Seems Ironic Though

I was planning on going to the gym yesterday (Tuesday) but because the weather was so nice I couldn't pass up the chance to do some outdoor training. So, although I had changed into my gym kit I changed back out of them and into some scruffs as I headed up to a sand quarry with my dog about 2/3 of a mile away from my house to do some tricking - something I have neglected of late. The place used to be really cool with a sandhill that was so old it had gone hard on top, and with a little disturbance you could get the sides of it to be really soft, resulting in some serious fun. I used to piss about there all the time with mates like 4/5 years ago and we used to do all sorts of backflips and summies down the hill - I used to able to do 540 backs with a drop of 8 feet to land facing down the hill, to then roll nicely and end up on my feet. I have no idea what my technique was like back then but no matter how sketchy I can't do that into a foam pit now :/
Seems ironic though,that I'm back in the same place doing the same stuff years later.

The sand forming the hill finally got used though and all the others are too soft on top to do much off :( so I don't use the area for training much these days. I did however find a nice new little spot for tricking yesterday. It had a hard run up to a little raised take off and soft'ish' sand to land on 5 feet below. The only problems with it were I could only get a 4 step run up and had to clear 2-3 feet of rubble to land on the sand. I started by drilling a few summies - trying different things - different tucks, different take off etc, and then moved onto trying sideflips and double legs. I hadn't done these in months and only ever done a handful outside the gym, so they were rather scary but I tried to get my old 'noobish' mentality back - before I had all the experiance of everything that could go wrong - and thought to myself if all the noobs can land these things then so can I. With witch I attempted a sideflip of a split footed take off and landed it with ease :)
-I tell a lie, I did half a dosen side flips and double legs on Ed's trampoline on sunday :P - but hardly worth shouting about.

I spent the next hour or so improving upon sideflips and double legs and variations of, getting more height and power into them, then going for distance, then a tight tuck with an early untuck etc. I found them really easy and soon picked up confidense with them, although after a while I started to lean back with sideflips and falling back on landings. I tried to correct but instead found myself going into more of a double leg movement and landing facing backwards, and no matter what I tried I couldn't correct it - I could land a sideflip but I would still be on the verge of falling backwards :\

The session went well and with the exception of one over rotated summie I didn't bail badly with any of the flips. On my way back through the quarry the workers had gone home so I was free to check out the machinery and things. The machinery looked crap and was covered in shit but there was a couple of containers and a building resembling a electricity sub-station with a wall next to it that provided a couple of oppotunities for arm jumps and precisions. Nothing too challenging, a 9 foot arm jump from a container to the building and precision/jump back and some arm jump/wall pass variations from the 2.5 foot high wall onto the building with a precision back to the wall. I quickly and confidently did everything first time everytime and realized that everything was all well within my comfort boundary and that 6 months ago I wouldn't have even attempted most of it :D

Today I woke up and managed to strain my shoulder slightly within 5 minutes of doing so by doing some handstands - I thought it would be a challenge to do them so early on a morning :|
It was ok though and after college I spent 90 mins in the gym doing loads on my pectoral's and abdominals and did a few climbups on my favourite bus stop - finding doing 'two handed' ones very easy to execute now - such an improvement on 2 weeks ago!

Peace Y'all