Today I, and a lot of the other traceurs from Leeds, went to a gym in Sheffield. I started the day by having to run from the bus station to the train station in Leeds on the account of my bus being late as usual. The distance is only like half a mile or less but considdering the pistols I did last night, it wasn't a nice way to start the day.
About a dosen of us arrived in sheffield with time to spare so we tried a spot of training at Hallam Sq but sadly it was too wet for anything so we headed off on the 30 min walk to the gym.
The gym session was 4 hours long but because my legs were so tired I spent over an hour talking/resting/filming. I enjoyed it non the less and improved upon a few flips - I can now land backtucks without the use of my hands but they still need a lot of work! I drilled a few sides and double legs, but again they still need a lot of work. The only thing I didn't get to do (in terms of flips) was two step wall flips. I wanted to get some practise doing them in the gym but I only had a couple of short oppotunities to try them and I wasn't feeling up to focusing on something like that.
The day wasn't all flips! We set up a couple of boxxes and drilled a few cat pass - precisions, double cat passes and other vault variations all with split foot take off, of course - the more practise, the better! After that we set up a box next to some wall bars to cat pass - arm jump, with variations again (we had a thick mat covering the bottom of the bars to land out feet on). We started way too small but the others soon got up to pace and realised how far they can actually do this combo', as most of them haven't yet had much experiance doing it outside yet - give it time.
We finished by attempting a 12 foot standing arm jump from a box to the bars. We were aiming at a bar that was about 18 inches above the level of the box, so it was pretty damn huge and just out of my range. I had two attempts, I committed fully both times and both times just got my figers to the bars but not enough to stop me falling back onto my ass! A few of the guys did it though, one of which was was Will, who made it look relatively easy, but then he has at least a years experiance on everyone else. [EDIT: Apparently Will doesn't have that much more experiance than the rest of us, he is just very impressive and gives this impression - "Go Will" I say!] The others who did it either had a larger standing jump to start with or were taller than most. From which I conclude it was my body holding me back, not so much my ability. I wouldn't say this is new to me at all, but it is a new realisation of how far I have to push myself, to better myself.
To keep up with the home conditioning I do, I have done 100 press ups and 50 dips since I got home... Just for shits and giggles really!
All in all, a good day -
Peace Always
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Hmm...I see you're one of those with potential to go really far with parkour if you dedicate to it and leave tricking alone, but meh...it's your choice.
I find the gym does nothing for my parkour, it's too unrealistic and is often dangerous to practise inside and take it outside. That's why I don't go anymore. If I was to go again I'd just do a bit of tricking as a one-off just for the fun of it.
Will hasn't had any more experience than you lot, he started in Jan 05 with all the Sheffield lot. He's just a machine when it comes to most aspects of parkour, particularly uber huge precisions!
Anyway, peace out. Hope a few (and only a few this time lol.) of you Leeds parkour guys could make it to Sheffield for one of the Saturday jams.
Keep training Scottie.
Ben (www.BenNuttall.com)
So I persume it's all because I'm a few inches taller than you and can jump a few inches further that I made it? Only joking haha. I have to say the gym for me is more of just a fun day, if you look at some of the bigger catpass percisions and stuff like that we were doing, of course we're not going to do stuff like that outside, at least not until we're as good as Steven Kaser at them, but the point of the gym for me is just a day to have fun. I doubt very much of it transfers to outside, expect the realisiation I'm still underperforming at armjumps outside and it's time for some mental training in that respect. Fun though.
Enjoyed doing the 100 presups with you on msn too, shits and giggles aye :). Would've joined you in the dips but like I said, where I do them creaks like mad and I doubt the rest of my house would've appreciated being woken up.
Keep training hard and I'll cya in a couple of weeks (got all sorts of stuff on keeping me away from Leeds for the next 2 saturdays).
Cheers For the comments guys!
Believe what you want to, but I take almost everything I do in a gym outside, it is a mental aspect that I am able to overcome in most cases. My cat passes might not be quite as big outside but they are not far off(after a few attempts anyway), my arm jumps definately are just as big and I take pretty much all the tricking I learn in the gym, outside... sometimes in vain :P
It is all confidense thing though :\
Don't be getting too worried about the tricking Ben. I am parkour through and through and see tricking as another way of training for parkour. There are many aspects of tricking that improve my parkour - Confidense, balance, body control/manipulation, self awarness etc
I always think that any traceur that refuses to try any form of tricking is both foolish and immature. It can help so much with certain aspects of parkour. This may sound a little 'bad' and sound like I cross tricking over with parkour. I DON'T. I use the skills learned when tricking with my parkour.
As for Will - I have been under the impression he has been training for quite some time now - ever since I met him in the peaks. I guess, like you say, he is just a machine - an amazing one at that! I will edit my post though ;)
"There are many aspects of tricking that improve my parkour"
I've heard it all before Scottie, you're just full of SHIT like the rest of them!! Haha only joking, mate (well, a bit)
Yeh I know you think that but I would disagree that it's improving your parkour. You could be spending your tricking time doing genuine parkour outside (for free), and you'd get better at parkour.
Which one of these makes sense?
Doing parkour makes you better at parkour
OR
Doing tricking makes you better at parkour
YOU DECIDE!
Peace out bruv. See you soon.
Ben (www.BenNuttall.com)
HAHA.
When you put it like that, it seems hard to come up with a response, but all I can say is I find variation in training very useful and gain experiance from it all. I have spent the last couple of hours traversing scaffolding and small walls in the dark. Just trying to find diferent ways of moving and also to work on my stepping. I would not call this parkour but it is training towards parkour. Tricking to me is only another variation of training. I don't believe anyone can find their own way by going out and drilling parkour movements over, they have to think, experiance and go outside the box to achieve this.
Peace
What you said about scaffolding, that stuff isn't what you'd call parkour by definition, but obviously as you said, it's parkour training. We all train like that when out doing parkour.
If you've got the impression I'm telling you you're doing everything wrong, then you're wrong...lol. I'm not telling you to do it my way, I'm just giving you my opinion and my feelings about how me and my friends train.
Yeh tricking is fun, but in my opinion it does not contribute towards parkour and as a dedicated traceur I tend to spend all my training time doing things I consider useful to parkour in all areas (fitness, movement, conditioning, strength, etc.) such as running, endurance, strength training, etc.
Peace out.
Ben (www.BenNuttall.com)
I can see I'm never going to convince you on this, but can you considder that doing various flips could teach you skills relevent in parkour. Just as another example, I taught myself to jump directly backwards to clear a gap of 6 foot or so a couple of weeks back. The one and only reason I did this was because I knew I had the ability to jump that far it was just about body control and using my experiance to find a suitable technique to make the gap. Something which everyone else failed to do. In the same sense to do any sort of flip you have to find a technique and execute every individual part of it to a degree of accuracy in order to land it.
I wouldn't go to the gym to trick so often if it wasn't so fun or a great way to train indoors, but I also wouldn't care about doing it at all if I did not believe I can benefit from it in terms of progressing my parkour...
Just 'my' way of thinking at this present moment in time mate. I'm sure my views will change rapidly over the next year or so of my training, and to be perfectly honest, I can't wait to see where they ('they' being my views) take me next!
Peace Man
Cool, man. Keep it up, it's good that you're putting so much time into your training.
What were you on about when you said about jumping 6ft backwards??
Peace.
Ben (www.BenNuttall.com)
Good morning,
the effort you're putting in is exceptional compared to the rest of us, and I hope that within the next couple of weeks I can step my training up to something of a similair standard. [Obviously in terms of what I can do. I'm not competing against sets and repetitions.]
Ben, you addressed the fact that you could simply train for parkour, rather than tricking, in order to improve upon parkour.. as valid as that is, and I agree, I do feel the tricking/gym sessions are definitly beneficial. The sessions are a whole different way of training, which helps keep the tedium levels healthy, hahah. Also, tricking uses so many muscles which you wouldnt usually use in parkour... but what if you suddenly NEEDED those muscles.. the ones you never really worked with?
Anyway, I'm not really going to bother pointing out my opinions, as you're both far more advance than myself, but anyway, Keep it up both of you.
Ben Marsh.
I'm really glad you are getting into the conditioning, it shows you are maturing and progressing mentally. As for me and Ben being more advanced than you, in terms of your views on parkour, you are not that far behind at all! As you can probably tell, me and Benhave some like minded views but contradict each other on a regular basis. All I can say is try to keep an open mind - something which I know you struggle to do, gather infomation of the more experianced but don't follow them.
As for the backwards jump - it was just a challenge I set myself to see if I had the mental ability to get out of the habbit of swinging my arms forwards to jump and to come up with a good enough technique to clear at least 6 ft
peace
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