Hills, Flips & Roly Polys.

Adam & Zade – Portrait.

 

Well, there isn’t too much to say about this day as such, due to not documenting it afterwards. That can only mean one thing, it wasn’t the best training session I’ve had or I didn’t think it would be worth writing about. I remember arriving later than normal into town, making my way to IBM where the masses of people were jumping. Street Media (SM) were there, along with more Derby and other city practitioners. Today there was even an influx of Trent University students out, giving Parkour a go and were no doubt coaxed out by other university regulars. Though those same students had little to no endurance and called it a day after an hour or so, part timers eh? The amount of people out made even IBM feel small and enclosed (more so than normal). Most people had started to fraction off to different places around the city.

I went with a smaller group, going to the Houses area to train. It was a good idea to train there, but it was a bit damp still and so when the tic tac cat was done, at times you slipped once the trainers were too moist. Kezza seemed to be amazed at the different variations of tic tacs there were. I’m sure people forget the variety of ways that can be done, or are so used to the bog standard way, they think there is no other way. There was the usual one legged push off, then you had the jumping into the tic tac backwards and finally the two step up the wall and 180 push out of it. Then the more unfamiliar tic tac where you land double footed on the wall before pushing off. It looked cool but was also very unnatural for most to plant of the wall doubled footed. Daniel and James were giving them ago too, getting used to the push and dynamics of the movement.

 

Kezza – Gainer.

 

It was a movement that neither of them really did, the same goes for many people these days. As the movement continues to progress and evolve I think many of the core basics get lost in translation. Not forgotten as such, but just become lesser movements and for that reason less practised due to the lack of complexity and coolness. People would, much rather see a standing or running precision at great height or of a large distance then a perfectly on form small jump, no matter how technical it might be, on a rail or and on something else. That doesn’t go for everyone, but it’s been the way of the scene for a long time now. It wasn’t long before we moved over to High Pavement, Adam wanted to look at the catleap and precision down, as did I. Boredom was already setting in, it hadn’t been all that great so far and I felt like I might leave soon. Motivation was lacking and with that we quickly moved down to the Notts TV / Trent Uni Building.

A caterpillar had been found by Kezza and Daniel and I snapped a quick photo of it as they held it, before it got launched into a nearby bush. I was ready to call it a day now, but got sucked into staying when Kezza was doing some flips on the grass hill. Daniel did a roly-poly down the hill after vaulting the railing followed by Kezza doing forward rolls down the hill too. The images looked okay due to the dull day, and I got a few of Ben holding a human flag. Some of the students in the building across the road were watching what the guys were doing as we took photos of them training and flipping around.

Into the Wide Blue Yonder.

 

Aiden, Zade, Kezza & Paul.

 

Today was going to be different kind of training session. How do you mean? I hear you ask. Well, on the Parkour Nottingham event [1] I had jokingly said that we should all dress in blue for a themed training session. At that time, I didn’t think many (if anyone) would take heed of my notion. Don’t get me wrong, it was an awesome idea for images and I even had an idea for a video if it did happen. I could even title it The Saturdays Blues or something along those lines. Sadly that video idea never transpired. I got ready as I always did and made sure to wear my blue clothes before leaving. I waited to see who else would be following the colour scheme. If I was doing it, I wanted to go the whole hog, joggers, t-shirt, wristbands even my hair band had to be matching blue. I wondered who else would be doing the same…

It felt a humid and warm day already and so I headed out with just a t-shirt and a jacket, as you never know whether it would stay warm or change at any given time. I arrived at Plaza to find very few out bar Aiden and a few others, shortly followed by Paul and Tom the Derby boys who had both arrived in blue too! It had seemed my mention of blue hadn’t gone unheard as others had colour co-ordinated for the day too, brilliant! I chatted with the Derby guys for a bit, then did a few jumps and filmed a few clips of Aiden doing a diving kong over the walls while others warmed up. We wasn’t going to stay at Plaza all day, I wanted to move and get the adventure under way! So once everyone was out, at least that we were expecting it was time to move over to Adams Building for more jumping and a fun packed day.

 

Ben – Stride.

 

Today even Kezza had turned up, amazingly. He was late and what a surprise it was to see him out in town again, after not being out for so long, he was even wearing his Npk t-shirt too! We navigated through the packed Market Square and finally entered the lace market and the Adams Building area. Was it going to be a training session, or another afternoon of food shopping and chatting?! It seemed to be a bit of both this time round, many venturing off for food, while others practised the running strides and kong precisions. I revisited the running precision from the bike railing. Will did it as a running precision into diving kong which looked so nice! I couldn’t do it myself, but instead wanted to land it and then box jump upwards to the wall. I kept craning it for a while before finally making it as a box jump once I was filming for the new RAW video.

It felt as if I could jump over the wall as a dash vault,  if I forced it but that would have been very scary to commit too. Later on as a group we moved the bike railing to increase the running precision distance. It was our very own portable training equipment. Another small run I filmed was a kong over one wall into a diving kong over another, though it was hard to set up and film with the amount of people always being in the shot or trying to troll. You can see Paul coming into shot while filming me on one of the clips.

The Mansfield Adventure.

 

Group Photo.

 

Today was to be a training session of epic proportions… To rewind a bit, people had spoke about training Mansfield, without anything really materializing from the slight echoes. Adam and Steve talked about it again on Saturday evening. The plan was to go some time in the week, seeing as it was the Easter holidays. Steve suggested a Thursday would be good for him and Adam was game for then too. Even though I wasn’t feeling travelling to other places (cities) and didn’t want to commit to the training session. I did make a very quick event about it and thought it might fall through anyway, then I wouldn’t need to worry. It’s not that I don’t like travelling, I’m just lazy when it comes to that sort of thing, the organisation, time it takes to travel and so forth. I wasn’t sure if there would be much interest with it being quite short notice, or if it would even happen in respects to the weather. We had limited (first come, first serve) seats in Adam and Steve’s cars for the journey over and with that, the requests came thick and fast for reserving a place. Even though the cars were near full, other people were still interested about coming to the session, some were going via train, bus or hitching a lift and connecting with us once in Mansfield.

It was looking quite a promising training session, the hype was getting more intense as the days went on. Even though it was on a weekday, which wasn’t (usually) good for everyone, soon didn’t matter and people made time for it. What had started off as a hand full of us going, had soon escalated to a twenty plus person jam with more people still wanting to attend too. Whether all the people turned up, including the locals from Mansfield was another matter though. It reminded me of the Beaster Jam [1] we had last year in Leicester, as a community trip going else where to train. I can’t remember the last time I had travelled to Mansfield, I know back in 2006 I used to be back and forth there with Phil, Jak and Sark. What surprised me even more was that James was up for coming along now too, so that was another car full of people if needed. I was finally feeling excited about the training session, I needed to make sure I got an early night so I would wake up on time and feel fresh for the day of training ahead. Needless to say, I doubt I would get that as excitement always kept me awake, the photo opportunities, possible movements to practise and how the day might turn out.

 

Mansfield.

 

Even though I had gone to bed early, I had woke up at 2am, then again at 6am and found it hard to get a proper nights sleep for fear of not waking up, that and knowing I had to be up and ready for a set time. I hate that feeling, it’s not like I would overlaid with an alarm… I woke up at 9am, alarm blearing and felt completely shattered, it felt like it was going to be one of those days! I had various messages from people to double check if everything was still going ahead, the weather looked great too. Luke was already at the park an hour before the meet up time,nothing from Kezza when I messaged him though. Adam was running a tad late as he would be picking up Ben before going to the park. Kezza had only just got up after ten and said he wouldn’t be ready in time and is going to get there for 11am as that was the meeting time (it wasn’t) as the time clearly stated 10:30 and we would arrive in Mansfield for just after eleven. What a complete and utter n0b! I said he needs to hurry up or he will be left, and then he had a right strop about it… It’s not our fault he couldn’t get up in time and got confused about times. No one else seemed to have problems with it all.

I arrived at the park to find no sign of Aiden or Mat… I’m sure they were meant to be early from when I had spoke to them earlier, they had already left and should have beat me to the park! There was no sign of Kezza, we rang him numerous times and it seemed he was ignoring his phone and all of us, yet had commented on photos of us all waiting for him. Mat and Adien arrived and then we were waiting for Steve to arrive. We should have left Kezza behind, he knew the stated time we were leaving, it’s not our fault he can’t time keep. Even I had managed to get up, ready and over before midday! It seemed unfair on those who had made the effort to now be waiting for him due to being so lazy. Adam said we can’t do that and so we waited, waited and waited some more… He said he was ten minutes out, yet didn’t arrive until nearly half past eleven! Even the late Scotsman Steve had got here on time for once. Kezza had ruined the day and had the cheek to arrive with an attitude, saying we should have just left without him if we were that bothered…

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.