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From his informative fitness posts on the various forums you may have visited to the in depth knowledge he shares at jams and gym events, many of you might recognize Steven's name. Having hung out with him quite a bit around Primal, and knowing that all of his hard work around here needed some recognition, I sat down recently to ask some specifics about who he is an what he does outside of setting all the noobs straight! 
Steve making his third set of 90lb Ring dips look easy! Read on for more...
Where are you from? What did you study?
Born and raised in Silver Spring, MD. For college, I studied biochemistry at
University of Maryland College Park and graduated this past spring 2007.
What athletics have you been involved in?
I did gymnastics from approximately kindergarten until when I was 10/11. Then I
played baseball for a year. Quit that and ran track for a year in middle
school. Then I went to high school and played golf for 2 years. In college I
joined Gymkana, an exhibition gymnastics troupe, and performed for them for 4
years. During that time I was introduced to Parkour through the Crossfit forums
by Jesse Woody and after I graduated I decided to pursue Parkour. So here I am.
How has your school and athletic experience effected your choice of
career/education/physical goals?
I've always been interested in the human body since probably about early high
school. That's always why I wanted to pursue a career in science studying the
human body or at least something of that nature. The complexities of it never
cease to amaze me.
I do think my background of dabbling in a lot of different sports has pushed me
towards achieving physical excellence, but it wasn't the catalyst. Basically
about 2.5 years ago a lot of different things came together. First off, one of
my good friends who's still a bit stronger than me [on rings] came to Gymkana,
and I decided around that summer that I wanted to pursue training for a cross.
Similarly, this is when I started my training log which allowed me to keep
track of my progress and motivate me. Indeed, about this time I was introduced
to Parkour by Jesse and although I did not seriously start training until about
a year later, it was also something tangible that my strength and conditioning
work could be put towards to because the discipline intrigued me.
For these reasons, I seriously started to scour the Internet because of it's
vast potential as a resource for information about the who's, when's, what's,
why's, where's, and how's of training. And it has been a long and wonderful
journey getting here. 
150lb Pull-Up Negatives on the way to a pull-up with bodyweight added.
You're finished with school, what's your next goal as far as education and
career goes?
Initially I thought of going to work in a lab because I had done that before,
but pretty much the careers for people with an undergraduate degree suck
without graduate work. So I've started volunteering at a hospital and working
part time in a physical therapy clinic to try to figure out what I want to do.
Both are excellent sources to absorb knowledge and information to continue my
growth in learning about fitness. As for my career path, I basically have this
semester to figure that out, but I was strongly considering physical therapy
with possibly a training certification like NSCA CSCS to do sports medicine
work and maybe part time as a trainer.
I'm aware of a number of your physical achievments, what is most notable in
your opinion at the moment?
So far I would definitely say the iron cross. That was my first real goal, and
it took about 1.5 years to achieve so it was a long and arduous process. It
was, however, extremely rewarding for me to achieve it finally and perform it
in front of my friends and family at one of the Gymkana shows.
Looking at the lofty level of performance you already show, what are your
goals in the coming months/years?
My goals are fairly simple and to the point.
The first is to get this knee back into shape. It's been a couple months and
then with my re-injury it looks like it's going to be another couple of months.
I need to be patient with it and just rehab the heck out of it. Discipline in
not doing too much too soon is definitely one of my not-so-great qualities
because I like to go at everything hard.
As far as goals go, I mainly divide them into sections based on chains of
movement. For example, I would say there are 3 major 'movement' chains in the
body namely the posterior chain, pushing and pulling. So Parkour movements
mainly focus on the legs (posterior chain) with some emphasis on pushing and
pulling (for things like muscle ups, wall climbs, QM, underbars, etc.).
For posterior chain, it's mainly just to become more conditioned there because
of the knee while becoming explosive which I was working on before I got
injured (mainly in performance like vertical leap, broad jump and sprinting
speed). The goals are obviously tangible ones like improve broad jump by a foot
so I know that I am progress and aiming for a progression (which is what is
truly important about goal setting).
For the rest like pushing and pulling, it basically comes down to strength for
me. I like the feeling of training hard and heavy towards awesome bodyweight
feats. Therefore, over the past few months I've worked on things like planches,
front lever work, one arm chinup and other things of that nature which
thankfully transfer over very well to Parkour essentially making a lot of
things like climb ups or QM easier. I know it's not actually very
'Parkour-specific' and therefore am not advocating it as such, but coming from
a mainly gymnastics background that's what I love to do as well so I will.
Everybody seems to have that one skill that haunts them as their nemesis,
or me it's the one-arm pull-up. What's the one movement/skill that seems to
foil you every time?
Skill-wise I would definitely say one arm handstand although I have not been
putting much time into it that I should have. For strength, it definitely has
to be planche. Probably one of the hardest strength moves to attain starting
from scratch for anyone taller than like 5'5".
You've been away from Parkour lately due to injury. What's your rehab plan,
and what suggestions would you give to aspiring Traceurs to avoid the same
fate?
Yes indeed my knee has been giving me problems for the past few months.
Basically I injured it working an ambidextrous climb up when it torqued out to
the side oddly because I go up really quickly (bad side effect of being
powerful I guess). It seemed to have pulled the tendon away from the bone.
Basically the thing to do first is to get full range of motion back to the
knee. Often times people have injures and they just sit and let them heal and
lose some of that range of motion. I did that when I sprained my ankle last
year and have basically lost about 5 degrees of dorsiflexion and 10 degrees of
plantar flexion permanently. Do not let this happen. Stretch it out as the
swelling goes down and ice.
Secondly, with my knee it's about working with non-impact work like bodyweight
squats, walking lunges, walking up stairs and exercises of that nature to
regain the strength and muscle mass. If it's a particularly bad injury one of
the things you can do is do unilateral work like pistols on one side which will
help retain strength in the other leg. Also, I've found working flexibility
like splits helps to conserve muscle mass because stretching is actually a bit
like working out as it involves eccentric movement in the muscles.
After this, it will be light impact work like jogging and working my way up to
running and then perhaps higher impact vaults. It is very important at these
latter stages to be careful and wary of your injury. With me I was careless and
did on max effort jump while it was almost healed and it put me back to almost
a week post injury which basically undid 2-3 months worth of rehab. As much as
you want to get back to work as a traceur or traceuse you need to stop when
your body is telling you to stop. If there's pain the body is telling you no.
Don't push through it.
This is, of course, a very simplified answer to a very complex question on
injuries (mine being specifically a knee injury), so what I or anyone else says
is not always correct. It's always best to get a medical consultation
preferably by a doctor/physical therapist/chiropractor who works with athletes.
Your regular doctor will not be able to help you that much and will probably
tell you to just stop doing Parkour.
Not a bad front lever, especially considering that it was following those pull-up negatives!
What draws you to be so helpful to the online fitness community?
There were many helpful people who guided me through the past few years as I
was learning so I like to help and give back. In addition, I always enjoy
questions that make me think as well to basically apply the knowledge I have to
certain situations where I might not have thought of that before. This is
especially why I like something like workout program design.
Where do you see your training (both your own and of others) going in the
coming years?
I think Ryan Ford's visit to Europe really opened up all of our eyes as far as
the US scene goes as to how much work they put in for conditioning and working
to develop flow over "big skills." I'd love to see US Parkour headed in that
direction.
Training is full of progressions, and I'm sure many people in the US scene
would love to develop their Parkour to the level of a lot of the people over in
Europe. Everyone wants to come into Parkour and do everything as fast as
possible and learn everything as fast as possible. Yes, these are valid goals,
but listen to your body more than anything else. If it's telling you to slow
down, then slow down. You only get one, and if you mess it up badly you'll be
done maybe forever. I know that came off more as a warning, but I have always
stressed at the very least conditioning work for the joints as an extremely
important point if you want to be a traceur or traceuse when you start
progressing in years. The technique and skill will definitely come with hard
work.
What are the most common training mistakes you find while helping others
either in person or online?
1. Diet is the key to fat loss and/or muscle mass gain. Working out determines
if weight put on is muscle mass or fat.
2. Compound exercises always over isolation. Yes, biceps curls are nice, but
pullups also work biceps as well as back and chest and will help more with your
climb ups. Do you need anymore reason than that?
3. Do not ignore pain in your body. Yes, you might miss a workout or two, but
it's better than missing 3-4 months or more.
4. Do not do body part splits.
5. Stay away from machines and other fitness fads.
6. Core work is overrated. Yes, some is good, but not when you're doing more
core work than legs. Your core isn't the main part of your body that is going
to run and help you do that vault.
If there was one tip you could give a person trying to create their own
program, what would that be?
Find out what works for you. Okay, so you made a program yourself. You don't
have to ask me or anyone else if it's good or for permission to try it. Only
you can figure out what works for you. I can't possibly know how it would work
nor can the best trainer in the world know that. Everyone has different
genetics, diet, sleep schedule and a host of other factors which play a role in
how you respond to workouts. |
