Topic: Greg's Training Journal (Comments Appreciated)

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

Well I woke up and all my muscles were tired and sore. Not really sure why, but that has been happening most days now.

I spent a little bit of time doing flips. Tried 30+ times. I realize I need a coach or something because I'm just not getting it. I looked up a few tutorials, but nothing helped. Oh well... I hurt my heels really bad on one of them.

Well Wolf, I did your workout in 10 minutes and 38 seconds. I'm never going to discount any workout you do ever again. For some reason, the pushups took me a very long time, and they are the reason I didn't break the 10 minute mark. It might have something to do with the fact my last workout was about 9 days ago.

I'm gonna go eat lunch... rest up a bit. I'm probably going barefoot running later, and possibly work on my underbars.

[wolf555]

   Dang you got 4 page's now, I'm not doing a very good job of catching up need to start writing down what all we do so I can post them. 10:38 is a decent time, but you can do better. I'll post something else in a little bit for you to try. If you want to improve push ups, you got to do push ups, something that helped me was when I wake up, before I eat I would do as many push ups and pull ups as I can, and do that before each meal and right before I went to sleep. Also variation, try different kinds of push ups, not just standard. Hindu, wide stance, diamonds, plyo, claps, gators, elevated, hands to the sky, and such. It really make's a difference. Train for a little bit and then try and beat your previous time on that one, and then try and beat mine, you will get it, you just got to work at it. (my time was 6 flat)

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

yeah I should start doing that. Since I eat all my meals here at home, I have a pull up bar readily availible to me. I'll start that tomorrow, because I have a packed night ahead, and I'm already tired.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

I really need to move. To Europe. Or Boston. OR any city anywhere.

I went to a local playground because there was some good stuff there. Turns out, all of the good thing had been torn up. 2 different swingsets. Pullup/underbar bars. The zip line. Since I went there just for underbars, I immediately lost all motivation and went home. I should go in for my driver license. Then I can drive to Portland, which is a pretty good city.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

I shouldn't be awake right now. I have a 5 hour play practice in about 12 hours. Thought I should put a post up here.

I learned the difference between unmotivated and exhausted. I have been the latter. Last week, I had 4 hour play rehearsals every day, except Wednesday and Friday, which were 7.5 and 7 hours respectively. This week coming up, I have 5 hour practices M,T,W,Th, then a show on F two on Sat and one on Sun. I had the weekend off, but I volunteered at a picnic on Sat and ended up working for another 5 hours, mostly standing in a small space, followed by 3 hours of lugging stuff onto a truck. It was fun. Sunday I also had off, but I FINALLY had a jam in Portland, which exhausted every surviving muscle in my body. Everyone there learned though. It was a great time. I stayed up this late because a friend and I wanted to go building climbing, (I don't know why I thought it was a good idea. I'm too busy for this.) and we find less resistance in the middle of the night. We climbed our old elementary school because some scaffolding had been set up letting us get to the highest roof. We tried getting on another building but called it off and came home.

That brings us to now. Today was my first real day of training since my last post in June. But I live parkour and stay active, so it's all good. A week from now I should be resting and getting ready for a long August of heavy training.


I just figured out a good reason to have the team name Thousandth Mile Parkour. No one step in the thousand mile journey is any more important than the last. No mile is more important. But the last step feels the best. The last mile gives you the greatest motivation to keep going. I'll live on the Thousandth Mile of my parkour journey.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

I swear I stayed true to my word and trained yesterday. Didn't count any of my sets, but it was still exhausting. I managed to do 5 precisions from another half brick back, which is like 8 1/2 foot lengths. I wasn't feeling the wall climbs so I only did a few. Went to the museum stairs, but rolled my ankle trying to make a big jump. Walked it off and went to the corner training spot. There, I did negative muscle ups for a bit which really killed me. Then my friend and I went to the playground and played a bit of tag before calling it quits.

It was a really sissy workout, but dang it felt good to get back out there.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

Two days ago, I did just enough of a workout for me to not feel guilty. I was feeling quite lazy.

Today was better, but my sternum was and still is in pain. I did 20 or so precisions, I did wall climbs, played at the stairs, did some tree climbing, then some muscle ups and hand stands. I did 3 muscle ups in proper form. They were slow, but I did them.

I need to get better at vaults. They are the reason I am not really good. I can't vault for beans.... but I don't have anything to get to basic skill level with my vaults, and I am scared......

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

Ballhats I am exhausted. Trained for a solid 2 and a half hours, I was gone and active for 4. Decided to WALK to Bowdoin College today. TERRIBLE IDEA. 3 mile walk, then training then 4 miles back because I took the long way.

Training is a story in itself. It started out simple, precisions, usual amount, a few wall climbs. Then we got to the museum, and I tried jumping to the 5th stair as part of the workout. I felt tired so I told my training partner I would only jump it 10 times. It took me a while to hit 10, and he kept going. I said I would  match him jump for jump, and kept going. 15 minutes later, I am up to 76 jumps and a jump to the 7th stair, and I think he got 83. I didn't know I was capable of something like that.

In other news, I have been doing muscle ups in proper form, and I think I did 6 today. I bet I coulda done more...

While doing jump for jump, we met up with 2 of my other friends, one had trained with me once or twice before, the other hadn't ever seen me in action. We played tag later, and it was crazy fun, and exhausting for the 4 mile walk home... Then we bought a huge pile of mike and ikes....

TL;DR  very difficult but good training day.

[wolf555]

Hey I don't know if it was from the mile swim or that uncooked steak I ate last night but just got through puking my guts out, like bad sick all night, so on the subject of swimming a mile. Don't do that, no one should ever do that.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

Someone on my school's swim team swam a mile breaststroke after a meet because he felt like it. He is a fish.

ANYWAY, training on the 9th got rained out, so we went on the 10th.

the 10th: That was good. We kept it light because we wanted to train on the 11th with someone who was visiting, but it was still a pretty decent workout. Muscle-ups were slightly more fluid for one or two.

the 11th: Holy heck. I woke up at 8 to go help set up a picnic as part of a school fundraiser. This is a big hullabaloo picnic so from 9 when we finally got started to about 2, I was lugging things out of a truck, pulling and rolling heavy objects, and hanging at precarious and difficult angles to wash inflatable rides. tiring but fun. After that, I went to do parkour. Not very difficult at all... we never found the guy. After THAT, my training partner (who also helped with the picnic) and I went BACK to the picnic to unload another truck full of stuff that couldn't get to the picnic site on time. This was full of heavy objects that normally require a full group of people. I think besides the two of us, we had 1 other really strong kid. This truck had the grills on it, if I am not mistaken.

today (the 12th): out of the 4 times I have helped set up and work these picnics, this was the first time I was able to be a guest and enjoy everything. It was fun. After it ended, I threw on a staff shirt and helped with tear-down. I got put on spike-ripping duty. I went around and tore up around 45 foot and a half long steel nails, a quarter or so were bent, all were difficult. After that, I helped take down tents and lug piles of steel pipes to the truck. After that, I moved an 80 lb tarp a large disance on my back. Then helped put things on the truck until it ended.

TL;DR?  I AM TIRED AND OVERWORKED. Possibly two rest days in my future.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

I feel like sharing this, and facebook is full of people who I don't want to really know, and I somehow feel like only people who have something nice to say would waste the energy to comment.

People ask me why I am so obsessed with parkour. They ask me why I get so offended when it isn't treated with respect. Well to put it bluntly, I owe parkour my life. At the beginning of freshman year (Sept '08) I slowly and steadily fell into a battle with depression. By February '09 or so I had no self worth, I was small, I was weak, no confidence, and I just wanted to curl up and die. Though I wasn't really suicidal because of my religious upbringing, I hated life, had no friends, and didn't have the confidence to do anything about it. Then I heard about parkour. I don't remember exactly how, but I heard about it and absolutely wanted to try it. I started doing the APK warmup, but as a workout. Most days I couldn't even do it. Finally, April 6, 09, I went out and trained for the first time. From then on, I was hooked. I trained a lot, found 2 people who would train with me every other day. Through being around people so much, and the flood of endorphins from working out all the time, I felt better. I gained self worth. I got my life back and became a human being again. Also, parkour gave me something to do, some reason to get out of the house. A side effect of working out all the time, I gained muscles, I toned up and women started finding me attractive. My life was given back to me better than before. So I literally owe my strength, my motivation, my current circle of friends, my reputation, my lifestyle, my life, to parkour. So you can see why I get offended when someone makes fun of parkour?

I don't really expect anyone to respond to this, and I know this is a training journal so here you go: today I did a pushup. I just needed to vent.

[Leland]

I understand man. We all have our problems..

Train hard.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

Woah I forgot to post my last training. I tried to remember individual days, but all I remember is that on one of the days, we did another jump for jump competition and I managed to win with 80 jumps to 63. Not sure what else.


Today though, I trained with a new kid who lives a half hour away. BUT he is moving in less than a week to about 100 yards away from where I start my training. YESSSSSS. He has been training for 2 months, and is probably better than I was at 2 months. He is really good at vaults, and pretty bad at wallclimbs and such, which makes us perfect training partners because I am great at climbing anything and I could only vault something to save my life.


We went through the usual. 25 stair jumps instead of a billion. He jumped to the 4th stair because he doesn't have a height advantage. -enjoys smugness..... smugness over- We met up with 3 other people and played some really intense tag. He was surprised to see how intense we were, how out of breath he was and how much he was sweating. Good times.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

Sunday I came down with insanely painful 8 hour long stomach pains. Spent a few hours in the ER to get some blood tested. I got another test today and all my elevated levels are back to normal. Appendicitis can't be ruled out completely, but at this point it is highly unlikely. I am supposed to take it easy just in case, and I didn't really feel up to train anyway because I still hurt. I'm hoping for the best.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

Day 9 of being sick. I am ready to be healthy. I am also ready for good weather.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

Boom.

I went training today finally. I took advantage of a few hours of sunlight drying things up. Played tag for a while. I went barefoot, and was feeling good about it. I am starting to get more confident without shoes. Did some muscle ups. The first two were much more fluid than before. I did 30 jumps to the 5th museum stair, and over half of them, I landed with my heels on the step. I don't know why, but after this long break I feel a little better at everything.

It was a good day that I hope is the beginning of more improvement.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

Training again today... sort of. My training partner's car is in the shop so he is out of commission until thursday. Me and some people played intense tag for a few hours. yeesh.

[wolf555]

Desiccated liver tablets.

[Greeeg the squiiirrel]

What about them? Good for you?

[wolf555]

   Been taking them for 2 days, I usually run on a good day, a 7:20-7:40 mile. Ran it today in 6:12, then did wind sprints, my lungs were worn out before my legs were. Liver is one of the best things you can take. The one's I have are 100 tablets a bottle, for $10 at Health Hut. They will solve most energy problems you have, and will help build up your immune system. It's just liver so this shouldn't be an issue, but have a doctor tell you its ok if your under 18. I should worn you though... I taste like crap.