Goals and Presentations

Well, I didn't complete all of my goals, but I did a decent job. I ended up going on a self-imposed week of rest first week of break, because my body was just self-destructing from overuse. After the week, I felt FANTASTIC though, and training resumed, and it resumed hard. Tuesday I trained with Doc Akh in Westminster, at McDaniels, and then we went to Acro (gymnastics gym) and I helped him teach his Parkour class. Wednesday was training at AACC with Disciple, Thursday I went down to Primal Fitness to play with Disciple and take their Advanced Parkour class.

And then Friday. I got at text from hardcoretraceur at about 8PM, telling me he was coming down to DC (He lives near NYC) with Kasper (who was staying with him, and lives in the Bahamas). Long story short, I drove down to DC at 4AM to pick him up from the bus, we came back to my house and crashed for a few hours. After breakfast, we met up with nickm, Ben Horn, and Disciple to train at AACC, and then we went to Primal to build things, hang out, go through a few Crossfit workouts, a Parkour open gym, and then we slept there. The next morning, we trained at Primal for most of the day again. So anyawy, things I accomplished:

GOALS/ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

• Hold a handstand - AND CONTROL IT - for a solid 6 seconds. - I didn't do as much handstand work as I would have liked, but I was able to hold a handstand for a good 4 or 5 seconds, although I had to use the wall to get up.
  
• Hold a bent-knees flag for 5 seconds. - Did not have time to work on this.
  
• Land my back tucks on my feet, consistently. - Figured out the main reason I'm screwing up. (Bringing knees and shoulders together, instead of knees to shoulders.) They're getting consistently better, so I'd say goal pretty much accomplished.
  
• Learn how to do a 540 roundhouse, at least well enough to teach it to someone else in Rochester. - My 540 is pretty good, though the landing needs more practice. I'd give it a Mission Accomplished.
  
• Start learning wall flips. - Did not have time to work on these.
  

Others:

• I am a lot more comfortable with my Kong to Cat now, as well as my Kong to precision.
  
• Started training on some trees. There are some trees that are hotspots by themselves...
  
• I think I finished getting all the footage I need for Countdown (movie I'm working on with Ben Corwin). We should have it finished by Christmas.
  

In other news, I don't think I ever posted a link to the presentation I gave to Campus Safety. You can find the Power Point presentation here. This does not include what I said, which really is the important part, but it is mostly just a list of topics I covered. Feel free to edit and use this for your own purposes, just give credit where credit is due if asked.

Also, RIT Parkour now has their own subforum on American Parkour. You can find it here. So if you go to RIT or are from Rochester, or just want more information about our training plans, swing on by!

Tonight... we work out... in HELL

The first official Hell Night was tonight. It was great. Seven people showed up, and we dragged in an eighth that we saw walking by. I know of one other person who just couldn't show up today, and we found at least two people who might be interested in joining us in the process. So I'm calling it a success.

We met up, warmed up a bit, and then got started. Two of the other guys had been to my planning session, but no one else had any idea what was in store for them... After the warmup, we started with this:


Crab walk up, backwards, move over a flight of stairs, and then QM down. Rinse, wipe hands on pants, repeat until out of rows of stairs.

Other popular favorites included grabbing on to a handrail and wrapping your feet over it, hanging underneath, and then crawling up. Wouldn't be too hard... except for the vertical support poles you have to go around. It was some serious work, but it was fun.

The Indian Wall Sits were good too. About a 75ft stretch of wall, sit with your legs at 90 degree angles, and your back pressed against the wall. The person at the end of the line stands up, runs across everyones thighs, goes back to position. Repeat until the end of the wall.

There was a lot of QMing. Up stairs, down stairs, up hills, down hills, through the woods (That's a personal favorite of mine. About 1/5th of a mile path through the woods. Get down on your hands and feet, and crawl as SILENTLY as you can, trying not to make any sound at all. It's long, hard, and dirty, but it's probably the best thing we did all night).

My only complaint is that there was a lot more resting than I had hoped/planned for. Part of this is almost required, seeing as there is some required waiting for room to open up for some of the activities, but we finished in around 3 hours this time. Next time, I want to aim for 2.5.

Of course, every Hell Night will be different. Next week we're going to do it all in the opposite order, partially so we can get to the really awesome rock precisions before it gets too dark.

However, I was VERY impressed by everyone. There's a lot of work to be done, but I think if people stick with it, as well as the rest of their training, we can really turn ourselves into something special. Especially once the dogsled gets built. (That's right. I said dogsled. Note: There will be no dogs involved in the pulling of this sled...)


(Left to right: Artem, Zachary (me), Charlie, Zack, Mike, Eric, Andres)

Great Job, guys. Lets keep it up.

Zackie Chan, Bruce Leo, and Matt Damon walk into a bar

Parkour was good today. The group is quite impressive, really.

Today (9.22.07):
*Worked on wall passes. People are getting much better, but most people are still using their elbows.
*Introduced people to a wider variety of vaults. Taught people kongs and speed vaults, then demonstrated dashes, double kongs, dive kongs, among a few others. A surprising amount of people got the kong down today. And most of the people who didn't will have it next time, I'm sure.
*Did some simple precisions onto a rock, demonstrated how to properly come down on an obstacle, especially if it isn't nice and flat (like a rock.. isn't.)
*Moved onto the gates. I did a short demo of how techniques can be strung together. I was hoping to get a turn vault to underbar down, but it was too high for a decent turnvault. People drilled underbars, prepping them for later underbar practice.
*Precisions onto the stairs. 
*Practiced some aerials and one handed cartwheels. I ended up doing some sort of bastardized one handed front handspring roundoff.
*We lost a few people here, but then gained a few people. We headed down to the SLC and worked on some taller wall passes, and then it got interesting. Hit the jump, as they say, for more details.
*We drilled underbars next, hard. We went to the Bookstore, where they have a slanted double rail. I was working on increasing the height on my jump to underbar, and I discovered I need to work on my reverse underbar, because I can't figure out how to come out of it without a broken spine.
*We finished up with precisions and rolls at the Kodak quad. I didn't work on my max-distance precision, just a few shorter ones. I tried a running precision, but couldn't get the... precise.. part down. Kept overshooting.

Okay. Now for the story. So as we were training at the (second) wall pass spot, I had noticed a lot of security across the field. (They were setting up/getting ready for a concert tonight) As we began to walk away, I noticed a security guard on an intercept course. I led the group and we kept on walking, when he called out "Hey guys, can I talk with you for a sec." I looked over at him, and pleasantly as I could (while I was thinking "crap crap crap") said "Sure, no problem."

Basically, he gave the usual, albiet humourous, speech about if we start climbing, and then smash our face in and lose all our teeth, not ONLY will the girls not find 
us attractive anymore, but he'll have to call and explain what happened to our mothers. He then asked us what we were doing. I briefly explained parkour (kind of like obstacle coursing, except using just whatever is around. People walk up and see a wall that they have to go around, we see an obstacle to move over.), and said that while I totally understand your reluctance, we didn't just start with this. We started with much smaller walls, and we practiced safe ways to land and fall, and basically that training safely is paramount. After I reiterated this in several different ways, and pointed out that I was just teaching several people the proper way to land, he kind of nodded and I think he understood. He then said, "Alright well.. just be safe." and then I introduced myself, he introduced himself, and we parted on good terms.

I'm actually planning on emailing him and thanking him for his understanding, and then inviting him and a few other members of campus safety out to see what we do. I think this is the best course of action. I'm hoping it will show that we're safe and responsible enough to alert them to what is going on, and what we're doing, and perhaps even let them participate, if they want.

I think the funniest part of the whole thing was when he was semi-lecturing us, and he was telling us to "think outside the box" (i suppose in terms of safety/what other people are responsible for). I just giggled (silently, to myself) and thought about how we actually WERE thinking outside the box.

More details to come in the saga of Campus Safety and RIT Parkour.