American Parkour

Hi! At last I opened a training log. This is the place where I'll keep track of my personal records, my goals, my failures and my school marks  . I will not, however, post a message for every calory I consume, simply because I do not keep track of that. Most of my diet consists of bread, eggs and fruit anyway.

I have stopped playing the computer 10 hours a day a year ago or so and became a little interested in sports, and took knowledgde of the world around my desk in general. Ever since I found out about crossfit and parkour and the American parkour WOD I have been very interested in fitness, maybe almost to the point of obsession  . No just kidding but these WOD's did seriously change my life (positively, that is).

Soooo, first my goals:

-After the holiday I will achieve a 10 for every subject (that equals a straight A in the American school system, did I tell I'm Dutch?)
-Being fit as a beast

That includes:
-12 seconds on 100 m Dash (currently 15 seconds)
-1:00 on 400 m run (currently 1:20 or so)
-Planche (I've been stuck on the tuck planche for months)
-Front lever (now doing the advanced front lever)
-Free standing HSPU (I can manage 4 or 5 wall assisted HSPU's)
-L-sit of one minute on the floor (Can do 30 seconds with tucked legs on the floor)
-One handed handstad (Can hardly do it against the wall)
-Become a lot more agile
-Unassisted pistols (I'm close)
-Teaching myself a proper front crawl
-Improved flexibility (i'm about as flexible as my pullup bar)

Yep, those are many strength goals. That is however the area I lack on, and I seek to improve it. I grease the groove on one handed pushups, and will from now on GTG on pistols as well. I'm usually doing some handstand work throughout the day (mainly lowering and walking), running with the dog (barefeeted), climbing trees, tennissing, playing with a soccer ball, kayaking,  etc etc. Oh yes I occasionally see a friend as well, for those that think I'm socially inhibited.
Now that my summer holidays have started I will really, truly try to practice parkour at least once a week, and I will learn the front and backflip, and I will educate myself a lot further.


Sooooo, the workout I did today (25-06-06)
Warmup (including pushups, pullups, situps, bridge, L-sit, handstand, stretches, bar muscle ups)
Front lever + Planche training (tuck lever, one leg straight other tucked for 30 seconds total, tuck planche 30 seconds total)
APK WOD Wednesday 21-06-06
Run 5K for time.
It was raining hard and thundering above my head making it quite exciting 
Anyway, time was 20 minutes, as usual. I won't get faster without specific training, but I first want to improve some other aspects of fitness .

Did some handstand training afterwards, then went inside, soaked.

No cold shower today, there was no need to


That's the end of my very first post  . My summer holidays have started so I will try hard to achieve my goals, and I will get some friends to follow the APK WOD too, although most are just lazy, dubbeldee excluded (he's started the APK WOD's)!

I was wondering why bar muscle ups as described in Demon's drill of the month are not included in the WOD. It seems they are a very applicable exercise to parkour and as much equipment is needed to do ordinary pullups. Other than that it is not an extremely difficult exercise, I can do muscle ups but I can't do proper pistols, and they are also included in the WOD. Substitutions are also not very difficult, one could use a chair (or another way) to get to the top position and then do a negative, or do jumping muscle ups if one can reach the ground, or as a last result sub with dips and pullups. The move does require some skill but what is wrong with that?

In many of the APK WOD's I train to failure. I can for instance pull off 18 pullups, so I do that till I can't do another full one, I wait a few seconds and do some more till I did the required amount. I hear a lot of people saying that you should avoid training to failure, but I don't feel really sore or something the following day. Should I take it easier or is it okay to train to failure regulary if I have a good cold shower afterwards?

Since saturday I've been having some kind of injury at my right heel of which I have no idea what it is, maybe someone here can help.
It hurts on the back right side of my heel, especially when I'm exposing my foot to impacts like jumping or running. It's not feeling like a stress fracture, but the pain is not fading when I'm increasing the activity, however does when I stop the activity after a few minutes.
It also affects the way I run, it causes me to land on the right edge of my foot, and I don't seem to be able to change this, like I can't hold my foot straight.
I don't think it's something with the bones, as my heels hardly touch the ground while running, and I feel the pain in the 'bounce' of the impact. I'm now trying to rest my foot and it seems to have healed a little since yesterday.

I think it's a result of overuse and a slightly bad running technique. I tried to relieve the pain a bit by just falling forward and pulling my legs as described in the pose method of running and the barefoot running site, and this actually helped a bit, still can't sprint or run long distances though 

I know it's hardly parkour, and the handstand is crap, but I thought it made a quite nice picture..



I wanted to get a picture of a better handstand from another angle but the ice started to break after this one 

Hi I wanna start the WOD instead of my own workout cause it seems much better.
However, I'm also doing the Air Alert 3 programme (in case you don't know it: http://www.home.no/slominski/Air%20Alert%20III.htm) Can the WOD and AA3 be combined, or will the WOD itself train my vertical leap just as good, or should I start the WOD after I finished AA3 (i'm now in week 8 )