Anton's Parkour Blog

Old friends and new moves

2008-01-18T11:58:00.000Z

Ok , I should have written about this alot earlier than I have but to be honest I just didn't feel up to writting much at all but haveing just experiment with something new i feel like I have to post.

So first of all, this weekend I met up with a whole load of old friends that I haven't seen in quite a while and had quite a good catch up session. I was really glad to jam with Andy again andeven though it wasn't a hardcore session liek we used to have it was just good to jam with someone I haven't seen in over 6 months but used to jam with more often than anyone else.

All in all it was just a bit of a piss about with some cool new things found and new storys exchanged.

Secondly I for the last week and a bit I have been trying some new strength skills that are really coming along quickly:

1. Elbow lever -> handstand
2. One armed elbow lever -> handstand

It's extrodinary how quickly these two skills have progressed, at first I realised that my legs were really vertical on my 2 armed elbow lever and now I'm within a hair's bredth of actually popping a one armed elbow lever to handstand all in about 8 days.

I'm going to try and get some video or pics of it because I'm quite proud of how strong im getting and how fast these techs are coming together

6 Months and you guys haven't improved; what have you guys been doing?

2008-01-06T20:43:00.000Z

So this last few weeks have been quite a change, I quit my job (I can hear a groan from all tax payers already, don't worry i'm on the look out for anouther and i'm not claiming JSA).

Anyway this has freed up a fair amount of time so I have decided to start turning up to weekly jams again, which has been awesome cause Matt and Ben have both been back from their new homes (Prague and scarborough respectively) so it's been really nice training with old friends.

However as with all nice things there is always a grey cloud on the horizon; those people that drove the majority of the comitted traceurs away from training in swindon apart from alone. they were just as annoying as I remember with their terrible self control, attrocious assumptions about parkour and their unbelievable lack of self preservation.

Ben and I were stood in a car park (a new spot that they had found),that just screamed hobo house, we were listening to the vast array of loud noises produced by careless landings, poor running technique and infact poor technique on nearly every front. The major bit of irony was when one of them(whom shall remain nameless at the moment) pointed out that one of the others had not protected his joints by not landing two footed into a cat leap but then proceded to make some of the worst cases of noisy landings I have ever witnessed, however nothing he could have done could possibly prepare me for the amount of noise that anouther one of the members of their group was making! the next statement is as honest as I can possibly make it without video or scientific evidence, the boys landings were so poor that not only could I hear it over the sound of a car passing by right next to me whilst he was at least 3 meters away BUT I could actually feel the floor vibrate everytime he made the same drop which in total was about 2 meters which wasn't just a straight drop but a vault intended to slow him down; needless to say everytime he approached a rail Ben and I tensed up and cringed as he landed, it often makes me wonder what his body will be like when he is 20. It has also evaded me how he could possibly make such a loud noise in a situation that could easily be recreated without so much as a tap when the concrete touched the person's feet; I can only presume that he was landing on his heels first and I know that he did little in the way of bending his knees to absorb any excess energy or shock. all in all this was the worst case of self harm I've ever witnessed.

After seeing how they train and the fact that every movement eventually ends up on camera no matter how un-fluid the motion is or how unimpressive in everyway (both in size and in my opinion more importantly technicality) it is; Ben pointed out to me that it is no surprise that in the 6 months we had been away they had not improved at all. I recognise that in the 6 months that my training has been scarce at best; I have decreased in strength, confidence and technical abilty, but every second I train it comes back very quickly where as these guys who have presumably been out regularly have not improved at all .

I can only put it down to a terrible partnership
A. fair weather traceurship (Never training when it's raining)
B. poor weather

midway through they day the majority of the guys left including the "commited, long term, X-TREME " members of the group leaving Ben and I with 3 other guys one of whom would leave within 10 minutes and one of the others within an extra 15. all because of the weather. what ever happened to training in the snow, ice, wind, rain and all the other things that mother nature could throw at you ?

Given this year the weather has pretty much been the worst on record there is no surprise that they have not improved at all, nor will it be any surprise when I have regained my strength, confidence and technical abilty alot quicker than any of them will be able to imagine and nor will it when I surpass my previous abilitys.

I find myself competing with them alot, which to be honest is a very bad thing! I should be competing with myself not others but I see them doing things that really haven't impressed me for a very long time and then them strutting about and boasting about it and I can't help but feel a need to throw a little something back in their faces, I will use this to my advantage, I will use this small annoyance they create as something to spur me on to TRAIN more NOT to out do them. I will know in myself that I am better than them , just as if ever I met any of my idols (Blaine, Jin, Daniel Illabaca, etc) they would know they are better than I am inside themselves but would use it in a positive way (e.g "well I was at that level once, I'm much better now, if I train hard I'll be anouther step up on the staircase that is parkour")

All in all I've really enjoyed myself recently and it's good that now i'm setting up jams with other friends i've not seen in a while, but I have alot to work towards.
I think tomorrow I am going to set up a list of things that I could do, Things that are now troubling me that I could do before and targets for the end of january (i.e back to my previous ability and then surpass it)

A whole month

2007-11-09T12:19:00.000Z

Wow a Whole month has passed since i last updated this and for that i apologise i really should have posted as I have done quite a bit since then.

Ican't rememebr exactly how many times i've gone out or whats happened but i do know that my training is really falling behind and its really a shame i just dont seem to get any time for training but i do nothing during the days, I really need to change that and fast.

I finished my pull up challenge which was good and i did notice that my climbups were back to the peak i had them at before my accident so thats awesome.

i went out a few weeks ago and my confidence wasnt very high so that needs improving

ive got back into trying to learn how to front flip; in my back garden with a couple of mattresses, im getting pretty close now.

all in all these last few months have been really bad for my parkour and fitness, im going to devote myself now to getting to an all time high, lets consider this a bit of a break and quite frankly i hated, im going to schedule at least 2-3 days a week from now on to train be it with OR without people with me which i think has been one of the hardest obstacles to overcome 2 of my best friends i am basically out of touch with entirely ben, who i havent spoken to since he went to uni and matt who is in prague so i get the odd email or ten minutes on msn with. these two people were the people i trained with the most so losing them has been hard

its also been over 2 years since i started parkour now so thats pretty cool

The end is near

2007-10-09T13:21:00.000+01:00

That's right people, I know it's sad but the end is near for me...... and my 1,000 pull up challenge, sorry that was really poor, I realised very quickly that I would never manage 1,000 pullups by the end of september so I quickly changed my challenge to 1,000 pullups by the end of 30 days (I.E a month)so yeah i'm on day 27 which means 3 more days after today but i'm throwing in as many as I can today because Friday is unlikely to see any pullups what soever as i'm going to the NEC and thursday may only see a few.

one of the main problems I've had is actually getting up and doing them more than once (infact 8 days) I've done absolutely 0 pullups (whoops) so for the whole exercise I've been behind on how many pull ups I should have done, my excuse at first was my finger couldn't cope with the force for all that long but then after that it was pure lazyness; HOWEVER this turns out to be a good thing, it means I've been doing LOADS of pullups in the last few days.

I can't wait to try out some wall climbs and what not soon just to see how much stronger I have become.

Parkour coaching

2007-09-20T10:15:00.000+01:00

This Saturday just gone I woke up at the rediculously late time of 1 o'clock (I had worked the night before so it is justified slightly)I realsied I was late for the parkour coaching thing I had read on the internet so I jogged up to the rec in old town and joined in, a guy called chris who was obviously a very skilled traceur and when he moved made me realise how far from my personal goals I really was; which quite oddly was very comforting and inspiring

Chris taught me and the other kids that were there a vault I had never really seen anyone doing before (step vault) and then a variation of it (reverse step vault) that seemed to work very efficiently, i realise, infact i realised a long time ago, that parkour isn't about this vault or that vault but none the less it's always useful to learn a new way of moving as a bigger variety gives a better chance of moving efficiantly also this reverse sterp vault provides a better alternative to reverse vaults (more control and safer) so I'm definately going to practice this alot and focus on it becoming something im very comfortable with

later on I trained with forest who more than anything clearedf up a few things that I wasn't 100% sure on which is cool.

I really need to train more this lack of training is disgusting but I'm sure every traceur has parts in their lives that get like this.

Ooh god so much to say

2007-09-14T12:09:00.000+01:00

Ok first of all I apologise for the rediculously long time between this post and the last, sorry guys I owe you a video or something.

As you saw in the last post I broke my little finger which prooved alot worse than it could have been and put me out of pretty much everything for about 6-8 weeks, well recently i've been easing myself in to everything again.

Anouther obstacle is that I got a job recently at a local bar so that limited the time I get to train and what not and i'm still trying to work it all back into this tighter schedule

I've lost a little weight since before my accident but this could be down to muscle wasting (however the weight loss makes it seem like i've not changed or perhaps got stronger because my climb ups aren't all that bad. my wrists however are much weeker so I keep having to work on those.

I've decided that a good idea to get myself back to my original fitness level (and then surpass it) is that I take on an ongoing task so i've decided after reading Paul (obsidian)'s blog and then watching his and danny wood's video to lisses (which is awesome) that his pull up challenge could be quite a good one (100,000 pullups on one specific bar) my challenge wont be as big as his as my wrist only really permit me to do about 5 pullups at anytime so would take me forever to make a serious dent in (although the more I do the stronger they'll become and thus the more pullups i'll be able to do at any one time) so at first i'm just goign to o for a measly 1,000 although once i've done these i'll probably say that i'll go to 10,000 and so on I hope to finish this by the end of the month but knowing my luck it'll take much longer!

Thanks to anyone who actually reads my blog and sorry about the wait
Anton

What a weekend!!!

2007-06-17T21:23:00.000+01:00

So this weekend was ..... different. Saturday started really well, finding all sorts of new techniques and movements and then Jack gave me some tips on how to do frontflips and I came extremely close to landing a couple. unfortunately the heavens opened and it pissed it down for the rest of the day so i only really got about an hour and a half of training.

today i met up with luke and after about 3/4 of an hour of playing about in the park behind his house doing a little bit of pk we then moved to farringdon road park where we intended to perfect flips after a quick warm up i psyched myself up and went through a few practice tucks then on my first attempt of the day ran hopped and thats where something went wrong I landed in a heap after hurtling at the floor in a dive posistion and i instantly knew i had dislocated my little finger, 4 hours later i was at home after finding out i have also fractured it.

so this is my first ever proper injury let alone during pk/freerunning not too bad as it's only a minor injury apparently its going to be about 4 weeks till its healed, ahh well at least it's not my right hand im sure i'll fill my time with fitness somehow

monday 4th june and ...... today

2007-06-09T21:02:00.000+01:00

This week I went out twice for training, monday was the first time where I did an hour or so of parkour, I was alone and manged to get over a few of my fears and blocks and whilst out I filmed a load of what I was doing so I got this video put together with alot of which will go into the main video that I am shooting at the moment I've included all of the things that went wrong for me whilst shooting so this isn't a proper video I was just a bit annoyed at the lack of vids I've put on here.

I also went out today down to Lydiard park and did a little bit of tricking with Matt and Luke, it wasn't a serious jam we were actually at a picnic and were just amusing ourselves. I think I've finnaly got to a point where I am confident that the next time I try a butterfly twist I might actually land it, this is because as I tryed the only one I tryed today I kicked, twisted but didn't think I was spinning very much and thought that i had only turned about 10 degrees and that I was going to land on my first side if I carryed on so I stopped spinning, I then fell for ages in which time I could have span quite a bit and landed much further round than I thought I had, this says to me that had I continued I would have landed a nice B-twist so that's definately something I will have to try again soon

I really need to keep up to date with this !!

2007-06-01T10:55:00.000+01:00

So last Friday was my birthday which was extrememly cool, my Dad bought me a home gym which has already seen a good pint or two of my sweat, its pretty nifty, it has all sorts of exercises to do including the use of a pec dec !!

The only real training I've done is on my new home gym and I went out and did hell night this wednesday with Ben and Jack which towards the end of I was feelign very sick which I have attributed to exercising almost immediately after eating, which I will never be doing again.

I didn't do any parkour this weekend because I was at karate camp which was also REALLY cool, two days of lots of exercise and lots of karate with a night of partying and general abuse of the body through drink and burgers, I know it's not good for the body and my parkour to drink but I believe it is necessary to just let ones hair down occasionally and enjoy some of life's less healthy options.

I am not sure how my body is doing at the moment, occasionally I feel alot stronger than I have doen before and then I feel weaker than before, I'm blaming the lack of sleep I have been getting recently for the weekness and perhaps I am just getting stornger then tired and feeling weak.

I also bought some whey protein the otherday after my dad gave me the home gym, I realised that the extra training could result in muscle wasting if I am not getting sufficient nutrition so the extra protien almost seemed like a must and as holland and barrat are haveing a better than half price sale on protein at the moment I snatched it up. I would definately advise it to peopel who are starting to work out more intensely, I got vanilla so I can mix it with stuff and it tastes awesome, also since drinking after intense work out I have noticed I don't experience the DOMS as much even if my warm down is less than it usually is (I am not at all advising not warming down)

thats about all for now, keep training

oooh haven't wrote about last week oops

2007-05-22T08:40:00.000+01:00

Ok first off I apologise for not writing in my blog about last week up until now, i really should have done so I just haven't found the time or inspiration at the moment.

Last wednesday we went out and finally did hell night again it was so awesome to really beast myself with everyone else and I was knackered for about 2 days afterwards, it was only a light session in comparison to the ones we used to do but was still about an hour and a half of pain and suffering.

This weekend I only went out on saturday which was quite a downer really, but recently I have been finding it really hard to be inspired to train hard and regularly I think it's about time I got out and did parkour on my own every now and then.

The good things that happened this weekend though are, I finnaly managed to do anouther muscle up, I believe thats the 3rd I have ever done, although this one was VERY momentum based i got to the point where my fore arms were resting on the bar that I was doing it on and then just swung my legs back and forth and just timed it right, it took about 5 attempts wiht the first 4 ending in me landing on my stomach but not balancing and falling off, but the 5th attempt I didn't really rely on balancing on my stomach at all and just shot up into the muscle up posistion, I know it shouldn't really count as a msucle up because the vast majority of it was just catching my momentum at the right point and using it to my advantage. so I will be trying my hardest to set that right from now on,

The best bit of that muscle up though was how well controlled I managed to descend I must have stretched it out to a good 3 seconds descending time which was quite an achievement.

The last thing that made me quite happy was something odd which I thought up at the wyvern (which seems to be happening alot recently) I approach the obstacle (a wall with a rail on top) as a kong but when planting my hands on the rail I posistion them as I would for a turn vault this allows me to swing round into a catleap. whcih in my opinion looks pretty sex. this thinkinging up new ways to move seems to be happening alot recently to me which I think may be the reason i'm not motivated very much (which doesn't make to much sense) I think it may be i'm bored of the way I move and I want to move differently, the only problem is ...... I don't know how yet.

I think I will try researching this turning kong thing that I am doing as well as watching more vids of people doing muscle ups to see where I am going wrong.

Clearing things up

2007-05-13T11:33:00.000+01:00

This week I went out with the intention of meeting with Matt, Ben, Luke etc and going off with them alone again for proper training but that was quickly stopped because when I got to flemming way they were not there and with the exception of luke none of them turned up at all, so I decided to train with Jack and the others whom I have recently had alot of arguments with over their training and views on parkour.

The other day at college I had a good long chat with Jack about these things that we had been arguing over and we've definately come to an agreement and over the whole day yesterday I mainly trained with him and managed to point out how much the others in the group seem to brown nose him, which intially does seem funny but you can tell gets on his nerves.

we discussed conditioning and I told himn of my plans to restart hell night after it fizzling out ages ago and told him this time round he had to turn up unlike before.

I did some new things yesterday but also found myself getting VERY annoyed at myslef for not being able to do the (very swish if I say so myself) tic tac to lazy at the red brick building so from now on I am going to beast that until I get it again.

One thing that really pissed me off yesterday was that I put my camera on charge the night before so I could go out and film but when I took it out of my bag it wouldn't even turn on, annoyed I put it back declaring I would take it to argos and try and get a replacement today, but then last night I went through the troubleshooting part in the manual and it said that if the power wont come on either the battery isn't in (which it was) or it wasn't charged, perplexed at this because I was sure I had put it on charge the night before I got my charger anyway to charge it up and this is when I found that it wasn't plugged into the socket which was obviously the cause of all this trouble so after charging it, it now works fine.

All in all yesterday had its good points AND bad, I settled things with Jack, my camera wouldnt turn on, I did some new things, I discovered I couldn't do old things, it was warm and sunny, it had periodic HEAVY showers, etc.

I have decided to not go out today because it is worse wheather than yesterday an no matter how much I am up for training in all conditions yesterday was enough rain for one day.

3 quite good days

2007-05-07T20:53:00.000+01:00

So I finnaly got round to typing this up after a couple of weeks of lazing.

Last week I went out and again me and my closer friends decided to go off on our own a bit for better training and I did some pretty cool things, then later joined up with everyone else for jamming where I did something that I have been thinkign about for quite a while which is the reason that I didn't post on here for a while because I really wanted to get it filmed but haven't had the oppertunity yet.

then on the thursday I met up with Matt for a few hours after college for some parkour where I found a new kong-precision which I think if I move a bit could also make for a good kong-cat

then today Matt, Ben and I went over to wesat swindon but because of the poor wheather decided to go climbing first down at the ridge where we climbed for about 3 and 1/2 hours which was KILLER!!! then we went out to the cinema for a small jam but not much got done because we were KNACKERED from the awesome climbing session.

this week I am goign to go out sometime for a jam and get lots filmed hopefully because my girlfriend found my tripod (YAAAY!!!) so I may finally get to film my vid which I promised you all by like january ( I am so sorry :P )

This community supports PARKOUR, not COMPETITION - Run Without Rivals

2007-05-03T19:22:00.000+01:00

The members of this community stand firmly against the idea of organized parkour competition. Our reasons:

1.
We don't believe in elites.
We don't believe in any form of selection among practitioners.
We don't believe in the necessity of any form of hierarchy of performance among practitioners.
We believe to be "the best" doesn't mean anything in parkour, because winning or losing don't mean anything in parkour philosophy.
We do not accept such a drive as part of the parkour philosophy.

Instead, we believe the drive to train should always and only come from within.
We strive to be stronger for ourselves and others, not against people, but with and for others.
Therefore, we reject and disregard any form of rivalry between practitioners.
Instead, we value mutual respect and solidarity in making progress as individuals and as a community.

2.
We believe it stands against the philosophy of parkour to compete to win or earn anything that is not part of parkour values, such as medals, prizes, trophies, money, fame, recognition, or glory.
Same goes about showing off for a crowd.

Instead, we look for priceless and beneficial outcomes to our actions.
We also look for benefits we all can share.
We are givers, not takers.

3. Competition encourages the unready to sacrifice their health for early victories, or to reach a ranking that has no true meaning.
It forces elite competitors to constantly and repeatedly endanger their most precious good, health, because of obsession and obligation of victory, and whatever is at stake as a direct consequence of it, including money, rank or status, pride, and also professional or sponsoring contracts and profitable commercial deals.
It leads competitive practitioners to unbalance their training and focus only on the specific skills needed to win, leading to chronic injuries.
Despite official denials, doping is most of the time involved in every level of competition, that money is involved or not.
We believe the physical consequences of competing at high level goes against the philosophy of parkour which emphasizes on moderation and the necessity of enduring.

Instead, parkour is a humble, patient and lifelong discipline, and the human body requires incremental conditioning to ensure its resistance and longevity.
Moderation is a truly important value of parkour and an indispensable quality in order to preserve oneself and for the body to endure.
Therefore, we reject whatever goes against moderation and that impairs the body.

4. Parkour doesn't belong to corporations, sponsors, medias, and people sitting at home to watch.
We believe we must not accept activities and plans that are abusively called parkour, that misuse its name and hijack its image to draw public and medias attention to something that is NOT parkour, despite the resistance of the majority of the community against such intentions.

Instead, we affirm parkour is a non-competitive discipline that belong to all practitioners, to the local communities, to the teams and friends, and to the human race as a whole.
We believe we must stand together against ambitions that do not reflect the original philosophy of parkour and that are disrespectful to the parkour philosophy and the parkour community.

Competition is not inevitable - it is just another obstacle! Support original parkour, keep our discipline free!

First day back and I F**ked my foot

2007-04-21T20:56:00.000+01:00

So today was the first day of training since the beggining of the easter holidays, I had been talking to Matt about how our training seemed to have disgraced itself and just become *do a few things then move on* instead of properly drilling movements over and over so that muscle memory can take effect.

So today after Matt, Ben, Dan, Luke and I had all turned up and spoken for a second or two, we moved up to the railway village and played on some scaffolding and on a few other things abit which is the site of my first mistake resulting in mass pain, at the railway village there are lots of little flowerbeds which are quite nice for doing diving kongs (except the kurb raises up just where I want to put my feet) I did it once but decided it felt wrong so I went to do it again and as I ran up to it I slipped and instead of crashing into it I continued with vaulting it (my legs were all over the place hehe)and as I landed I fell due to the clip on the kurb, to put it lightly it hurt like buggery and i'm pretty sure I busted a blood vessel of some sort (probably a small cappilary) which after doing I probably should have stopped or at least kept it to the absolute minimum but I didn't (surprise surprise).

Later on in the day we went over to Queen's park and did lots of precisions and Matt and I found an AWESOME running precision, in hindsite I think what we were doing may have been a bit contrary to Blanes legendary "grandad strength" theory but was fun none the less and I don't see either of us doing it for a while again basically it was a gap between two rocks of about 11 foot plus we weren't launching from the edge of the rock and weren't landing at the very edge after a few warm up trys I came very close to the rock and thought the next tiem would definately it, expecting Matt to have a quick warm up go again I thought I was bound to do it next but he just ran at it a flew through the air landing quite a way on to the rock which was a bit off putting as my focus was broken through cheering but luckily I still managed it although that is how I learnt that REALLY hard dirt is nowhere near as hard as rock and I think I may have bruised my heel (yes the same one as I hurt earlier)

so for the rest of the day I was limited to alot of one footed work or using the bad one very lightly, all round it was a brilliant day where I am sure I gained loads from my training.

1.5 Miles in 12.11

2007-04-20T09:54:00.000+01:00

I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned on this Blog or not that I intend on joining the Royal Air force and that to get in you need to pass lots of different tests, one of which is the initial fitness test (there are more fitness tests but this is the first one you do) basically I will have to run 1.5 miles in 12 minutes and 11 seconds or less, now I wasn't sure if I could do this and decided that it's abotu time to start training for it, so I have been taking my girlfriends dog out for walks and just doing 24x100m shuttle runs (1.5 miles = 2.4 km (more or less)) the first time I took the dog out I only managed to get to 1900m but I had done ALOT of exercise by then so I was pretty drained but I went out with it yesterday and we managed to do the whole 2400m, now the only problem I have found is that when doing shuttle runs I am probably taking 2-3 seconds because the dog has to turn aswell so at a minimum I am taking over an extra minuit so I have decided that every Friday from now on I am going to go to the gym just to find out how fast I can run it on a treadmill (which from what I understand is how it is done in testing) Basically the running with the dog is the training and the weekly/fortnightly (depending on how affluent I am feeling) gym visit will be testing (and training but that wont be the focus)

For a short day, today was AWESOME

2007-03-31T21:50:00.000+01:00

After last week which was such a bad day of parkour I decided I wouldn't even write about it here, which was a first since I started this blog, today was so good, I was only out for 4 hours and I wont be able to go out tomorro because I'm off to Switzerland, but today I really got some quality training in, Danny from Reading was down,which is always pleasant and Jack was out for the first week in ages, we went to all the usual spots but just got so many new things burnt into my mind to try for the next few weeks like some really nice precisions and mini* catleaps in Queen's park.

* mini catleaps - an example is catleaping on to a 3 foot rock thats on the floor from anouther rock which is only an inch from floor height, hardly challenging in the way there is basically no danger of falling and that the landing is just off the floor but the jump is a very long one.

I cannot find my tri-pod which is very agravating because I should get back to filming for a video and this will set me back alot!!!

2 days that couldn't have been futher apart

2007-03-18T19:53:00.000Z

This weekend was bizzare, Saturday was shit! I was so uninspired I couldn't get myself to do anything, even though I had the energy to and I wanted to I just couldn't find he inspiration to jump up and throw myself at anything, I'm putting it down to the shin problem I seem to have developed so yeah all in all Saturday was crap for parkour/fitness training

Sunday on the otherhand couldn't have been any different I turned up at Flemming way about half an hour early and waited for people to turn up but.... just like every other sunday nobody else turned up (this is starting to get REALLY annoying) so I phoned matt and asked him wether or not he was coming out, he asked luke if he wanted to which resulted in a maybe, I rang him back back after a short while and asked him whether or not they were coming which ended with a " if we get this sound card to work we are goign to try 300 and if that works your coming to lukes to watch it with us" it worked, I've now seen 300

after watching the 300 we worked out to the point where i couldn't bicep curl like 20 pounds without my arm threatening to kill me whilst I sleep so then we decided to goto the park behind his house and see how our parkour is (basically lets go outside do a bit of parkour and laugh at how pitiful it is due to the working out) and the I tryed something which I have been wanting to do for a long time and finally I have managed to do it, finally after six months if not a year of trying I have finnaly muscle upped

I cannot believe how much it means to me just to be able to one after all this time training, one thing I di dnotice is that the muscle up i did (which was on the cross bar of some swings may have been aided by my feet writhing around and perhaps getting a little bit of extra force from kicking the chains although I doubt it gave me that much of a hand, so i need to start training muscle ups so i can do them anywhere, anytime but for now the glory is a real high !

Second day back and all alone

2007-03-12T12:20:00.000Z

So on sunday I went into town to meet the guys as per usuall but as this annoying trend seems to be going on, nobody was their accept myself. it was a good day none the less especially when i bumped into the group of kids i keep meeting and they told me about a gym they have found over in highworth that only costs £6.50 a day and you can do parkour there.

it was a good day even if it was only about 3 hours of training and my shin was still hurting (its monday now and still hurting, i think i will go on UF and see if its shin splints or something )

my climb ups weren't as good as the day before but that could be a mix of being tired from the day before and over exagerating to myself how good they were, im not sure i think i will go out in a couple of days to see how good they really are

Back from New York back into training

2007-03-12T08:43:00.000Z

After what has seemes an eternity I finnaly got round to doing some parkour this weekend, it would have been alot sooner but things kept creeping up like going to see my mum and going to a small town over in the states known as New York, you may have heard of it,

so at 12.05 Turned up at flemming way for some real training, as it stood there were only the newbie kids there and none of the guys I tend to socialise with whilst out, but shortly after I did a warm up jog with Alex and half way through some stretching Ben arrived, as we were saying our hellos and what not a community support officer walked over to us and asked us what we were doing, we told him we were doing some parkour at which he decided to tell us that we were doing antisocial behaviour! which just puzzled me, how on earth could parkour be anti social? so we asked him he said it was because we could hurt ourselves, how this comes under antisocial behaviour i'm still yet to figure out, he followed this by voicing his assumptions that none of us had first aid training and had no way of getting to the hospital if an accident were to happen, this was rather infuriating as not only does ben drive but has multiple first aid qualifications along with loads of the other guys who do to, how i wish luke had been there with his 1 grade below paramedic qualifications in first aid. the jumped up community support officer decided to disperse us and then tell us we weren't to return for 24 hours!!

the day was awesome though as soon after Andy met us at the wyvern and Ed and George met us as we were being moved on, in the end it was Ben, Andy, George, Ed, and I hanging out and we went to some of the other places we don't usually go,lawns and queen's garden to be exact.

one thing I noticed was that due to all the conditioning I have been doing whilst not doing parkour (100 pull ups a night to be specific) I have been flying up walls and things of that sort and even more noticable was how close I got to doing a muscle up, the only reason I stopped was that the bar was so thin it was starting to cut into my left armpit as I was trying to get my right arm up aswell. This is a significant step for me in my parkour and strength training.

after going to the lawns we stopped by the smile store and had some food and smoothie, then went down to town so Ed and George could get their bus home, from there Andy, Ben and I went over to the Primark car park where the big group of kids I keep bumping into turned up and one of them did a really big dash but the three of us shortly left as big groups like that often attract alot of negative attention.

we then went over to the red brick building where I did a very nice tic tac to cat leap which again my climb up was simple in comparison to my usual standard, we then practiced huge running cats which was entertaining and finished up by doing a couple of diving kongs where I may have damaged my shin which is still bugging me now.

Yesterday at west swindon

2007-02-22T19:58:00.000Z

Yesterday was fitness heaven for me, I woke up at my girlfriend's house and walked for half an hour to get to Daniel's house where shortly afterwards Matt, Luke and then Ben turned up and we walked out to west swindon which took the best part of half an hour.

we had a short break at the pizza hut buffet and got extremely fat, then walked on over to the cinema for some parkour training, it wasn't anything hardcore but was good fun anyway.

At four o'clock I left the guys and walked over to the Link centre to meet my friend Ross and we climbed for abotu an hour and a half after which he dropped me off at home where I popped in for a drink then had anouther 20 minute walk down to Daniel's house again where after some PS2 we walked down to Luke's house where after a while we started working out and had a nice intensive work out with him and Matt (who turned up after us.

all together it was a really good day of lots of different exercises and I had loads of fun

p.s that session with Ross at the climbing wall has really refreshed my love of climbing and I MUST go back

Sunday at west swindon

2007-02-22T12:33:00.000Z

So on Sunday Ben, Luke, Matt, Dan and I went out to west swindon for a little bit of a jam, it was so nice to have a change of scenery for once we only jammed at the cinema and then went to lydiard where we didn't o much at all but then went back to the cinema were some mini chavs decided to bug us for an hour or so, which was rather annoying.

The main thing though was that I had loads of fun and this change of scene probably helped me loads with all the new obsticles to move over, hopefully the next time i go into town I will be able to see a few things a bit differently

A week of parkour

2007-02-17T23:12:00.000Z

Hmm I really should have got round to writing this each day that it happened, but I didn't so I'm going to do so now!

Monday.
Well Brendan made his arrival back to Swindon from up north in Chesterfield this week so we decided we had to welcome him back with a session of parkour.

we met after a day of college so I was in a pair of jeans trying to do parkour, it efinately was not an experience I relished after a good six months of training in jogging bottoms or light flexible trousers the feeling of heavy, baggy jeans was npt nice. But you have to work with what you've got so I trained anyway.

I didn't do anything new or different but I had fun, mainly I think because of the vibe of the day laid back but still some good training.

Thursday.
After mondays session I thought I had agreed with Brendan to meet up and have anouther session so I brought Matt, Jack and Warren with me. We quickly found out that there had been a mix up and we weren't meeting Brendan at all but instead met Alex, Matt's brother, so discovering that Brendan wasn't coming everyone but Alex and I left leaving us to jam together.

thursday was a little better than Monday as there was just Alex and I so alot more opertunitys to do things without having to wait for a while. We mainly jammed the wyvern without moving elsewhere after we got there. midway through the session Alex quickly popped to the library to look for a book so i stayed at the wyvern and now that it had been about an hour I was starting to really do some of the more impressive movements the wyvern has to offer including the run that I enjoy the most, as I was finishing it with a nice roll I heard to girls say "wow" and "what just happened?" I giggled to myself after the second comment and carried on training as I carried on training I realsied the girls ( and the boy they were with) that had said those things earlier had sat up on the benches at the wyvern and had started watching me train and looked away everytime I looked over, it was an odd experience I have been watched doing pk hundreds of times but usually only when in a group this time they were only watching me it was lightly unnerving and a few times I felt like I was going to bail but thankfully didn't.

later that day Andy turned up obviously after college and he strated jamming with us to, this only added to the session (especially when I out konged him) I know that competition isn't a part of parkour but I'm a solid believeer that friendly competition is one of the best ways to improve people's ability. and then I showed Andy the way I had decided may be a good one of a HUGE running precision, he didn't make it but came very, very close and I am sure he will make it soon.

Saturday.
Today was a brilliant day, I've been noticing that my parkour training sessions seem to be getting really good recently and I'm really enjoying them (even more than usual).

Today we went all over the place as per usual and spent a considerable amount of time at the wyvern and today I really made myself proud by finnaly managing to reach up to and pull mysle fup to the third branch at the wyvern tree which has been mocking me for weeks now, ever since Luke did it in the first place, what made it even better was it wasn't a once only time I managed to do it twice today, admittedly though a good few hours between each one, my other noticable achievement is that my kongs have become much longer than they were before. I first noticed this on thursday when I out konged Andy but now I keep finding myself doing it everywhere and not just occasionally, the first time I first saw it on the kong at the wyvern but then noticed I was getting really close to the road at the primark carpark with otu much trying at all, my main question is , is this almost instant improvement in my kong length from a loss in weight, a change in method or something else? from what I can see my technique is exactly the same as it's always been and I don't think I have lost any weight (although I will check tonight)

I got a little bit more filmed today but still not enough in my opinion, I really want to get this filmed and done soon and tomorow i'm going to west swindon for some parkour and hopefully will get a fair amount filmed then.

Worried about the snow

2007-02-10T22:43:00.000Z

Today i woke up and was overwhelmingly relieved that it wasn't snowy and frosty liek ti had been for the last two days. so when i went out today i did actually do quite a few cool things (nothing new just a little smoother) it rained on and off today and i stopped training by 4 o'clock because it started to really piss it down.

it wasnt a very big jam today and to be honest i didn't work particualrly hard but that was for a very good reason, tomoro was meant to be a HUGE jam in reading but thats now been cancelled; but the point is i was goign to take it easy today so i could get LOADS done tomoro in reading , ahh well I'll just haver to work hard tomoro in swindon.

Big jam and new friends

2007-02-04T10:26:00.000Z

So yesterday I turned up at flemming about 5 minutes late, and to my surprise i saw only 2 people; Danny from silent motion and a much taller older man I assumed it was someone else from silent motion, I was wrong it was Mark a guy i had been chatting to on the urbanfreeflow forums for a while, still abit shocked from the lack of people i started to phone andy and jack to see where they were and incoruaging them to come out.

after a light warm up a few other peopel started to arrive so we got round to training and all together, yesterday was a REALLY good day i didn't do anything all that great, nothing new , nothing that I couldn't already do quite competantly but I feel that I really improved yesterday and the atmosphere was pretty damn good aswell.

I think the only down side to yesterday was the absence of alot of people (Ben, Matt, Luke) that and the usual annoyance of how the Swindon parkour scene is one quater parkour three quaters social gathering, at one point yesterday it was only Mark, Danny , Andy and I that were doing anything parkour related whilst everyone else was sat around smoking, eating , listening to music and chatting; it really hurts to know what used to be a rich parkour scene where the only problem was having to wait your turn to do stuff because there were so many people has now turned into a youth club.Don't get me wrong alot of the peopel who sit around do parkour and at points in the day it is a bit hectic trying to not run into people because there are so many of them but by the time 2 o'clock arrives 90% are sat down smoking.

Finally some training

2007-02-01T20:33:00.000Z

Ok so after something like 12 days I finally got to do some parkour training;I feel alot calmer for it , I'm not so figetty and I'm alot more relaxed

I didnt get anything filmed or photographed but hey it was only a few hours and not that hard a training session

FINALLY I TRAINED !!

The closest I've been to doing parkour this week

2007-01-30T09:31:00.000Z

so I didn't manage to go out last sunday cause my stomach decided it hated me, I couldn't go out this weekend because I was busy doing all sorts so this picture is the very closest I've been to doing parkour this week

It was drawn by my good friend Daniel Lee, he's recently taken up parkour which is always good to hear, And he's been drawing for as long as I can rememeber and I've known him since we were about 5.

It's actually sickening how good a an artist he is, recently he's been doing lots of these little charactuers of his friends and i saw him drawing this. the original sketch took all of 3 minutes then later that day he inked it and then photoshopped the colour in

so yeah nice work Dan

Pretty shitty day

2007-01-20T19:23:00.000Z

Today I was hoping for an awesome day with lots of filming and lots of Parkour but almost the complete oposite happened I forgot to take my camera and we got nothing filmed on Andy's camera. not only that we broke of into smaller groups and moral just plummeted so I started to just not perform all that well either in training. I was hindered alot by injury I sustained the otherday after not checking the stability of a bar and landing like a complete tit. all together I am in a really shitty mood about today so tomoro I'm going to tear Swindon up and get everything I want to get filmed done and dusted

One thing I have noticed is that even though I dislike alot of them (especially the ones that claim to do parkour but turn up solely for social reasons and just sit about) I work alot harder when around the noobs than when I branch off with just Andy and a couple of other, probably for a couple of reasons 1. the atmosphere of lots of people doing parkour is pretty killer 2. I don't want to look like one of the kids that just sit and loiter so work 100 times harder, maybe it's time to suck up some pride and just ignore them and hang about with them and work hard opposed to having peace but not working to well

Lots of new things today

2007-01-13T19:57:00.000Z

Today was an AWESOME day for parkour training! I progresed more today than I have done for a long time, adding a few new swish ways to pass through some enviroments and have really improved some technique on some other things that have been a bit sloppy for a while now.

Jen, Andy's friend from cirencester came down again to take some more photographs for her photography project so that was pretty nice getting some photos of me taken, I also filmed alot of cool stuff for my video but I definately did not get enough filmed for my liking. and a couple of things I need to re-film.

then to top the day off just as i'm waving at Andy as he's getting on the bus I noticed a few kids doing a few things that looked a little like parkour, so I decided to carry on training for a little longer and started talking to them about it, it turns out that they have only been training for a little while, some had only started today, so I showed them a few little things and had a few good little conversations with them about parkour. I think they seemed interested in meeting up with us at the weekends so that will be cool.

hmmmm I think I may treat you too anouther little sneek peek at what may end up in the video.

yeah bit of scaffolding fun! I did manage to get it a bit tidyer but when I filmed it my camera had a bit of an eppy. filming was done by Andy so the shakey camera award goes to him (worst bit is I had my tripod with me but he neglected to use it:P )

Parkour for lunch again

2007-01-11T22:10:00.000Z

So againb after college today Ben, Matt and I went into town and did about an hour of parkour training. It wasn't anything hardcore or anything but was a nice change to just coming home and sitting infront of the tv

we had a bit of a challenge between us,to see if we could jump up 6 steps of the ten set from standing it wasn't anything serious just a light hearted change in training, it didnt seem like much at first but after the 40th jump or you realise how much your working your quads

I didn't do any filming at all today I'm going to get as much as possible film on saturday and sunday though with any luck I should be editting it by sunday evening

Parkour for lunch

2007-01-10T11:25:00.000Z

So yesterday after my two hours of college i went down town with Matt, Ben and Daniel (who is due to start training for parkour this weekend) for a light lunch of parkour training. We spent the majority of the time up at the wyvern and we only really trained for an hour and a bit, I got a little bit filmed for my video although I'm going to get the majority of the fopotage for it this Saturday assuming the weatehr is good for it.

For the last couple of weeks I have taken up doing the 100 challenge which is basically picking an exercise (or more if you so desire) and within that day doing 100 of them, assuming you choose a good time to start it's not that difficult although is still rewarding; the problem I encounter most though is realising I only have 30 minutes before I'm intent on going to bed and haven'e done any at all.

I'm definately noticing improvements after only a couple of weeks but I think I will stop doing it on friday evenings so I am at full performance for parkour training on the weekends especially if I am intending on filming.

Hell night number 2

2007-01-07T22:08:00.000Z

So today I went out for Hell night number 2 and was shocked by the small turn out , there were only 3 of us. We did nearly all of the exercises that we did last time but missed a couple but I added a few more instead so a beast fo day was still had.

Afterwards we did a small bit of parkour (which is proof that it probably wasn't hard enough) and I managed to do a few pretty cool movements and not to mention a few really nice bails,now don't wet yourselves or anything but here goes for the first video of my blog (well past it's due date) infact I think I may even put up two !!

this is a kong precision I managed to do after hell night filming was done by Matt Hall so he can be blamed for any shakey camera

and here as I'm sure you can tell is me bailing spectacularly (that being said I've had more spectacular bails) again filming was done by Matt Hall and so was the monkey comment :p

Rainy days not good for vids!

2007-01-06T22:20:00.000Z

So today I was heavily considering not going out as it was pissing it down! But after seeing that the post woman had tried to post my new UF hoodie I decided to go anyway, I knew that Jarrad was coming down and he was bringing some people from Weston so that only encouraged me even more. When I arrived I was surprised to see mark there and Jack who seemed to be less than willing to come out. we went to the wyvern almost straight away and jammed for a while then the two guys from weston , Jarrad and I went over to the council buildings briefly then went to Primark carpark for some training in the dry.

Admittedly today wasn't brilliant for parkour training and was even worse for the video i wanted to film I managed to film a whole NOTHING tomorow however I shall film lots hopefully

3rd time lucky

2007-01-02T21:44:00.000Z

As it's the last day of the holidays I decided that today come rain or shine I was going to get a good days training in. So Last night I organised with Tom from Malmsbury to jam today, it was a really good day once i managed to get there

As I left for town i jumped the gate for the Outlet village carpark and as I landed in a pk slap my jogging bottoms tore right along the crotch so I had to buy a new pair of trousers (after 2 more attempts to leave but hindered by repeated forgetting things on my part)

I tryed some really cool things today including a huge dash at Angelos which thinking back to it is quite a wonder how I didn't really hurt my ankle more than a light strain on the second attempt at it (I think I may let that be my last attempt at it for a little while)

I practiced handstands a bit today which is quite different for me really I would really like to be able to increase my hand stand time to at least 30 seconds or so before the end of the month

New year, New obstacles

2007-01-01T13:10:00.000Z

Last night for new years eve my dad and I went down to Looe in Cornwall as per usual due to the awesome party in the streets every year,its actually voted second best place in britain to be for new years eve,

so before going into the pubs for some drinks,it was about 4.30 i went down to the beach with my dad and started playing about on the sea defences, huge big step like structures of all different levels ,widths and lengths , soon enough I'm doing all sorts of different parkour movements (precisions, kongs, lazys, cat leaps ) My dad did film me doing a run or two but it was too dark to see anything good and his camera on his phone isn't the best

It wasn't long but was a pleasant change to walking in the rain

Bristol People down

2006-12-30T22:57:00.000Z

Wow today was awesome! I was expecting an ordinary day of pk perhaps even a bit of a sucky day due to bad weather but when I turned up I was shocked to say the very least to see so many people. At first I though it may just be lots of new kids but then realised they were alot better than any one from swindon let alone your run of the mill noobs

It happened to be the Bristol lot and a few others it was pretty hectic today; at maximum there was at least 30+ traceurs and then the usual tag alongs.

To put it lightly us swindon guys have been put to shame with our parkour abilities but hey I'm not bothered especially as Mitzey and Jarrad have both said they will be coming back again soon so will definately have some very skilled traceurs to learn a little from

so yeah much thanks and what not to the guys from Bristol especially Jarrad and Mitzey who I spent most of the day with.

hell night .... well midday

2006-12-24T21:13:00.000Z

Ok again this is a bit late due to PC dificulties, yesterday I went to town with Matt and met up with Luke, Shaun, Dave, Josh, Dan and Brendan whom is down for a while ,which is nice as we all miss him (although we would never tell him :P )

So yeah because Brendan was down for the week we decided we should go ahead with the hell night , although it was midday.

Things I have learnt from hell day

In the cold things are 200% harder so take into account for that especially if I KNOW it will be could
cat posistion shuffles aren't as easy as i assumed once you get past a certain distance :P
the hell night plan i made wasn't tiring enough allthough we did miss out the press up stance thing mainly cause this was the first week and was more of a tester than anything else
one day of PK11 then one day of iron maiden then the 3rd day being hell night can make exercise alot harder :P
hell night is FUN

will definately have to do it again as it was so much fun and al in all only one injurie was sustained from the 7 of us which was me and due to rushing something I should have definately taken my time over and knew I should , luckily though it was only a very minor injurie (cut thumb) it was just it wouldn't stop bleeding due to heightend heart rate

PK11

2006-12-24T21:05:00.000Z

Ok this is a bit late but that's because I've been having some pc dificulties, so on thursday 21st i woke up at 4 o'clock in the morning and left my house at half past to goto London for UrbanFreeflow's PK11.

It was really foggy and as I was walking along station road to meet Andy I could barely see 100 yards ahead of me !

when the bus finnaly set off it took three takes to get past the magic round about because the luggage compartment on the side opened and some guy's lugauge went missing whilst driving so we kept having to go back to the bus depo

when we fiunnaly got there we met up with a few people at the victoria station and went on the tube to pk11

it was a really great day I had LOADS of fun but the only downer was missing our coach home and having to buy tickets for anouther i still ache a bit from the warm up and down by Forest and Dan which were both KILLER

I definately want to goto PK12 and any other pk events set up not just for the amazing fun doing parkour but meeting new friends,meeting up with old friends and seeing some amazing traceurs

Swindon Hell Nights

2006-12-19T16:56:00.000Z

Ok before I go any further your going to need to goto http://www.blane-parkour.blogspot.com/ and read up on what a hell night is, Done? good ok so I have taken his advise on setting up my own equivilent here in swindon I've asked a couple of people to see if they're up for it and they seem to be so thats ok (I probably would have done at least a few weeks on my own even if they weren't up for it)

this is only really a first draft , I have editted it once already but it's likely to be editted at least once or twice more, I'm also sticking with the idea of making it harder each week so it will be editted each week anyway

here goes then:
warm up

Start at flemming way as usual and do a whole lap of the walk-in centre jogging until back at the flower bed Exercising arms as jogging.

get a good stretching session in as it is going to be vital for the evening

then everyone does 10 shuttles from the flower bed to the white wood that pokes out and back

Then some more stretching

warm up (and easy bit) over

flemmingway

Everyone jog down to the sticking out white bit and one by one get into cat posistion and start shuffling along the wall until getting to the vaulting wall is (whilst waiting for your turn or people to finish after you stay down in pressup posistion for constant exercising)

Then everyone on to the vaulting wall and into cat posistion(tallest at higher points shortest at lower bits ) everyone does 5 get ups from cat posisiton (muscle up stance) and back again stay in muscle up stance until everyone is finished

then every one does 20 weightless squats

jog to the shop mobility

Shop mobility

when at shop mobitlity one after anouther try and get all the way along the walls making NO sound at all (there is a gap for cars to get through at one point so get down from wall and run to next bit ) if done properly with no sound this should be quite difficult and take quite a while

wyvern (back of)

Just past the railings get into cat posistion and shuffle along until you get to the gap then climb up and cat walk up to the top of the wyvern whilst waiting get into press up stance

when everyone is finished go round the front and on all fours go down the huge steps and back up again face down both ways

then to the tree in the corner of the wyvern jump and grab branch then reach up for branch above and climb up to that using only arms then back again repeat til 5 are done then next person everyone else press up stance

the one at a time on the rail (or a wall if you have awful balance) we will do 5 pistols on each leg(one legged squats)

one after anouther grab railing by vaulting block down by tree and get into muscle up stance so feet are off floor and shuffle all the way along until back round by steps on the other side (will have to over come the tree somehow :P )

after all this upper body some cv and leg training is in order so everyone to the bottom of the grass hil and run up the closest side along the wall all the way to the perminent gazebo bit and down again do this cycle 3 times

now our legs arent feeling left out any more time for a nice jog down to primark car park round to where the kong to cat is

the idea is to get into the car park and up to the top quickly and silently but to add in some more difficulty lets say as little touching the floor as possible

top of primark car park

goto the lamp post and climb up it and touch the primark roof the come back down whilst waiting everyone else is in pressup stance

now we have touched the highest point we are likely to get on hell night (unless i add in anything on debenhams car park but i doubt we will go there for week one)

so we need to get down some how ... we are going to use the white steps which we all know so well and love but instead we wont be using the steps just the rails (the floor is lava) until we get to where the buses are

now anouther quick jog just to keep those legs awake as we dont seem to be doing much for them

house of frasier

muscle up stance on the lowest bit of the disabled ramp and shuffle up to the top of it (not to much of an incline but its one hell of a way after all this exercise)

now inside (oooh nice and warm) we are going to run up all the steps and out on to the roof (ooh this may be higher than the primark car park ... ok i lied earlyer)

run across the car park and down the other stairs

back round to near the rails but this time over by where the skaters go there is a fire exit climb up that then down the stairs whilst waiting for your turn or people to finish get into pressups stance

round to the wood chipped bit

one at a time find a branch to hold on get in to pull up posisition

pull legs to 90 degree posistion and do 10 pull ups whilst legs are at 90 degrees pressup posistion whilst waiting for everyone

raise legs up to 90 degrees and back to hanging again slowly and controlled using abs not momentum 10 times

As I said earlyer this is subject to change and I am willing to bet it does soon, I will edit it on here rather than make a new post so if it looks different; no your not going crazy

oooh I cannot believe i haven't said yet 2 days till pk11 !!!!!!!! yeah I'm pretty hyped about that

this means I will have quite a pack week
tomorro I'm going to walk through the hell night routine to see if its possible :P , then thursday i will be at pk11, the Friday I will be seeing Iron Maiden , then saturday Brendan is coming down and we are going to DO the hell night then sunday is christmas eve which is likely to have at least a little parkour in

Not long left

2006-12-16T18:41:00.000Z

So for the first saturday in about a month I went out today, it wasn't a huge jam but it wasn't small at all. We went to the civic offices almost straight away which was very fun but today I mainly seemed to be doing conditioning exercises due to my dodgy ankle.

Pk11 isn't far away now only 5 days left, I'm really looking forward to it not only will it be the first time I've been to a jam in a gym not to mention one of this size! I'm REALLY hoping I'm at peak condition by then.

REALLY taking the mickey !!

2006-12-15T00:13:00.000Z

I've notcied that in the last 6 months or so I seem to get an injury then just as it's starting to heal and go away anouther jumps up and bites me !! the latest sounds like it could be a "2nd degree ankle strain" and is proving to be a pain in the ass.

I am really hoping that this will be gone by the weekend ,let alone by pk11 which whilst we are on the topic is only a week away and I am really buzzing about it.

I really want to go out this weekend but with the ankle pains I'm not sure I'll be able to .

Bloody rain

2006-12-10T21:57:00.000Z

Ok so i'm not one for giving up on training because of the weather but today was a mickey take !

Last night whilst out on the town Ben and Matt told me that the parkour jam that day had been awesome and I had missed out on loads which immediately made me determined to go out today and train my ass off; so I organised a jam for today in the vein hope it may be dry again and be good.

But of course as soon as I got there it started raining and it turned out that only Shaun, Ben and I were the only ones willing to come out in the cold for training .

It was a very good day of training we went to the civic offices but went to a different bit than Andy and I found and it was really fun but eventually after about 3 hours off good training and an injury to my ankle I had to give up and leave.

I have decided that this enough time spent not jamming and I need to get out on saturdays again 2 weeks in a row I miss saturday jams and 2 weeks in a row when I go out for sunday training it pisses it down i'm also upping the amount i'm going to train and conditioning so i'm nice and fit for PK11.

Hmm I really need to start putting some pictures up on here, will take at least one or make a video the next time i do something training or parkour related.

Cold air makes me tired

2006-12-08T15:45:00.000Z

So today I decided because I didn't have college today I should really get off my ass and go do some parkour ; especially as I won't be able to go out tomoro as I usually do.

So I left my house at just gone 20 past 12 and went straight to the carpark behind what used to be primark, where I was surprised to meet a couple of kids that I have seen training around town before doing a few kongs, I asked if they minded me jamming with them for a while which was pretty cool because I was alot more confident than I usually am and actually tried the kong to cat there which has been bugging me although I didn't manage to do it fully; it definatly boosted my confidence. Shortly afterwards they decided to leave and because I wasn't really in the mood for training with people a fair bit younger than me i decided to stay which to be honest I preferred as I was really in the mood for homing some skills a bit better alone rather than teaching people whom don't see parkour as a discipline but just as a laugh and something cool for the time being.

After training at primark for a little while longer I decided that it was time to move on as I wasn't progressing at all with the movement and I am probably best leaving it so my head can sort it out.

I then moved on up to the wyvern where I trained for quite a while on just alot of basic things that i can do there but just need regular practice to keep them nice and clean, after a while I realised there was a group of about 3 drunks up in one of the corners imitating me so to avoid any confrontation I ignored them briefly whilst finishing off the few movements that I had left that I had promised myself I would practice and left to go get my lunch.

After lunch I moved up to Angelo's to practice precisions which in my view mine have become very sloppy and have decreased in length recently which I am far from happy about, I suceeded in doing the longest decending precison which had been bothering me for some time now although I knew I could do it which was a real bit of salt in a wound, so I made sure I did it 6 times just so I am 100% about it and moved on as crowds of people where moving past and were quite a distraction.

From there I went to flemming way which had a similar problem with crowds so I left shortly after arriving and went back to the wyvern where I started training some real upperbody and arm strength which quickly drained me of all my energy, all this cold air and working harder than usual really took it out of me so after beasting myself I was forced to walk to anouther few hotspots determined to do something else but I couldn't actually bring up enough energy to do anything so was forced to go home.

All in all i spent about 3 hours out but the main killer of energy was an exercise I read in an article by rip on www.teamtraceur.com the basic idea is to find a tree with a few branches above one anouther ( I only had two branches ) and to climb up them using only your arms I did it at least 5 times in a row and that mixed with all the cold air took it out of me entirely. It's a good exercise and I shall be doing it at every oppertunity from now on I think.

Parkour interview

2006-12-06T11:54:00.000Z

So i was talking to my friend Andy (read his blog www.andycamdenparkour.blogspot.com) and he told me that he recieved an email from a woman from www.swindonweb.com who wants to do a interview with us guys from swindon parkour and shoot some video and get some photos , i'm really excited about this as this'll be the first bit of publicity swindon parkour has ever recieved . I just hope that they won't twist our words to make parkour out to be about jumping off of roofs and the like ; although if they are intent on shooting video then it's probably very unlikely they will do so

hopefully more to follow

Introductions and ankle pains?

2006-12-03T20:20:00.000Z

So I'm Anton Sieluzycki (s-mi-th) , I'm 18 and into Parkour and martial arts but intend to join the R.A.F after this year of college.

Anyways thats enough of the formalitys back on topic.

Parkour - Parkour is an art to help you pass any obstacle; to go from point A to point B using only the possibilities of the human body

I first found out about parkour when i saw a documentary called Jump London which featured a small group of Traceurs (practitioners of parkour) from the birth place of parkour, lisses, venturing to london to test their skill against some of london's most iconic buildings, I was amased for the first time I had seen something so incredible that coincidently I had been doing in a much smaller , less impressive way for the whole of my life whilst bored or trying to get around something that was in my way , for the next few months every now and then I would find myself jumping around alot more but still never taking it as seriously as I would have liked and the fact I had no friends that I thought were that interested I quickly forgot about it and gave up on the idea .

A year later a second documentary from the same director starring two of the same traceurs along with a group of English traceurs this documentary was called Jump Britain and at the end of this documentary it mentioned the website of the English traceurs www.urbanfreeflow.com
as soon as the program had ended I was on the pc and onto the website , I found myself even more astounded by all the videos and photos , later I went on the forum but decided not to join but instead just read what people had to say.

After about 6 months I joined the forum and wrote a bit about Swindon's hotspots that I knew of almost straight away I got a message from a guy saying that he was from Swindon too and jammed with a few of his friends , I was stunned finally I could meet people that did parkour to and that didnt live miles away but wait what if it's one of those internet pheadophiles I thought to myself all sorts of horrible thoughts went through my mind so i put off from meeting them.

A few weeks later I went to college for my second year and in physics there was a boy that sat on the table next to the tables I sat on called mark, every now and then he wore a white tshirt with the letters eFas written in pen on the back, this was the name these people went under eFas crew I wanted to ask him whether he was into parkour or not but didn't want to look like an idiot if I was wrong so decided not to so whilst chatting to them on the 'net I dropped hints that I may know one of them and eventually I was pretty sure he was one of them so decided to arrange a date to meet them.

So on the 8th of october 2005 I met with Jack , Andy , Shaun , Mark, Brendan and some other guy who i've never met since and it rocked since then we've trained together loads and become great friends i've also managed to rope in a few of my other friends into parkour.

Shortly after meeting a few other people who were into parkour we decided that a split between eFas crew and others was a bit crap so we decided to form a different group S.P.R or Swindon parkour reveloution but most of us just say Swindon parkour

Swindon parkour now has roughly 20 regularly training members with a few others that don't train very much, Not all the members live in Swindon 5 live in and around Malmsbury and one member lives in Chesterfield (although he used to live here) , with experience from a few weeks to nearly 1 and a half years,

I am one of the more experienced memebers and one that trains more often and regualarly than others.

So now your up to date with Swindon parkour.

So today I went out it was wet from a massive storm last night, the jam was only Matt, Luke, Andy, begginer Ben and I, it spitted on and off all day and I did alot of alright stuff although for some reason my left ankle started to hurt excuritaingly on the left side of it so I had to go a bit easy on it after a while but t'was all good fun, although I did only manage to get about 3 and half hours of training which really isn't long enough for me, but I blame the ankle for that and not a lack of effort, ok this post wasn't very good for a review of my parkour but that's because of that monster I just had to write about the history of Swindon parkour. There will be photos and videos later on and much better reviews but hey not for now.