Wow. Oh. Wow.
I haven't posted on this for ages...a whole week!
Well actually I have hardly touched my computer, have only been posting from my iTouch. I've been really busy with nonparkour stuff, and also training really really really hard! The problem is, ehh...along with my intense training I've had to go to a bunch of parties and stuff and have been pigging out on pizza...tostitos...etc etc etc which may not be too healthy for me. I've been trying to condition as much as possible too so that's a plus.
So last weekend I dropped in at a buddies house to sleep over at a birthday party, and he's got some great spots where he lives at! I showed off my fronts to everyone, and although the landings not too great it was still impressive haha. And yeah...landings...I thought it would be easy to fix it up, but it's proving to be quite a challenge. I can't tuck for too long, basically I just slap my knees and open up, and apparently I'm only about 2 feet off the ground. So I really need to jump UP, and STALL. It's really tough though because in the air I'm like "crap crap crap I can't stall or I'll bail!" and I tuck
. *sigh* it seems that improving my fronts are actually harder than landing them
. I NEED TO WORK ON THESE!
So anyway at his house I just trained a bit, some nice walls, and my 360 underbars are shaping up very nicely. I need to find a good rail set, I've got a SICK combo planned out. Normal underbars are hard for me though, mostly the mental block. Their fluidity is lacking. So I'm also doing pretty sick tree spins, getting my hands to high chest level. I can land them on trees that are pretty much straight. Going to try them on walls soon. And after training that night I pigged out with pizza, soda, all that crap :/ I need to learn to control myself. Anyway, the next morning we went to hang out at the local high school, which is amazing for parkour!
I practiced fronts into the long jump pit, which went normal...landed not terrible but okay. I also got a pretty nice kong to cat and craned some stuff about neck height or higher. There was also some rails near walls so I did some turn vaults, precisions, etc. Then tennis
Oh and random note, my camera should be arriving from Nikon this week so I can start filming! Yay!
Okay, so this week I've been working on the same things a lot, and it's been going great. I actually have a list of everything on my iTouch...where is that...*goes and searches* Ok, got it
Hmmm let's see. Okay! Been trying some new stuff in the freerunning menu in terms of walls. I thought 360 wallhops looked pretty sick so I found a nice 8 foot wall or so to try 'em on. Ummm...that didn't work at all. So I decided to start with 270s. The first day it was utter failure but then the next day I came back and started consistently nailing them! They're actually really fun, the key is to only start twisting after you kick off the wall...at least for me haha. Apparently they look pretty clean. So after nailing these, I decided to go back to 360's and am still failing, I get almost the whole way around but not quite. Help would be appreciated
Oh, and I noticed this after the 270 wallhops - my climbups are improving tons! Before I would have to literally drag myself over, forearms and all, and now I can smoothly do an explosive pullup and do a fast climbup using only one forearm! Full climbups should come very soon with all the pullup conditioning I am doing (8 max atm
)
Okay, small note here: after not doing any kongs for a while I tried them again, and was surprised to have kong fear for diving kongs which had never happened to me before. However, I persisted and made it go away completely after a couple of days. It looks like I am going to have to practice vaults consistently.
And while we are in the subject of vaults...reverses! Okay wtf is going on with these things. They are incredibly confusing for me, I'm trying to reverse over a picnic table and am barely making it, and probably with bad form (I can feel it, it's not fluid at all). I just don't get the vault! Also my momentum doesn't stay with me throughout the vault and I have to push off a second time to keep the vault going, resulting in a slow and ugly movement. Ugh. New goal: perfect reverse vault.
Okay I've also been working on kong exit distance, which is not good at all. I'm only getting about 4-5 feet off a rail, and can't even crane something 3 1/2 feet away from the rail. I think the key is in the momentum and I'm not maintaining it correctly through the runup. Also I think I'm taking off much too late, with my front foot only about 2 ft from the rail during takeoff. I'll post again later today on what happens because I've been looking through some old threads and have some new ideas.
Okay, and a nice surprise - my turn vaults are looking and feeling beautiful. I'm landing amazingly softly on the other side of a rail, and have some great height on them right now. I used to have a lot of trouble with these but getting my hips up is really making a world of difference! I'm doing some great turn vault to dismounts with these: I found a location with a 4 foot rail and then a 4 foot drop after it and am making the whole process as smooth as possible, and it is working out fantastically. I can't WAIT till my camera gets back!!!
Balance. HOOO. LLLLYYY. CRAPP. This has improved, omg, so much. Whereas one month ago, in
this thread my balance sucked like crap, to the extent of not being able to take one step on a cat balance, I can now walk in a cat balance for how much ever distance I please, and can also walk on rails very easily. I consistently get 10 feet or more. I've been doing loads of isolation work on this and the level of improvement is so incredible. Also, just two days ago I almost brought myself to do the "rail" precision" mentioned in the above thread. I'm so close, I can feel it.
Okay, precisions! There's not too much to add except that I've adjusted my landing by trying to minimize the leg bend, and it's helped a lot. I've been doing loads of pistols, and btw these are coming along extremely well. I'm up to 2 on each leg now!
My leg strength has improved tons and I feel almost no impact when doing decent level precisions. Also, downhill precisions are amazing, again almost no impact. What else about precisions?...Oh yeah! Fear factor < before!! Precisions that I am questioning the length of are coming more easily, I just jump and go with the flow! I'm lovin' it baby!!
I did my first tree exclusive day the other evening! Basically this consists of finding a huge tree, of which 6 exist at DFS, and climbing as high up as I can, as fast as I can! Man oh man, this is fantastic for creative movement and just "playing", ya know? It just gives me a small break from repetition and conditioning where I can just do whatever, and the best part is that it is still constructive. This is improving my reflexes hugely, mostly because I can't afford to fall when I'm 15 feet up in a tree lol
. Anyways, it turns out I'm great at this! I don't feel much fear at all. This is great because before some mental conditioning I would have been scared to death to take a step from one branch to another high up in a tree haha. Parkour also comes into play as sometimes as I need to wallrun up to the first branch which is sometimes almost 10 feet up. I encourage everybody to do this at least once in a while, it's FABULOUS.
I've been editing my roll. Before I used to roll onto my shoulder, and now I'm sort of flipping up and landing actually onto the back of it. It's fantastic how much this tiny detail is improving it. It feels beautiful, I can tic tac down a set of 5 stairs onto concrete and roll, and feel absolutely no pain. Love it.
Ok, wallruns. There's this huge wall I've been trying to get to the top of for a long time now, and it's about 11 feet tall. I can get to the bottom of the topmost brick, and it's pissing me off tons. I need THIS much more height. I'm trying absolutely everything. Is the answer conditioning? Please, all help is being accepted. This will be a huge goal for me.
One more thing, I've noticed something. I just don't seem to enjoy flips. I mean, sure, they're cool. I don't have too much fear for them anymore. They're awesome for chicks. It's just that...I enjoy speed and "flying" more. I love speed and being in the air. I just don't feel the same passion for flips? Maybe this will change over time, and I'll keep working on flips to improve proprioception, and just for fun, but for now I enjoy parkour more.
EDIT: Ok I was at a party and I tried a precision from one rock to another and slammed my shin onto the edge of one. It was blunt, I'm extremely lucky. Even so, I received a nasty bruise and it's hard to walk. However, I think I would've been okay...if I didn't slam the same exact area into a bar on a playset 2 hours later. I'm going to have to lay off high impact stuff for a while...
