goals, so I won't start recording my training logs until tomorrow.

11-20-08

Breakfast:
-1 egg, cheese, and bacon croissant sandwich
-2 pancakes with syrup
-4 slices of honeydew melon
-1 cup coffee
-1 cup skim milk
-1 cup hash browns
-1 blueberry muffin

Lunch:
-Roast beef Subway 6" sub
-1 bag Original Sunchips
-1 cup Diet Coke

Dinner:
-1/2 slice pepperoni pizza
-1/2 cup rice with chicken stir fry
-2 pieces fried chicken (I know... but I couldn't resist!)
-1 cup 2% milk
-1/2 cup skim milk
-2 cups corn
-1 cup green been casserole
-2 toffee cookies

Snacks:
-1 bagel

Workout:
I met up with the few active members of MIPK (We had a total of 4 today; Aubrey, Alex, Duncan, and myself).  We warmed up a little at Dental; QM, sidestep, jogging, pull ups, jumping drills, and burpees.
We moved over to Markley to work on some cat leaps, climb ups, traversal drills, and foot placement.  I held back a little today for several reasons: 1. My wrist is still recovering, 2. It was freezing outside, and 3. The cement was icy in several patches.  I drilled several stationary cat leaps and tried to work my way up to a running cat leap in the same place.  I didn't reach the wall, but I think I'll come back again when the cement isn't so icy.  I know I can do it, but I was holding back.  Duncan hit it and then landed another massive cat leap from the the wall to the windowsill.  I'm sure that I can get both, but I need to come back another day.  I drilled a lot of climb ups and negatives, worked on some limited ROM climb ups on the windowsill, did a few one legged precisions and running precisions, did some balance drills, and traversed across the rock incline.  It was a pretty laid back session overall, but I still found some things that I want to work up to.

Thoughts:
I really need to work on my technique more, especially running into both precisions and cat leaps.  I know that these things are all within my technical grasp, but the mental barrier is paralyzing for me.  I think I'm going to start drilling running work on my own just to get over my fears and get more comfortable with the added momentum.  This fear is really holding me back, so I have to start addressing it.

I talked to you about this before but I'm just gonna write it out anyway, because I'm bored as hell waiting for the training.

When you're working on static position body weight workouts, the most important thing is how long you held a solid position, rather than general sense of how long you worked on it.

http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode3/229

You probably saw this article before. He talks about having a solid 1 min hold of one position before progressing to the next progression of each exercise. It doesn't really matter how long you put your time onto it in general sense. You have to be able to say that you held the position for 1 min or 2 min total when you're working on L-sit, planche, front lever, handstand hold and etc, because it's quite possible that you worked on it for 10 min., holding for 20-30 seconds each and resting 1-2 min between sets which gives you 3.5 min. maximum total and 1.3 min. minimum total, but you could have worked the actual position only for 1-2 min, (which is still substantial amount for a beginner) or less.

So my point is, when you did static hold and you're writing it down on your training journal, try to write it as specific as you can. Read Duncan's journal, you can see that he wrote down how long he held his positions each time he did it.


This holds true for the core workout also.


It was super fun going to Planet Rock. I don't have torn callouses like you and Mike, but my hands still feel raw. No cat leaps for us today I guess.

11-23-08
Can't remember what I ate because I didn't have time to do this yesterday, but I'll give you and idea of what I trained.

Because our hands were still raw from Planet Rock, we decided to work on lower body.  It was a day precisions!

-Varied standing precision work from ground to raised planter (probably about 40 or 50)
-Running precision work varying take-off foot and distance (probably about 30 or 40)
-Precision and balance work around the crane (rail precision and balance, precisions from tire to cement walls, etc.  This was more of a cooling down thing, so I don't really know how many jumps I did)
-Stair precisions varying distance/height of step (Probably 30 or 40)
-Rail precision/balance work; balance up rails, working on mounting rails from both parallel and perpendicular angles, QM
-Landing drills from stairs

Thoughts:
I need to work on sticking my running precisions.  It was nice to work on precisions, though; it's an area that I don't usually focus on and still needs much improvement.  I also want to work on my longer distance rail precisions.  There's a really nice rail precision by Dental that I eventually want to work up to.  When I get the confidence, I should be able to kong-to-precision to the first rail, and then precision to the next one.  Overall, it was a pretty good day.  I'm probably going to start a regiment of box and broad jumps into my Monday/Wednesday workout routine.

Thanks!  I really like that MadPK video.  I just tried out doing the movement on a cable machine before reading this, but the rest of the video was great.

I don't know how I feel about standing on the pullup machine, if only because I won't be going through the full ROM, which I feel is pretty important.  Regardless, we're going to have to make sacrifices in one department or another if we're not doing an actual MU, so thanks again!

Oh man, Steve Zavitz, what a fag... ha, kidding. I like that you included the half-assed pullups. I didn't count those. As far as exercises that could help work towards the flag, you could do side planks, and to raise the difficulty, bring one leg up to your chest, and also side-hollow holds.

Sorry for the lack of updates!  Things have been crazy busy lately, so I've had little time to sleep let alone update this log.  Anyways, I'll try to give a quick recap of everything that I did over Thanksgiving break.  I've eaten far too much to remember over the weekend, so I'll leave my diet out of this post.  Suffice it to say that I was genuinely full for the first time in a long time.  Also, being home really helped me catch up on sleep.  It's scary how little I've been sleeping lately.

11-28-08 through 11-29-08
Nothing structured, but this was the day that I built my parallettes!  I probably did about 4 hours of collective work on them.  Specifically, I worked on L-sits, tucked planche holds, shoulder stands, planche to shoulder stand presses, and handstand push ups.  I think the longest I've been able to hold an L-sit is about 5 seconds (I know, pretty lame).  Planches have been giving me difficulty on the paralletes, mostly because I can't seem to position my arms correctly.  I can do them fine without the parallettes, but the difference in hand positions is really tripping me up.  Also, full ROM handstand push ups are extremely difficult.  I suppose I'll start drilling them, but I'm not even close at this point.  My shoulder stands are alright, although I'd like to get a full handstand press soon.  I also did some varied core and upper body exercises throughout the break including hollow holds, praying monkey push ups, one-armed push ups, pull ups, headstand press ups, V-ups, bicycle crunches, and probably a few other things that I'm forgetting.

11-30-08
Some more unstructured parallette training.  Not as intense as before, but I'm trying to work on L-sits every day.  Met with MIPK for the Sunday session.  Not much of a turnout; I ran the session and there were only 2 other people there.  We did some light warming up in the areas of Dental that weren't covered in snow or ice.  I worked on my flag holds; I'm noticing some definite improvement.  After warming up, I moved the group into Chemistry for some indoor training (there was no salt on the sidewalks and no one had plowed anything; I decided it was too dangerous to train outside).  It really wasn't much of a session; I gave a few pointers on tic-tacs and wallruns, plotted out a few precision circuits from bench to bench, and drilled some vault flow.  I found out that you can precision from handle to handle on the benches, so I worked on that.  To end the session, I ran a core and push up circle.  We did some basic hollow holds and some leg hold variations, and then we did a circle of 10 push ups.

12-1-08
More varied parallette training.  L-sit work, shoulder stands, planche, etc.

12-2-08
Met with MIPK today; it was another low turnout.  Before everyone arrived, I worked on my flag holds.  Not much improvement there, but it feels better each time I do it.  Mike took us to a parking garage where we worked on endurance drills of both strength and mental willpower.  It was a cat hang drill, but the gates that we held onto were frozen metal pipes.  We moved from rung to rung for as long as we could stand the cold.  After that, we did some cardio work on the stairs: jogging up and down, broad jumps down, QM up and down, one foot up each step, traversing.  When we came back to ground level, we did some light conditioning: dips, push ups, and squat drills, ab holds, climb ups, pull ups on a chain, precision work, foot placement.  When I got back, I did some more conditioning.  I did about 5 typewriter pull ups, about half of a typewriter archer, and 10 L-sit pull ups.  After that, I did some more parallette work.  I actually found a drill that might be useful.  It's sort of like an ice-cream maker, but for planches.  I did about 10 of those, but I don't think I'm doing the technique correctly.  It might take me a little while to figure it out.
Anyways, here's my progress on my holds.
L-Sit: 15 seconds
Tucked-planche: 18 seconds
Tucked front lever: 12 seconds

Well, I know I said I'd update this along the way, but I figured a summation would work better.  Now that I'm back at school, I'll be getting back into the swing of regular training times.  I'll let you all know how that goes tonight.

During the break, many things happened.  I worked a lot on my paralletes (L-Sits, planche, and shoulder stands), I got one of those Iron Gym pull up bars for Christmas (I figure I busted out 30-40) pull ups a day, I bought myself a pair of rings (still haven't reached the muscle up yet, but I'm getting closer), I trained with a few guys from BCPK, I trained by myself downtown, and I did most of the things one would normally associate with winter break (i.e. ate a lot of food, slept in every day, spent time with family and friends, etc. etc.).  I've really improved since the last time I was home.  Some of the "massive" walls I used to attempt seemed so much shorter.  There are 2 walls that I used to try every time I went downtown, and now I can get them both consistently.  My dynos have improved a lot, and I can now run the "tree course" in the park faster than I ever could before.  My climb ups have also seen much improvement; they're much smoother than they were a few months ago.  Unfortunately, because of the snow and ice, a lot of potential training time was spent at home.  Battle Creek doesn't have a full time maintenance crew to clear off all sidewalks and salt the roads; most of my training grounds were covered in snow drifts by the time I made it out to the city.  Luckily, there was a heat wave near the end of the break, so I got a few days to train with Shamas and Dexter, but I wish there had been more time.

On a related side-note, I was almost arrested during my solo training session.  I was sporting my new APK hoodie (the black perspective one) with my blacks pants.  Admittedly, it probably wasn't the best choice of attire, but, in my defense, I hadn't planned on staying out as late as I did.  I started training without any problems in the afternoon, but I didn't finish until about 7:00 pm.  It was pretty dark by then and, when I came back to the parking lot, a police car pulled in after me and boxed my car in.  2 other police vehicles pulled in after him and surrounded me.  An officer stepped out of the car and asked me how I was doing (I thought it was kind of odd that he said that, but it was probably just protocol).  He explained that someone had called in a theft in the area and they had seen me running through the town.  To make the situation worse, I had forgotten my wallet back at home (when I had switched to my sweats, I forgot to grab it out of my jeans pocket), so I didn't have any ID to give him.  Luckily for me, they were all really understanding and nice.  He had to put me in the back of his squad car, but he left the door open.  They searched my bag and asked me a few questions.  I told them I was out training, but they didn't let me go into detail (one of the other officers said something about jogging, but I didn't want to cause any trouble so I didn't correct him).  Eventually the guy who called the report in came up and told them that I wasn't the guy.  The witness said that they should be looking for a short, black guy.  The officers apologized and gave me back my bag.  I just smiled and told them it wasn't a problem.  All in all, it wasn't a bad experience.  They treated me extremely well, they were courteous, and they listened to what I had to say.

This little experience got me thinking though.  Wouldn't it be cool if we could get certified "Traceur" cards?  I'm thinking I might talk to the police in my area about getting some arrangement.  I've actually been trying to get in touch with the local law enforcement for months.  In any case, I just think it would be useful to have some sort of card signed by the police chief saying that we're allowed to train.  That way we could at least alleviate some suspicion.  It's just an idea.  Anyways, I'll update this tonight with my training.