Easter Emptiness.

Ben’s Trainers.

For the second week in a row I was out training with the Npk community at the weekend training session. The weather Friday night was terrible, cold and heavy rain with a strong wind too and I did wonder if that would transpire into Saturday. I was surprised to even be out though, after sleeping in Friday until half past two in the afternoon. The day before that I was up at seven in the morning and so my sleeping pattern is pretty messed up currently. I didn’t go to bed until two or three and was still laying awake well into the four and five o’clock hours. I guess being excited to train again had me too restless to sleep, the thought of new photo opportunities and a good training vibe didn’t help matters. I did wake up around ten, but then lolled around in bed until nearly twelve, making everything a rush. Adam was out this weekend and wanted everyone to train even if weather was bad, though it didn’t seem like many were going out now due to last nights weather putting them off, God dammit!

I was running late anyway and so was Kezza and a few others who said on the event not to move from Plaza until they got there. I didn’t expect many to be out, or the ones who did to be very few. I arrived at Plaza at around quarter to two, to find that no one was out?! All bar a mysterious guy lurking near one set of the walls, pacing back and forth checking his phone. Then there was Adam sat with Aiden on the other kong precision walls. I said to Adam that I instantly felt demotivated for training and might just go home as I hate sparse turn outs… The lurker looked familiar, a possible practitioner? After a while the same vape monster came over to us and asked me if I remembered him… Holy shit! It was Rob, Mr Bozik! I hadn’t seen or trained with him since 2009 [1] back when he had come to Nottingham with his friend Michal and Pike. Rob really hadn’t changed that much, he said he was waiting for the SM guys to arrive, who should have already been here by now…

Kezza – Portrait.

Others started to arrive slowly but surely, Mat, Kezza, Ben, Luke, CJay and Holbrook and a good amount of the community started to form. Everyone was warming up, kong precisions, diving kongs, general flow and even flips. There was quite a diversity of movement skills between us all today. CJay was on top form with his own training and it didn’t seem like anything was too much hassle for him to do with his good jumping power. He was doing some crazy double kong, then was trying to double kong handspring out of the move… Holbrook was practising a small run involving the railings. While I was trying to get out of my unmotivated mood I was in. Some newer movements I hadn’t seen anyone do, was a diagonal kong precision from the small blue railing to a wall. It might be small, but very awkward and thought it would be a good movement for people to consider. Much like the running precision from the first wall, up and over to land on the same blue railing. Some terrible looking and feeling movements but the guys were getting them done. I took a few photos, but at the same time I wanted to move and train rather than be stuck behind the lense.

We moved up to the now lesser trained area of Houses, the buildings are always open at the weekend now and so that means there are constantly cars parked in the way of where we train. Instead the guys trained near the kong precision and foliage part of the area, Kezza drilled the kong precision while Rob ran behind filming him. I quite enjoyed the shots I got of him doing the k2p. Once the cars had moved, even though it was wet and slippery due to the rain we practised a few tic tac cats. I trolled Kezza who wasn’t sure he could even do the tic tac cat now, I walked over to the wall slowly, saying I would do it no problem and then pushed off the wall and did it with no real speed or run up. He didn’t expect me to do that and was laughing, slightly amazed I had. I then did the 180 cat from hanging onto the wall with my finger tips, which was another old school movement which many still can’t do today. Each time people try, they expect some magical deeper groove in the wall which makes it easier to hang on, or some sort of trickery. It’s all to do with finger strength and forearm strength though, nothing more, nothing less.

Kezza – Running Precision.

CJay and Ben were looking at an ugly running downwards precision, it was diagonal and over the foliage. It was plain terrible, but it looked fantastic as a photo and so I set up my camera up while the guys kept preparing for the jump. You had to run blind and could only guess where the wall was, seeing the landing once you were in the air, no wonder it took them ages before they nailed it. I captured CJay and kezza doing the jump, but then it seemed like our time was up as a security guard had come around to move us on. He was friendly enough, asking what we were doing and watched us do a few movements before leaving us. We left Holbrook who still wanted to do the jump and hadn’t yet had a try, taking a gamble with the guard… When he came back for a second time, just as James did the jump. The rest of us headed over to High Pavement where muscle ups, flips and catleaps were what people were practising. I cut my finger after doing the standing catleap, which still scared me this week and still felt a stretch as I jumped. My finger kept bleeding and looked quite deep, damn that sharp wall!

Rob said, lets train some real spots which was funnier the more he said it. What real spots were there to train? It seemed like High Pavement wasn’t as fun this week as it was last time. It seems we were doing a similar circuit to last week’s training session when we had a pit stop over at Orange Walls again. I don’t know what came over me, but after being bored by the area I quickly became very creative with my photography. I felt inspired by angles and the moves being done, I was crouched in the foliage, being anally raped by twigs and thorn bushes while getting a low enough shot of the kong precision movements, focusing on the guys and the nearby ivy leaves. Rob did a crazy dive roll over both the smaller orange walls, it looked really good on the photos. Mat had got the diving kong over the walls too. I know he had wanted that for some time so congratulations on the accomplishment. There was a sign post block thing which people used as a take off for running precisions.

Rob – Dive Roll.

I had jolted my ankle with one of the running precisions, slightly undershooting the landing and hoped that didn’t put me out for the day. Luke did some nice 360 backs and the photos looked good too. Once again, some of us moved down to the green bar for muscle ups and using the resistant bands again before we made our way to arboretum. Another pit stop was at the entrance to the grave yard where Holbrook was doing a sanding precision, which looked massive. While everyone else set up their cameras to shoot and film I noticed even members of the public had stopped to watch as he did the jump. The hardest part was trying to time the shot perfectly so no trams or cars were in the background. Holbrook said it was near his maximum jump and at times is why he was bouncing off after landing. Kezza said a cat would be fine, but not the precision as it’s mental. We moved on to Arboretum. Aidan and Mat started dancing as a car with loud Indian music playing rode past, while the rest of use moved away from them quickly, pretending we didn’t even know them…

So far, so good. The day had a great vibe to it and I was thoroughly enjoying it. We stopped off at the bird cages area again, there were quite a lot of us to all be training in such a small area, but we made do and everyone was training their own things and liking the precision with the drop. The real fun began when I decided to get a few group photos, something which I have forgotten to do most training sessions. It wasn’t the most ideal lighting or weather but was worth a shot in such a big open area. People fighting over climbing up the tree, using it as a perch was everyone’s main goal, with Rob managing it and dedicated that space for himself. The first shot was quite normal, but got more homo when Rob posed in his boxers for one shot… It didn’t stop there though, when we were leaving the area a slanted tree was the next to be scaled and used for a group photo. It was difficult to get everyone up in the tree and find a set space where they weren’t shielded by other people or the branches. Sliding off the tree was another unfortunate event which happened while posing for the shots.

Group Photo.

We moved up to the cannons area, I got some really nice shots of Holbrook doing a diving kong to one of the cannons. With him being so outstretched it looked awesome, but most the photos look great in the area due to surroundings. Rob once again mentioned when are we moving to less, rubbish areas and train some real areas, he got his wish when the next area was to be Girls High, a ‘real spot’ as Rob kept saying. This was when the group split to get food, and people seemed more reluctant to train, through being tired, bored or unable to do find things to practise. I decided to film a few clips of Kezza and Holbrook doing the same level downwards diving kongs. The walls were high and had a drop, there was also an underbar with a drop too, which scared most people. Seeing the guys do these movements had put me more in the mood for photos and video again, though it was annoying when Mat and others were trying to bomb the shots and not being quiet when filming… Rob was panning and following the guys too and so I had to make sure we didn’t conflict with each others shots.

A diagonal cat was an idea for a movement, which Holbrook quickly liked and turned into striding along the two wall before it and then did the cat as a box jump afterwards. Ben did the standing cat as did Kezza. I wanted to do it too but was completely shattered by now, drained and out of juice. So my whole focus was now on photography, I got some really nice angles of the movement and then a tic tac 180 precision from Holbrook using the sign post on the wall too. It had turned into Holbook and only Holbrook who was training and being filmed, while some of the guys went around the back of the area to look for things to practise and this allowed more control over my shots. The funniest part of the day was while Mat was on the phone to his mum and Kezza took it off him to speak to his mum. It was made funnier by the fact he put on a fake voice, only for Mat’s mum to ask who was that as he sounded very gay and that had us all in laughter afterwards! A highlight of the day, which I thought I had captured on video, but sadly hadn’t, a golden moment missed!

Holbrook – Tic Tac Precision.

We moved around the other side of the building, joining back with everyone who were there flagging energy wise and many leaving for home. It had felt a very long day of training, even though we hadn’t ventured to that many places to train. I know we were in a schools grounds, but there were so many empty condom wrappers littered around the area! There was a massive climbing wall outside the school complete with the climbing gear too, it was ever so tempting to climb over the fence and have a climb. Though we kept restraint and didn’t, we carried on training some running catleaps, and 180 precisions. There were always something to practise, one person would see a movement and then someone else would extend it with another way of doing it.

A never ending possibility, things in the area compared to yesteryears felt rather easy now. A sign of how training has evolved. It had been a really nice day, had a great vibe and I had hundreds of photos to sort though too. Most were heading back to town while I was hitching a ride back with Adam to the Parkour park. On arriving back to the park Steve was on his way and so I left the two of them to train into the night, while I returned home. I couldn’t have handled being out any longer even if I tried. I do hate leaving a training session earlier, or being unable to train, but at times you got to know when to call it a day and you’ve had enough…