(urban, natural, indoor)
After having a day off on Wednesday (still a bit low on energy post-cold) I get straight back into it on Thursday. I meet with Lauri and Joe at Vauxhall at 1:30pm and we are lucky enough to see some of the Parkour Generations team running through the technical trials for the ADAPT certificate. Having had a huge day of strength and conditioning testing the day before, a lot of the participants are sore and tired, however they push through and put in a great effort for their technical routes. Joe, Lauri and I work on wall run/vault combinations for a while before moving into the dense architecture of the Vauxhall hotspot. I shift my focus to flow and foot placement, tracing a few challenging routes until they feel natural. One route included a cat-pass/precision at a strange angle which played with my mind for some time. Joe worked on a running precision that had been toying with him for ages and Lauri decided to master all the jumps that he had been too scared to do, with great success!
We moved on, picking up a bite to eat and catching a bus to Battersea park. Joe led us to the best little parkour hill I have ever seen in my life. In the middle of the park is a small hill that has been landscaped to simulate a rocky outcrop, complete with ponds and shrubbery. The 'rocks' are all sprayed concrete, making the grip very reliable and most of the ponds are empty, giving more room for movement. We spent a while picking out precision jumps amongst the features of the rockery, but soon moved on to tracing routes up and down the hill. After settling on a couple of routes we worked at getting them as smooth as possible, especially the descent, which required very careful foot placement. The more 'natural' angles and shapes were a pleasure to work with after playing in the strictly 9o degree themed Vauxhall area. The flow was more challenging from a foot placement perspective, yet the movement seemed to be more instinctive... Joe was nice enough to take some footage, so you'll see what I'm talking about when it all gets cut together...
Back onto the train and all the way out to the Moberly Sports Centre where I join Joe, Brett and about 30 others for a Parkour Generations indoor class. Tonight Forrest is leading the class, getting us warmed up with some light jogging on the spot, some killer arm isometrics, exhausted diving monkey pushups, and completely exhausted hand-clap pushups... Then the lesson began. We broke up into six groups and worked in stations: a long cat balance; slide-monkey (lazy-vault) combinations; reverse step-vault/tic tac combinations; palm-spin practice; slide-monkey to reverse step-vault and my favourite: Playing with chairs... Yes, one of the stations had us using regular chairs to hone our skills as traceurs. Our group lined all the chairs up and created a complex route of swing-throughs, tic-tac to sitting and some other ingenious chair stunts...
Before I knew it we were all back on the floor working our abdominals to hernia point and I was reminded of what it feels like to fall down from plank position... It's been a while. Forrest was eventually merciful and warmed us down with a yoga-esque stretching session. The smile never left his face all night.
We moved on, picking up a bite to eat and catching a bus to Battersea park. Joe led us to the best little parkour hill I have ever seen in my life. In the middle of the park is a small hill that has been landscaped to simulate a rocky outcrop, complete with ponds and shrubbery. The 'rocks' are all sprayed concrete, making the grip very reliable and most of the ponds are empty, giving more room for movement. We spent a while picking out precision jumps amongst the features of the rockery, but soon moved on to tracing routes up and down the hill. After settling on a couple of routes we worked at getting them as smooth as possible, especially the descent, which required very careful foot placement. The more 'natural' angles and shapes were a pleasure to work with after playing in the strictly 9o degree themed Vauxhall area. The flow was more challenging from a foot placement perspective, yet the movement seemed to be more instinctive... Joe was nice enough to take some footage, so you'll see what I'm talking about when it all gets cut together...
Back onto the train and all the way out to the Moberly Sports Centre where I join Joe, Brett and about 30 others for a Parkour Generations indoor class. Tonight Forrest is leading the class, getting us warmed up with some light jogging on the spot, some killer arm isometrics, exhausted diving monkey pushups, and completely exhausted hand-clap pushups... Then the lesson began. We broke up into six groups and worked in stations: a long cat balance; slide-monkey (lazy-vault) combinations; reverse step-vault/tic tac combinations; palm-spin practice; slide-monkey to reverse step-vault and my favourite: Playing with chairs... Yes, one of the stations had us using regular chairs to hone our skills as traceurs. Our group lined all the chairs up and created a complex route of swing-throughs, tic-tac to sitting and some other ingenious chair stunts...
Before I knew it we were all back on the floor working our abdominals to hernia point and I was reminded of what it feels like to fall down from plank position... It's been a while. Forrest was eventually merciful and warmed us down with a yoga-esque stretching session. The smile never left his face all night.
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