Bails, fails & Injuries.

 

Today was an early training session again, seeing as it was to be another adventure. What with the dark nights drawing in earlier each passing day, along with the icy coldness, it seemed worth the effort to be out early and make the most of the daylight hours. People needed to be out at the earlier time of half past eleven and everyone seemed okay with that oddly. Time will tell if it happens as planned though… There were a fair few out, judging from the event. Adam was a no for today due to being ‘busy’ and that was a shame. I will admit, I wasn’t expecting people to be out early and so I was amazed when I got to Crowne Plaza to find David, Steff and Tom already there, shortly followed by James, Geo and even Zain! We were all waiting on Ben (again) who seemed to be late for the last few sessions. It got closer to twelve and then finally, everyone was out. Kezza was a no show (as always) despite saying he would definitely be out weekend… The other maybes on the event weren’t out either.

James felt tired, as did a few people. It hurt to do movements, maybe due to the cold? People warmed up using the arch in the area, doing running precisions through it. While others later were doing diving kong precisions through it. It wasn’t long until we got the adventure day under way and moved over to the Adam’s Building (Lace Market) while on the way to Sneinton. It felt nice to have the low kong precision again this weekend, after it was so hard the last time I was there. It seems to be a cycle with it, what with the run up and curb too. It seems I’m not the only one having the same problems either, as David was finding it difficult too. Once I pointed out how I did it, to avoid the curb during the run for the kong, I think that helped him. Until he realized he was opposite footed to myself and changing his run up he found it easier to do. I also realised later while filming that where a hand rail had previous been, that I still held my hand up in the air to avoid hitting it, even though it is long gone.

 

David – 180 Precision.

 

The others were busy doing strides along the same walls, as well as box jumping them too. I started to film a few movements, collecting for a possible day video. Some of the B-Roll I collected was at points, quite worrying in regards to love affair of Gio and Ben! James broke an upwards precision, I would put it down to the pressure of me filming and trolling him. Perhaps he was worrying about how I might use the footage if he didn’t make it. Whatever the reasons behind the break, it was good to see him get it and led to a funny part within the video. Gio did an awesome kong precision to a railing (also seen in the video) which not only moved, but had a small landing area as well. David and myself looked at a 180 precision from a lamp post to a wall (seen in the above image) it was slightly diagonal as well. The angle looked great, even if the movement felt horrible. David was the closest to landing it, I kept putting one foot down and couldn’t commit to the wall. David was craning it at times and I got some nice photos to show for it. Maybe next time we can try and get it, when we haven’t thought so much about doing it.

Some local chavs were walking through the area and as they walked past they shouted the classic ‘do a backflip!’ line which we and anyone that trains has encountered a thousand times over… The plan was to go to the furthest point of Sneinton and then make our way back from there, rather than starting from the closest part which we seemed to spend hours at and then making our way further out. As you only have to come back afterwards, which was always tiring. I also wanted to check out this new location I had come across on Google Maps, a slight detour, but it looked like it had potential. I may have regretted that decision, with how long of a walk it was to get there seeing as we weren’t training at any locations before hand. The place was different to what was shown on Google Maps, all the railings and wheelchair access were no longer there. Annoying, but there were still things to use.

Windmills & Commitments.

There was to be a big crowd training today with the weather set to be so warm, even some of the Trent University guys were meant to be joining us today, if they didn’t overlay. I had planted the notion in everyone’s mind for it to be an adventure day, the places of choice I had suggested were on the outskirts of Nottingham like Sneinton, Carlton, Lenton and Radford. With those in mind, we would make our decision on the day to which area we would venture upon. I ended up being in town before 1pm for a change. I felt like today was going to be a good day of training, it had to be and another reason I was out so early due to the excitement. Though it was proving not to be shared by others, who were arriving late and it felt like we wouldn’t be moving until later in the day at this rate. Some who were running late were worried about missing the day trip and asked for people to wait at Plaza for them. They knew the times though… If people cannot make it on time it’s not my fault. Much like Steve, who arrived later that evening at Plaza, even though we were at the time in the middle of Sneinton and had no way of letting him know where and how to get there… Not that there would have been much point by then either.

Plaza was soon filled with people arriving. Chris, Luke, Mat and a few others, slowly followed by Ant, John and Jason! Now there were some blasts from the past, to say the least. It’s mental to think how long it had been since either of them had been to a Npk training session. It was good to have David out attending again this weekend as he hasn’t seen many of the new areas we have discovered over the years. Phil arrived, along with Brandon and a few others, it didn’t seem like we were waiting for many more to arrive but we warmed up at Plaza nevertheless. No Femi today though, he had only just got up, knowing full well it was an adventure day and told everyone to hold up and he would be there soon… More like half past two or even three! That wasn’t going to happen, we could be waiting forever if he was running on black time. With people ready to move and restless, we made our slow walk over to Sneinton, stopping off at the Adams building first, in the lace market. An area where many usually end up chilling or become very unproductive when we gather there, at least from past experiences and I have no idea what causes that to happen.

 

Femi – Diving Kong

 

To say it was the start of the session, it felt more like the end of one. We had only just arrived and people had decided to go food shopping… I mean seriously?! I thought you were meant to have eaten before training, not arrive and then grab breakfast which adds to time wasting. I could understand if it was to grab some supplies before we ventured into Sneinton where there wasn’t shops nearby. The funniest part of the day had to be when Brandon was getting increasingly angry with Femi while on the phone, trying to explain where we were and how to get to us. Each direction and landmark Brandon used as a guide had Femi confused and no idea where he was on about. The frustration on his face was enough to tell how infuriated he was by the whole situation, laid on the floor, head in hands, groaning, unable to explain any simpler to Femi. After some back and forth speaking with Femi he eventually managed to find us and proclaimed as he arrived in the area why didn’t anyone tell me it was this spot in the first place?! As he only lived around the corner from it, and had ended up taking a long way around to get to it, face palm!

When everyone had finally finished their weekly shop, training was able to commence and people warmed up with their chosen movements. I captured some images of Femi and Holbrook doing strides to a diving kong. While capturing the said images, I got an interesting shot of Femi from underneath as he strode onto a wall. It made his leg look super long and stretched, like a cartoon character, the perspective was very strange and yet very awesome at the same time. Just as we were trying to make our way to Sneinton it seemed that people were more interested in training Adams, finding new things they wanted to try. So it was hard to get people to move and so the group slowly fazed out, one by one. Once on our way, we passed a side street which had things to do, only now it seemed everything was overgrown, that or people were in the way like the local drunkards. It was onwards to Byron Court, an old but gold spot for training, at first people seemed to be a bit uneasy, unsure what could be done, while others sprung into action.

Spring is upon us, once again.

 

Today I woke up early and with the weather looking so nice, I wondered whether I should venture into town or not for the Saturday training session. What with my ankle hurting all of the time it would be somewhat of a challenge, as I struggle to walk to the local shops never mind town where I would be standing and using it throughout the day. I was feeling dammed if I did and dammed if I didn’t, I would end up annihilating the ankle either way. If I didn’t go out, I would have missed a great day for photography which would have been equally annoying and maybe, just maybe the ankle would hold out for once too! I arrived in town just after two o’clock and rang Kinga to find where everyone was located, they were up training at Houses which wasn’t the best area for me, with it being uphill all the way there. I limped my way to the area and found not many to be out, the group had split already with half training at houses while the rest were across at High Pavement tricking on the pebbles.

I decided to try some climb ups while at Houses which I did try last time I was out [1] and felt rather disappointed, this time proved no better. I could just about get above the wall, but it was a slow and painful raise out of the motion to the hip cat position. I could feel it in all my arms, shoulders, back and forearms. At least this time I could do them even if it was a struggle and one arm at a time, maybe I could work on them more while being out, though that would be somewhat difficult as my ankle doesn’t last that long for training sessions. I want to do things and do in some respects miss all the training, but I know there is no need to push for it as I’ll only end up making things worse as sad as that is. It was cool to see people out training, nothing has changed, well except for a few new faces, the vibe was very much the same one I had left from being injured.

 

Stefano – Portrait.

 

I walked over to High Pavement area and peered around the corner wall and saw many of the guys tricking off the step up and having fun, unaware of me watching them. I then shouted ‘Surprise mofo’s!’ they all squinted and stared confused to who it was until they got closee, a smiling Zain was happy to see me and ran down to greet. I climbed up on to the wall and watched for a bit while others did tricks and chatted with people. It felt strange being out, the dynamics had changed and the session and style of training felt as if it had also shifted to when I had first come out. It wasn’t long until the group split and a few of the guys moved down to Bilbie Walk to train, an old area which doesn’t get much used these days. It was like we hadn’t even been at High pavement long before everyone was set to move, I felt almost invisible as I followed.

Bilbie walk where people were scaling walls and I spoke to Yaz for a bit before I left him to carry on training. He was practising holding some front leavers on the small rails, which looked awesome and is quite a strength feat at that! Some turn vaults on the blue rails were the next thing being done and pop vaults. Down in the main area, people were doing pop vaults, scaling the wall. Yaz was reminded of the worm to climb up from one of my videos, and he also drilled the drainpipe dyno up. Always a hard one for many, as it is quite big. I got many photos of the guys sat atop of the wall, portraits, all while Vince smoked away his life in the corner ‘resting’ which was a debate between the group.

Dull of Days.

 

Yaz’s Hand.

 

I arrived in town just after two o’clock and then began called people to see where they all were. After having no answer from Yaz or James, I called Zain while making my way to the IBM area. Zain picked up and informed me that was the exact area they were at and I carried on walking in that direction. It was an odd day today with the weather being very dark and overcast looking like it would rain but it never did. I arrived to find not many out and to see Zain sat down with his camera and taking photos of people. The same as what James was doing, I took a pew next to Zain and we discussed his camera while I got mine out ready to take some photos of the day.

Denis was busy hating on the area and wanting to move from this place to somewhere else like Adams – the one area he has always hated the most but today he wanted to go there. I took some photos of the guys doing running upward precisions from the plant pots to the walls, experimenting with angles as always. At one point they wanted to move the plant pot but it proved hard to move by trying to lift it up and would only lift very slightly much to our enjoyment. Yaz and Flip pushed it with their feet while having there backs against the wall as the pot was stuck on one on the concrete slabs and it moved ever so slightly. Zain was hesitant to do the running precision and in the end he got the courage and did it with ease, while Denis decided not to give it ago.

We made our way down through the Market Square and on our way Zain and James decided to take some photos of the water features, while myself and Denis left them to it and carried on walking up to Adams area. It was only when I had seen the photos later that day that I realised I should have stayed with them and took some photos of them too, as they looked really great with the water being frozen in time. I guess I always have next time to get some images of the water and see what I can capture. We had arrived at the Adams area before the others who had popped into Tesco’s before hand. The area was still wet and slippery and it didn’t look like it would dry any time soon. I spent the time talking and taking photos as well as doing a few upper body things. I had noticed it had started to get colder and so I kept my coat on to keep warm. My favourite quote of the day was when Yaz who had a chocolate milkshake in his hand and I said, ‘which brought all of the boys’. That led to us singing the song and having it stuck in our heads for the rest of the day, very annoying.

 

Yaz – Running Upward Precision.

 

The area had a random book left on the wall and it said it was free to read and it is not lost and feel free to pick it up, read it and leave it elsewhere so it can go on a journey. A very strange thing to see, although, if it did get wet I’m sure that would be the end of that saga. I had a text from Webster asking where we were and replied back we were at Adams area, forty minutes later as we were all ready to move to another area did I wonder where and why are they taking so long to arrive? We walked down to Art Gallery walking past a notice on a lamp post stating a guide dog had been stolen from it’s owner. How horrible is that even more so if it was while it was out guiding someone! Yaz was busying sliding down all the poles which I tried to get some photos of while walking down.

I kept getting text messages hearing them beeping from my bag and when I checked they were from Webster asking where we were and due to having very low credit, I couldn’t reply and so got Zane to text them back. Only for them to then send one back asking who it is that was texting them and that they were at Art Gallery but no one was there, they then looked down the steps and saw us and came down to join us. They explained they wondered who Zane was and that they thought when he text back saying we were at Art Gallery that we had said it for a joke as when they were at the top no one was to be seen. I was getting some great angles of Yaz and Flip doing the a catleap from a rail to the wall among other movements. I wanted to use angles of the whole rail or lamp post to give some great feeling into the area, I think some do justice to the area while others didn’t focus as well and had to be cut.

We moved further down the area to the large white slipper wall where everyone was trying to pop wall climb it. As they were doing this Yaz with his nearly empty bottle of coke threw it up in the air, rotated a few times and landed perfectly upright on top of the wall right next to Zain and for the ones who say this we all shouted and went crazy at how amazing that was for not even trying! Denis was quick to say, ‘that is one in a million and it will never happen again now and can’t be repeated for a very long time!’ We were mad that no one had filmed that piece of amazing history and Yaz said he would try it again, and he did… Many, many times over all which failed and frustrated him, even other people had a try all having the same non existent luck. As we walked past Broadmarsh Shopping Centre, the guys had a look at a higher wall and tried to pop vault it while myself and Zain sat down eating and spoke about his camera bag and how nice and compact it was and how I wanted one which was small like it too.

 

Flip – Front Tuck

 

We headed over to the what used to be Capital One building where a few of the guys were looking at a downwards precision from a higher wooden ledge to a lower one on the building, the main fear factor here was the shear drop. Flip did the precision while Zain contemplating doing it pacing back and forth over and over again, unable to commit to actually doing it. While I was on the ground taking photos and a few others were jumping around, I heard someone shouting, ‘oi, oi, oi’ over and over again at first I thought it was someone messing around as we all did and so we ignored the shouting. Only for a Chinese guy from in the building to come out a secret door and tell us that we were not allowed to jump around here and to move on. On that note we took a short walk along the canal up to Jury’s Inn where we trained for a bit. It felt like a wind tunnel and always did for some reason, as all the tall buildings funnelled in the wind which made it twice as cold in this area.

We had moved over to the canal area, as we crossed the road, I noticed a girl in a car looking at us and more so when people were jumping around. The same person appeared again at the traffic lights later on too. I got a few great photos of Ben doing a handstand on the wall with the Jury’s Inn building in the background, while the others were doing rail precisions and general vaults. While people were vaulting Webster nearly took out two cyclists as they came around the pathway. As Zane was paying no attention and looking over the bridge, I scared him as I walked past and grabbed him and shouted. People moved over to the BBC area to train and then a short time after everyone called it a day, while the few remaining ones of us decided to take a adventure to the scaffolding field. It had been fenced off now and once we climbed over, all of the building had been bricked up and massive tyre makes were all on the ground too. A further way up all the overground shrubs which were there for years had been cut down and removed, so we were able to climb on the scaffolding.

A strange guy walked through the area with his dog and asked what we were doing and told us about how people got into the building now with it all being bricked up. On that note and people wanting to leave, we walked along the wall  back to the canal area. Zain and Denis jogged down and along the canal and then climbed up onto a bridge to get across to the other side buy going along the rail conductor bridge and across to the other side where all the graffiti was to explore and film. On the way back Denis scaled the wall up to where we were and hung through the small hole in it while people walking across the road could only see his ass and legs hanging out and were laughing and talking about it. Webster then got a big stick and started to hit Denis’ ass with it who was helpless shouting ‘ouch, ow, quit it, that REALLY hurts you know!’ which had us in fits of laughter and then he climbed up and over the wall stating it wasn’t cool to hit someone while in the hole in the wall and with not a little stick but a massive one and it was really hard too.

 

James – Taking photos.

 

Denis – Unimpressed.

 

Yaz – Running Upward Precision.

 

Denis – Ninja running, kong.

 

Yaz – Running Upward Precision.

 

Yaz – Running Upward Precision.

 

Flip – Running Upward Precision.

 

Denis – Feiyues.

 

James’ Parkour Visions.

 

Zain – Running Upward Precision.

 

Zain – Running Upward Precision.

 

Yaz’s milkshake brings all the boys…

 

Yaz really likes his milkshakes.

 

Flip – Portrait.

 

Denis – Portrait.

 

Aaron – Portrait.
.

 

Yaz – Squirrel 180 Cat.

 

Yaz – Portrait.

 

Flip – Catleap.

 

Yaz – Catleap.

 

Close up of sleeve tag.

 

Yaz & Flip.

 

Flip – Precision.

 

Flip – Catleap.

 

Yaz – Precision.

 

Webster – Precision.

 

Webster – Precision.

 

Ben – Precision.

 

Zain – Precision.

 

Yaz – Who wants to taste my brownness?

 

Yaz and his milkshake… Action!

 

Yaz – Drinking the milkshake.

 

Yaz – fully vitalized!

 

James & Zain – Camera buddies.

 

Flip – Precision.

 

Denis – Walking along a high bridge.

 

Flip – Running Upward Precision.

 

Yaz – Sliding down pole.

 

Yaz – Squirrel 180 Cat.

 

Flip – Squirrel 180 Cat.

 

Yaz – Squirrel 180 Cat.

 

Yaz – Bollywood dance?

 

Yaz – Hanging Around.

 

Yaz – Pop wall Climb.

 

Webster – Sideflip.

 

Yaz – Front Tuck.

 

Yaz – Precision Face.

 

Ben – Handstand.

 

Ben – Handstand.