Knee Problems?

Training has been a little slow of late and although I am very happy with some aspects, I have been unable to put my all in recently.

I haven’t got close to completing my daily conditioning recently and this is predominately due to a shitty cold I have had for the last week or so. Apart from the runny nose, cough, sore throat etc I have been feeling really lethargic and have been lacking a little energy when training. That isn’t the problem though. The problem comes after the day’s training, I can’t stay up long enough to do any serious conditioning and I can barely get up the next day. I find myself spending pretty much every other day resting and I’m not liking it one bit.

However, this will pass shortly and I’m feeling much better today, even though I did a lot in Horbury and Wakefield yesterday. My main concern lies within my knee, I have been feeling a slight pain for a few days now. I have had lots of different pains on and around my knees before but never one from inside it and it worries me a lot! I am going to try and keep away from ANY sort of heavy landings for a few days and see if the pain persists, but at the moment it is even hurting to simply squat down on the balls of my feet, not badly, but there is definitely pain there. I will keep you updated on how this plays out.

As I said I did lots of training in Horbury and Wakefield yesterday. It was good to get back to Horbury and great to see Mart and Theo again! I have progress loads since I was last there when it was dry and it was a great feeling to be able to do a lot of movements I was previously unable to even attempt. I also loved the now named ‘Horbury Tree’, a large tree which fell over some time ago but carried on growing. It has limitless possibilities and is a great test of power, accuracy, balance and confidence.

Me, Dan, Jamie, Alex and Ben spent a good deal of time there before heading back to Wakefield where we did a bit more training before heading to Ben’s house when Jamie went home. We had a bit of food and met up with Joe before going out and doing a little more training. I did a few decent sides (they are coming along nicely) and Joe did some crazy ones before it rained so we just ended up on a few roof tops having a bit of fun. Alex managed to do a couple of tiny gaps he was shit scared of. Sometimes I forget how inexperienced he is, he has the ability of someone who has been training much longer but when it comes down to faith in his own ability he is still very much a noob. He will have to work on things like that a little. We had some more food at Ben’s before watching a few videos including a preview of this years ‘May Vid’ (We wanted to make a sequel to last years as it was so good -- to be released in June) which is looking immense I have to say, before going to sleep. Me Ben and Alex did a tiny bit of training today but we were all far too tired from yesterday to do much. Alex especially seemed to be quite the tired boy.

Me, Ben and Liam went to Sheffield on Saturday, where we met up with a very excitable Alex and some of the SPK lads along with a few of the newer guys. It was drizzly and damp all day and this meant the training was slow but I never stopped for too long and when it did dry up I got some good movements nailed. Will impressed me loads that day as he is in fact an ox-man (very strong)! I immediately respect anyone stronger than me, but as the day went on I found myself spending more and more time with the guy and having some good ‘parkour chat’ and getting along well with him. However with the exception of Will non of the other Sheff guys there even came close to impressing me and again with the exception of Will non of them could train seriously. I thought our group in Leeds was still playing catch up with other groups around the country in terms of commitment as we were the last time we visited anywhere major, but going on the evidence from Sat we are far more committed than most. It is very pleasing to know how far we have come as a group and how good we train compared to some.

One thing that stuck in my head was when we found a place to do some pull ups on – you had to grip the end of two thin vertical bars and it was rather difficult. Out of everyone there, there were 4 of us who attempted to do some, Ben, who couldn’t grip it long enough to do one (bless him), Alex got 4, I did 10 before giving up (though I wish I hadn’t in hindsight as I had at least another couple in me) and Will kicked our arses with 15. But the thing is out of the people there us ‘Leeds guys’ were by far a minority and yet 3/4 of the guys who tried the pull ups, train in Leeds. I remember ‘Small Fat Danny’ actually running away and hiding when I asked him to do pull ups – that was before he saw what we were doing them on!

A point came up in Horbury when I jumped off about 8 feet into a roll: I was saying that because jumping of high things has been labelled as such a bad or noobish thing to do that even some of the more experienced traceurs don’t train anything towards doing them. Yet you watch any French traceur and that is what they do a lot of the time. I was saying that if it is done correctly with a roll then there is very little load going into your knees, I then got down from the roof with a good jump and roll and then by hanging slightly and dropping and I found that the jump with the roll was far easier on my knees and I felt far less shock. This was enough evidence for me to support my theory yet Ben was still very sceptical. I hate this position the British scene has got itself into, we have rebelled so much against things like this that we are missing out on so much of what the movement of parkour is about. It is a very ‘raw parkour thing’ to jump/vault off something high. I am not nearly saying this is for everyone nor am I saying you should jump off higher and higher things, I am saying that some of the more experienced guys lack the ability to land from a relatively high jump and for little reasoning.

Peace people