04

(solo)

Yesterday John and I trained for about an hour in about 16 square metres of space. We had two rails, a low garden wall and a light post to play with. It was strange to think that a couple of years ago, when I started training, I would have had no idea what to do with this space. I'd probably drill a few monkey vaults, see how far I could precision from the pavement to the garden edge, get bored and move on.
Now I am at the point where even the smallest, most featureless spaces begin to look like superb training locations.

I guess this says a lot about my approach to Parkour. I am drawn very much to the technical, the micro level, the flow that occurs not only in the linking of several movements, but in each part of every movement that goes into that flow. So I am quite happy just playing with a couple of rails, expanding the space within their bounds, filling it with the myriad possibilities of movement... this foot here, hand grips this way, leg traces this arc, momentum kicks in, weight re-distributes, rotate through shoulder, lead with the head... Even though I learned the turn vault a long time ago, it is the small spaces, the tight focus, that makes me learn even more about it.

Today, I trained solo.
Just near London Bridge station I found a quiet, spacious courtyard area. Paved, bricked, broken glassed and malodorous. Perfect. All mine for the next 2 hours.

I used an extended quadrupedal warmup to check and clear the main area of debris then moved on to the drills. I started with climbups - moving from a dead hang to a kick up and then springing up onto the wall. Next was lazy vaults - continuous vaults figure-eighting between two adjacent walls. Then pop-vault to dash combinations - once again continuous - running between two adjacent blocks. All bi-lateral, of course. :) Comfortably exhausted, I moved into circuit mode. Finding a nice path that included a decent change in altitude, cat-pass, precision, turn vault, lazy, arm jump and some running, I focused on foot placement and economy of movement. I finished with a few technical problems: a (wobbly) rail precision to arm jump/climb up, and a split level cat-pass to wall pop. Then a 3min 44sec plank hold (Angus and Julia Stone's "Mango Tree"), a thorough stretch and an almond croissant from Borough Market.