For everyone who couldn't make it out to NY last week for PKGen's visit...you missed out big time! Dan Edwardes, Stephane Vigroux, Chris Keighley, and Julie Angel came over from the UK for an open training day in Central Park. Over 80 traceurs showed from all over the US and Canada, Ohio drove up a van full of 10 guys, Ottawa made a showing, and I flew all the way from Seattle to be there. Click through for the full story and media!
The day started with a brief introduction and a jump straight into the "warmup" (warmup and warmdown are codenames for heavy conditioning in PKGen apparently). We jogged, did a lot of QM, a bunch of jumping exercises, some interesting QM variations (sideways monkeys are great), and a large amount of push up variations. Everything was done very dynamically with just a few small rests in between. To say that it was challenging is a huge understatement, we basically got our asses kicked...
From there we went through some precision basics from Stephane and went through a challenging follow the leader course. After some jamming around the huge rocks of Central Park we broke up into groups and headed out for more specific movement training.
Unfortunately the park was not prepared at all for us to be there, and we kept getting kicked out of everywhere we went after about 30 minutes (the warmup itself ended up having to be done in three different locations). That didn't stop us however, and we ended up training well into the night, probably about 7 or 8 hours total.
All in all it was an amazing (and tiring) day with a great deal of information absorbed. Some of the Parkour Generations guys have been training hard for over 20 years as well as teaching countless numbers of students and they didn't hold back any of that experience in teaching us or answering our questions. I'd like to thank them personally for emphasizing conditioning the body for the basics first and foremost, and raising the bar for the intensity of conditioning needed. If you want to still be practicing parkour in ten years time, you need to listen to experienced traceurs like these and focus on strengthening your body as you are progressing through the various techniques (and Don't Be Dumb).
Keep a look out for Julie's video of the event on her site, and until then check out some of these:
I drove twelve hours from kentucky to be there and it was well worth the trip. I was truly impressed with the skill and conditioning of the pkgen guys. Training with Stephane Vigroux was inspiring and it showed me i definitely got a long journey ahead of me if i ever want to be at their level.
2.
02-21-2008 16:15
Dave from ITHACA? WHOOO ITHACA! Haha.
3.
02-21-2008 17:18
Yeah, Ithaca! Thas Michigan!! Rock on! Wish I knew when this stuff was going on....
4.
02-21-2008 19:30
cool guys, keep it up. by the way CONGRATULTIONS TO SKYNATIVE, our next Ninja Warrior
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