American Parkour

My working definition when is "the discipline of developing the capacity to overcome obstacles using your body, and developing the self through overcoming obstacles" that is my best attempt to translate the inchoate philosophizing of the founders and provide a workable goal to orient training towards.

More and more though I think what I see actually being practiced in the parkour community is "the discipline of the developing the self through interacting with obstacles." The emphasis for most people far more about personal development, creativity and finding interesting ways to play and interact with the environment then it is pursuing effective capacity.

Its not sexist to acknowledge that men and women have different capabilities its just realism. In sport there is a persistent approximately 10 percent gap in performance between elite male and female athletes that stopped converging 30 years ago, in all sports that have high level of participation of both sexes. Women are smaller, they have more body fat and less muscle mass, they have lower levels of testerone which helps build muscle and strength as well as potentiates the nervous system for explosivesness. The reall gap in performance between males and females may actually by wider because almost everyone at the elite level of sports is on PEDs which work better for men then women because they are derivatives of male hormones which women are more senstive too.

I think only one women has made it past the jump hang on ANW I think this is largely due to weight and height they can't depress the trampoline enough to get a good bounce and then are not tall and long enough to grab the net. There are definitely female athletes who could do so, a good female pole vaulter could probably make the jump hang fairly easily being selected for decent size plus lots of strength and speed.

The other issue with Ninja warrior is the biasing of the of athlete pool, that is to say there are hundreds of male athletes every year representing a wider range of different levels of athletiscm, size and physical background against a dozen or so female athletes.

All of the top female competitors like Luci Steel, Natalie Strasser, and Janine cundy so far have been smaller girls I doubt any of them is over 130 pounds. A girl who was similarly athletic to those three but 5^8 and 150 would probably have better chance on that obstacle.

There seems to be a bit of misunderstanding here.

Eternal rotation at the shoulder in a dip position will result in the humerus moving closer to the body elbows wide will actually result in internal rotation at the shoulder.

However even with elbows in the shoulder can default into an internal rotated position. An internally rotated shoulder position results in compromised biomechanics and impingement of the brachial nerve IE muscle up elbows.

Keep the elbows fairly close to the side and focus on external rotation at the shoulder imagines imagine trying to break the bar by rotating the palm away from the body and intiating this motion from the shoulder, feel the tight back and down position this creates do not lose this at the bottom of the dip.

Agreed.

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The only real athletic events where genetics play a significant role is the huge role is extremely short anaerobic or extremely long endurance events. Prime examples are 100m and marathons where west african genetics tend to dominate the short, and east african genetics dominate the long.

Maybe I am misreading you but I strongly disagree with the statement genetics  play a large roll only in a few sports. Genetics is a huge factor in elite performance its just that racial differences in genetics are not as a big factor.

Anyone stepping to the line of any major olympic event has a very select set of anthropomorphic, and neurological factors optimized to that event.

Gymnasts have very different anthropomorphic characteristics then sprinters, and both are completely different from swimmers.


Most everyone can probably get decent at sprinting or gymnastics or swimming but only a very small handful will be close to Olympic level and none will be elite in even two of those three.

I think the most profound finding is variability of response, I am pretty convinced by the food reward theory of obesity put forward by stephan Guyenet however I have found that I have shifted to a lower body fat set point since lowering my carb intake independent of calorie restriction. Its not massive between 1.5-2 percent but going from the healthy to athletic BF range is big deal for someone like me.

At this point I advocate a real food diet, starting with paleo as a baseline, adding in agricultural foods depending on tolerance experiment,  with macro ratio's and sups only for performance optimization with an n-1 one philosophy.

Individual variability is huge, Creatine is one of the best supported sups out there, aside from a couple pounds of water retention I had absolutely no noticeable response to it. On the other hand phosphyidyl serine has shifted my entire circadian rhythm by 2 hours.

The truth is we don't really no what is strong enough or how to measure strength in a way that is directly applicable to given sport movement that isn't that sport movement.

Strength performance is quite complex something like a leg press something very simple boils down to maximum potential muscular tension. An athlete that is able to exhibit more tension is stronger. But even on leg press its dependant on anthropometrics, the same amount of tension generated by a muscle result in different effects when translated over the proportions of the long bones.

Someone with longer levers has to produce more force to move the same amount of weight but has the ability to produce more momentum at the end of the the lever. So ideal strength ratios as measured by a squat is not comparable for a guy who is 6^4 with a 40 inch inseam and guy is who is 5^10 with a 30 inch inseam I have no idea what Usain bolt squats but I doubt he will ever approach what ben johnson squatted.

Jumping high and running fast are reliant not just on maximal muscular force but efficiency of the stretch shortening response, ability to relax and contract muscle completely in rapid sequence, and co-ordination of all angles of the limbs to elicit the optimal angles of force generation. The motor patterning involved in squat and deadlifting is very different from that required for jumping, up to a certain point adaption in heavy lifting drive performance in jumping past a certain point there are diminishing returns. Where the point is variable based on the athletes inherent antropometric, neurological, and muscle fiber characteristics.

Decide what your goals are find the excercises that help them and keep doing them until the stop helping. If you vertical increase 5 inches going from a 200 to 300 pound squat, and 3 going from 300-400, but doesn't improve past that then focus on maintance of that level of strength and look for other tools to improve that capacity.

The grip on the minimus is ok. I have the trail version which has a pebbled outsole which is dumb and messed up the grip for good month for me before it wore off. It grips real well on rails, and the wood in our gym and smoother concrete more porous concrete and rock is not very good, the suck in the wet. Overall I would probably give them a 3 out of 5 on grip maybe 3.5 when I really want grip I use my 5.10 daescents but I have adapted to the lower grip for the most part.

Here you go Alec, I assume this is what your refering. Ido is awesome you should explore his youtube channel and his old blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHn-Hk8OBSo

More ideas on barefoot training here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW7hZlxlTlo

Funny the second video featured is me, I have never heard of Kinobori. In the end its doesn't matter to much the name is not what matters. Movement, training effect and intent of training are what does. Training in nature is incredible valuable.

I am feeling pedantic so i want to point out the other side to the abs are made in the kitchen rule. I

If you want abs like this http://tinyurl.com/7lucj94
Thats 50 percent diet 50 percent genetic.

The 50 percent diet thing is you have to have the right diet to get your abs visible the 50 percent genetic is the shape of the abs once revealed I had a gymnast I worked with who was 7 percent bodyfat he had 7mm on his abdominal pinch test he did not have a six pack he had 2 abs that was it that was all he would every had he simply lack the horizontal segmentation that most people had. My business partner has 7 abs instead of the normal six or eight. People have varying numbers of segments symetry of segments and size and shape of segments, in addition differences in fat patterning means your results may varry.

On the other hand if you want abs like this http://www.bodybuildingpro.com/coleman07.jpg Thats 25 percent diet, 25 percent genetics, 25 percent working your ass of in the gym and 25 percent taking ungodly amounts of PEDS, HGH in particularly is useful for this look.

This has been rafes pedantic service announcement of the day thanks for your time.