Taking a break

Sadly to say my wrist hasn't been healing. My left wrist, my right wrist feels fine with very very little discomfort at all, is still very uncomfortable when ever it is used. So i have decided to take a complete break from the technical side of parkour to try to allow my wrist to heal. The reason being for this is not because i "use" it while i train, I'm very aware and able to train around having to use my wrist, but its because of the self preservation instinct that's built inside us. if i fall, even a small one, the likelihood that ill use my left hand as a brace is too great. It has been too frustrating not being able to demonstrate techniques that i'm trying to explain and show off my baller handstand skills. not to mention my favorite moves since i started have been the wall spin and the palm spin and i haven't been able to do them in almost 2 months. Im hoping this sabbatical will allow my wrist to heal enough before american rendezvous 2 because i decided i will be going and instead be blowing off the london rendezvous that i so badly wanted to go to. : (


BUT....i bit of good news! I was able to fix my cat leap so that im not hitting the wall all crooked out and stuff. check out this cat leap i did for you. This was way up high in that tree! like way up high! playground leap

Quick reference stretching chart.

Hold each stretch for 5 or 6 deep breaths (25-30sec) as you exhale go a little deeper into the stretch

This are listed in the order I do them in, I find it to be easiest this way.

Forward Bend:

standing straight up inhale and reach for the ceiling, exhale and reach for your toes

Cross-legged forward bend:

Cross one leg in front of the other and reach for your toes. switch legs and repeat

Sitting Hip Bend:

Sitting down on your booty, point your toes and bend from the hips. stretch forward only a few inches. 

Sitting Forward Bend:

Sitting on your booty, point your toes and bend from your back. reach for your ankles.

Half Hurdler:

On your booty, pull one foot into your groin and reach down the other leg. If you bring your left leg in, reach across with your left arm

Cross-legged back stretch:

Sitting on your bum cross one leg over the knee of the other, place your elbow to your knee and look behind you.

 

Open Hurdler:

Sitting forward, bring one leg behind you to form a right angle at your groin.

NOTE: you can touch your heel to your butt, like in the picture, or you can have your knee bent at a right angle. Its personal preference

Dead Man Stretch:

In open hurdler position bend the straight leg to a right angle and lean forward over your thigh.

NOTE: you can bring your heels in, like in the picture, or you can have them both bent at 90*

Cross Arm Shoulder Stretch:

Sitting down with your legs straight out, take your arm and pull it across your chest

Tricep Stretch:

Pull one arm over your head and down your back, grab the elbow with the other hand and pull down

Wall Calf Stretch:

Put your toes up against the wall and lean in

Roof passageways and Demon drops -David

Started out Saturday morning training with Will and some nerds near the Dog and Duck Pub on 17th because waterloo park was closed for some event. Sucked. This other spot is OK but other than a couple of cat leaps there isn't really much I can do with my wrist in their current condition. My cat leaps feel like they have gotten better but my toes on my right foot still really really hurt from the botched cat leaps I was doing earlier this week.

So after we warmed up Ben and Will and I headed up to the top of the adjacent parking garage and found some really cool (Scary) passageways from the edge of the parking garage to the neighboring building. Its really hard to explain. I wish I would've taken a picture but I was'nt thinking about it at the time. But try to imagine this...in between these two parking garages there were some pipes, that ran at a diagonal, and they served as like a platform that we could lower down to and then jump down back into the garage a level lower. Anyways if you cant picture it, just picture a scary passage from one building to another. Ben did it first, then me, but Will thought the risk far outweighed the awsomeness. Will is a cautious cat. He said he'd do it next time. We shall see.

So after playing around in the parking garage for an hour or so we decided to take the M3 and head down to san marcos for Open Gym. I spent friday evening with Marcus and we were talking about what we were wanting to train at gym. I mentioned that the last time I was at open gym I really wanted to attempt a demon drop but when I got up on the bars I was just way to scared to ever let go of the bar. I asked him for some , "help" now, "help" from Marcus means he will berate you and call you names untill you man up and do what he says. Its not a very good way of teaching, but it does get results. : ) anyways, so after I stretch, Marcus and I wonder over to the bars todo some demon drops.

A demon drop is a silly manuever that is executed from a cat hang. You pull up with your arms and drive your butt as high as you can get it, release the bar, and use the momentum generated from your butt drive to continue rotation into a front flip. If it sounds terrifying, thats because it is. I'm not usually scared of much, because Im a manly man, but this had me about to pee my pants. I didnt even want to climb up onto the perch and when i did, I immediatly climbed right back down saying "ah, hell no". so after spending some time with Thomas and Levi explaining to me what exactly I was going to be doing and gave me a few drills to get myself comfortable with the motion and the execution of the inward flip. Levi was having me do "loser" flips, which are front flips but they travel backwards. It is similar to what we called a "cut-away" flip back when i was on the diving team, you jump backwards and duck your chest down and flip. So I went off and practiced the Loser flips for probably 45 min, and then Thomas had me do this butt driving drill. I'd stand about 6" away from the wall, with my arms up, jump, and lightly tap the wall as high as i could while looking down at my feet to make sure they stayed 6" from the wall. What this does is because you are looking down your hips will come out and up. This got me comfortable with the feeling of driving your hips and the loser flip got me comfortable with flipping inward. As a result,

*whew, I did it! I let go of the bar! This was scary! To this date this is the scariest thing I've ever done. In fact, after the second succesful attempt, my body was shaking from all the adrenaline and I had to stop training and stretch untill the end of gym. : )

Here I am being less of a Poon 

I will continue to train the Demon Drop untill I am no longer scared!

Imagination Is Everything

Parkour vision develops

I live a relatively monotonous life, with a splash of color. I noticed this Saturday (April 02) that parkour is intertwining into my daily life a bit more. I was at tech crew 10am-9:20pm, throughout the building and the painting I found ways to practice some pre-parkour developments. To name a bit there was Q.M., landing with both feet, precisions, and just flow. The involvement with my environment was quite spectacular and made the time fly. Previously tech to me was just a way to exhibit habits of a work-a-holic, but now I think my time at tech will just become another playground to challenge me.
*Yellow miss

Supplemental Workouts for Chan

Heres Chan's workout to supplement the leg workout Ive written for her. Its targeted towards her Butt (I know, right?) Back and Abs.

It is a timed workout, an alarm should be set to go off every :35 seconds. The workout is to be performed on the days off from the leg workout (odd weeks - tues/thursday. Even weeks - mon/fri) the exercises are to be done in the order Ive listed. There are breaks built into the workout, please try your best and only rest during the break time.


The chart is set up for the first week.
Week 2 - you go through the exercises twice
Week 3 - once through, exercises now last 1 minute
Week 4 - twice through, exercises last 1 minute
Week 5 - once through, exercises now last 1:30
Week 6 - twice through, exercises last 1:30

Exercise	Time
Squats	:30
Lunges	:30
Explosive Lunges	:30
Donkey Kicks (L/R)	:30/:30
Hip Bridge	:30
BREAK	1:10
Side Plank	:30
Bird Dog (L/R)	:30/:30
Starfish	:30
Butt Raises	:30
Frog Butt Raises	:30
BREAK	1:10
Flutter Kicks	:30
Hollow Hold	:30
Crunches	:30
Full Sit-ups	:30
Bridge Dips	:30
BREAK	1:10
Handstand	:30

　
If you need an extra :35 rest, you may do so once during the workout.

You should place a towel underneith your yoga mat to help protect your knees and tailbone.　
You should know how to do squats, lunges but ill try to explain and find pictures for the other ones.

Explosive lunges: Being careful not to hit your knees, go into a lunge and explode out and switch legs in the air.

Donkey Kicks:  get in doggystyle, pull your knee in and kick it back out, slow and controlled. dont alternate legs, do :30 on each side.

Hip Bridge:  hips up, hips down. slow and controlled


Bird Dog:   alternating leg/arm in the air, static :30 hold
Starfish:  Now this one is a little hard to find a picture for, its one of my exercises. you lay on your stomach with your arms and legs spread out like a starfish. squeeze your butt and pull your legs and arms into the air so that only your torso is touching the ground.

Butt Raises: lie on your stomach, cross your arms and lay on them like a pillow. squeeze your butt and lift your legs up into the air, then back down, then back up... KEEPING your legs as straight as possible.

Frog Butt Raises: same exact idea as butt raises but instead of keeping your legs straight you bend your knees 90*

Flutter Kicks: exact same position as butt raises. bring your feet into the air and kick them like your swimming.

Hollow hold: on your back, lift your legs and shoulders off the ground a few inches and hold. If you remember from the ab workout we did its position "2"

Bridge Dips: so you go into whats called a table which is like a crab walk position and your pushing your hips towards the ceiling, engageing your abs and butt as much as you can, bend your arms and "dip" to the floor and then press back up.

That should cover the back and butt exercises. dont worry you will get to rest on the weekends, your arm workout wont be very hard, itll just be a few exercises and they are all, one set-max reps, so it doesnt take very long . Ill have it written before monday. Thats when we start!

Gotta fix my Cat Leaps - This is top PK priority! -David

so I have changed how I do my cat leaps, for the worse.

I dont know if I'm compensating for my sprained wrist or what but yesterday and today when I go to do a big cat leap I turn my hips and feet right before i hit the wall, so I am not able to absorb with my feet. It could be that Marcus is trying to show me the way he does a cat leap and the unfamiliarness of it causes my body to panic? It could be that my body is trying to protect my wrist? It could be that I'm scared to jump that far since it has been a while before the last time i trained cat leaps?  It could be that Im just a big pussy. I dont know, all I know is its needs to get fixed because It hurts to slam into the wall.

Heres a couple of videos

hear me say "ouch"

Hold your head sideways 

but see how my feet arent straight? both of those were really huge catleaps BTW.

So being aware of my crooked legged-ness I was trying to correct what I was doing wrong but heres the thing. I tried. I told me body to land with my feet perpendicular to the wall. Does my body listen? no. at the very last second i turn my hips. It happened over and over again till Marcus and I ran into Jan and David and I went to show them what I was doing wrong and asked for input. Well that time everything worked out great except my knee cap hit the wall and went "thud" everybody was like 'that sounded like it hurt' and i was like 'yeah, but look at my feet. They're where they are supposed to be! So the very last cat leap of the day was a good one, the best one ive done since my injury : )

So the goal for me for the rest of the week (hopefully it doesnt take any more time than that) and train nothing but cat leaps. trying to focus specifically on keeping my hips square. I am going to ignore the way the Marcus feels is better and go back to my stagger-step Yamakasi break technique. HOPEFULLY that will fix everything. I wasnt doing this before.

Chan's 6 week American Rendezvous prep course -David

Here is a workout I put together for Channie, this isnt really designed to like shred her muscles out, its purpose will be to release endorphins and to prepare her body for the abuse that the YAMAKASI will put her through in May.


2 sets of 10 push ups should be done everyday! Wednesdays will be harder with double the push ups (4 sets of 10 pushups)

Squat hops are to be done during odd weeks on wednesdays only, even weeks, squat hops are done on all three days.

Weeks 1,3,5 are to be done on Mondays, Wednesdays , Fridays.

Week	Leap ups	Step ups	Thrust ups	Burnouts	Squat hops
1	2x 10	2x 5	2x 10	1x 50	2x 10
3	3x 15	2x 10	2x 15	1x 100	2x 15
5	3x 20	2x 15	2x 20	2x 100	2x 20

　Weeks 2,4,6 are to be done Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Week	Leap ups	Step ups	Thrust ups	Burnouts	Squat hops
2	3x 10	3x 5	3x 10	2x 50	3x 10
4	4x 15	3x 10	3x 15	1x 150	3x 15
6	4x 20	3x 15	3x 20	1x 200	3x 20

Here are how the exercises are done

Leap ups:

Step ups:

Thrust ups:

Burnouts:

Squat Hops:

1 rep is: squat - little jump - squat - big jump

How this started -Chan

It started with an idea to just keep a written record of the adventure's the Kersch and I had.
Throughout we'll be writing how we're doing in our pursuits with parkour and other misc things hopefully relating. =]
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It is a beautiful day today at our location, blue skies, blooming green grass, and still bare trees. The sun shines bright, barely a cloud in the sky, yet the nip of winter clinging onto the beginning of spring is evident.