American Parkour

I need you guys to spam this link wherever possible and to please fill out the form yourself. There really is nothing that will benefit any one of us if this bill goes through

https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=487

Copy/paste this text if you don't want to type out the description yourself

The PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) is a threatening sequel to last year's COICA Internet censorship bill that would -- like its predecessor -- invite Internet security risks, threaten online speech, and hamper Internet innovation.

Please consider urging your members of Congress to reject this dangerous bill:
https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=487

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=206348942715514&

I'm assuming even those of you who aren't my friends can still see that, if not let me know.

This was just a TEST video so I could get the feel of what I plan on making. If anyone has some cool ideas I'd appreciate em. I'm thinking I'm going to go with a serious theme, and I'm feeling the song "The Pot" by Tool will be good to use for it. I will post the final product when I'm done

I'm putting this is General Discussion because I want to ask this question in accordance to training.

I assume glasses could fall off and break, but contacts may dry up. I was just wondering if you guys could share your personal preferences. My eyes are getting pretty bad and I'm prolly gonna be going and getting one or the other soon. I'm leaning towards contacts because I despise glasses, but I'd rather do glasses if they'll interfere with training less.

Is it alright to take all three of these things at the same time or any combination of the three near the same time?

I don't want any of the effects of them to be negated by the other

Funny vid by Teg the Take Flight posted to their Facebook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKIItQctEYI

Well for those of you who don't know me too well, I've gotten into Buddhism a lot this past year and one thing Buddhism teaches is mindfulness. In short, mindfulness is just simply paying attention to a specific thing in great detail. Benefits can be a calming effect, a deeper understanding of something, or just a heightened awareness of what you're really doing. It's kind of hard to put into words, but it can be a very eye opening and thought-provoking practice.

But back to my reason for creating this thread! I'm sure some people are like "No religion here kid!" so I'll get on with it haha. Mindfullness while training for parkour is an extremely eye opening experience. It is hard to put total focus on every little detail when you have to worry about things like gravity, executing your technique, and breaking bones if you fail.

When you slow down your movements and replay them in your head it's really interesting to see how much work your body does for things that seem so simple. Take a landing for example: you normally think "Land on balls of feet, legs absorbed the shock, keep moving". But when you slow down and replay that landing in your head you realize how many things your body does just to accomplish this. Your eyes spot the ground, you judge the distance and get your legs at the right angle, (I'm barefoot so I've got a bit more going) you land with the back part of your toes a little bit, big toe first and the rest follow suit as the balls of your feet come down. A large amount of muscles in your feet tense and it progresses up your leg. The front of your shin, the back of your shin, your quads, you abs and then you hear your landing "was it quiet enough?" you might ask yourself. Then your back muscles activate, your arms come in to touch the ground for stability - your pecs flex, your shoulders flex, your hands extend and your hands finally come down towards the ground. They touch it for a split second and then start pushing back making your forearms clench, your triceps flex, and some back muscles flex. Your abs take an active role now pulling your body away from the ground,as do your quads, lower back, and shins. Your feet then start pushing and your off in the direction you chose to go in before the jump even took place.


Your mind processes so many things and your body is capable of so much it's incredible. When you really pay attention you gain a deeper appreciation for what you can do. I wanted to let you all know that the inspiration for me to write this post up was a landing from a failed back lever on my pull-up bar. I realized how much work my body does in that split second from losing control to landing on the ground and it's all subconscious. The human mind is well... Mind-blowing haha.

I plan to implement this into my training next time I have the chance to get out. Let me know what you guys think or if you've ever done this before.

So again, it has been awhile, and I hope to frequent APK again like I did back in the day. Things seem different here, but still the same amazing community (with many added members). I have been practicing parkour since April of 09, but I feel I have the skill level of a lot of people who've been practicing for less than a year (though I have a lot of knowledge built up, and experience). This year I want to commit to parkour. I miss the rush, I miss the blisters, I miss the cuts, and I miss learning. Parkour has regrettably been on the back-burner for awhile and that needs to change. I've come up with a few rules I'm going to try to implement into my life in hopes of keeping me motivated.

1) A minimum of 5 techniques a day. This includes vaults, rolls, QMing (1 technique would be either a minute of practice or an actual usage of it), etc.
2) Watch a PK related video daily, or at least almost daily. This one isn't as necessary but I figure every time I feel like I don't have the energy to work out, or go train, this will help motivate me.
3) Eat healthy. This isn't entirely related to PK, but it's something I feel I should do to improve my body overall. I've cut back to almost no meat mostly for personal reasons, but I still eat it. I want fruits and veggies to be a main part of my diet.
4) Roll. A lot. I neglected rolls for some reason. I learned them when I started, then I learned vaults and wall-runs and the like, and then I stopped practicing rolls. Why? Who knows... But that stops now.
5) Repetition. If one of my daily minimum techniques end up botched, it gets redone. No exceptions.


That's about it for now as far as the rules. I plan to force myself to start jogging again tomorrow night not taking weather into the equation unless it could be dangerous. I dislike running in shoes but I guess it's better than frost bite. I'm going to work out daily unless I'm too sore, but that is my only reason not to (except time barriers I guess, haha). I will be taking more protein than in the past to make up for my lack of meat intake. Yes, I take a MV. I also take fish oil . I hope to be posting a lot more now... It feels good to be back (again, haha).

I'm setting APK Forums to my home page after this in yet another attempt to keep me on my course. If anyone else has some suggestions that have helped them in the past please share them.
Thank you all for past and future support, it really means a lot to me. I'm glad I have such an awesome group of people in my (sorta)life.

I haven't done anything lately (no working out or pk for two or three days) and this morning I woke up with a weird pain above and to the sides of my left knee cap. It feels like a weird type of pressure and is only painful when I fully extend my leg. I took some tylenol but it's not really doing anything 
I was hoping to find something on google but I didn't. The closest was something with the iliotibial bands but that doesn't sound like it's exactly it

Edit: it just started hurting while I walk and it's giving me a slight limp

I've been gone for so long from APK that I nostalgia'd looking at some of the thread names. I mean, I had 49 pages of "unread posts since my last visit". As far as what I've been doing: I originally decided that I was getting too sidetracked on the internet, and my plan was to try to turn my computer time into workout/training time. However, what ended up happening was me losing all motivation to do anything physically challenging for like a month and a half. However, it wasn't all bad. I reconnected with my gaming self on Fallout 3 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 (maybe not a good thing, lol), I became more active in my Buddhist studies, and just kinda chilled.

I wish I didn't let all of this happen without parkour, but I'm not going to lie; I did. I've probably gained a few pounds and lost some of my definition, but I still have a few months left of warm weather here to get back into it. I shall start pestering my friends to come train with me again, and make them help me stay motivated. I'd like to say "HI!!!!!" to everyone, and let you know I'll be frequenting APK again, as I've learned I lose motivation without your guys' help. If you guys would be so kind as to help me out, I'd like to know what's been going on here, in the PK community, and I'd love it if you guys could post some sick videos that've come out recently to help get me motivated again.


P.S. How do you guys like my improved grammar skillzzz?? I've decided to stop being lazy and actually hit the shift button and the apostrophe button now 

so ive been doing parkour since april of last year. it was all by myself and me being the demotivated lazy person that i am never trained to much, and i really regret it. i want to be training ALL the time this year, and REALLY devote myself. my problem, however, lies with my girlfriend, whom ive been with since january of last year. she was supportive (sort of lol) of parkour last year, and even agreed to train with me once (never happened). this year i found some people to train with finally, which makes staying with it a LOT easier for me, and she all of the sudden has a problem with me doing parkour. she wont tell me WHY she has a problem and the only thing i can see is that im hanging out with some new people (boo-hoo right?) and im spending a little less time with her.

ive tried explaining to her that parkour is my lifestyle, its what i love, and its something i can get good at, and no one will judge me (outside of people like "WTF ARE YOU DOING?!?!"). ive explained the philosophy and ive tried to get her interested in many ways, but alls she does is complain and act super depressed when i go off to train (she knows how to pull my strings, shes not really THAT affected by it, i can tell).

does anyone have any suggestions? i cant have her being pissed at me in the back of my mind every time i train, its too distracting and will ultimately lead to less training and more slacking off like i did last year.

tl;dr girlfriend gets mad when i train, what do?