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.

Solar Rays.

 

David – Portrait.

 

This entry is that of three training sessions, as I didn’t have that much to say or images to share for individual entries to make it worth while. So merging them all together in one post soon beefed up the content. Lets talk about the first day of training (17th March) I had planned to be out with Ben, Adam and David even though it was predicted to rain. With how bad the weather was the evening before, I had decided to not set an alarm for the morning as I already knew the weather would likely be just as terrible. Low and behold when I woke up, the weather was just that, wet and rainy. I was feeling unmotivated for training and not wanting to brave the dull, rubbish weather and thought that others might have the same idea… I received a message from Adam asking where I was as he was already out at the park with his sister Rebecca. I then got messages from Ben too saying I should come out, as it’s no longer wet and David and Luke are out with them too. After many photos and messages from them, taunting me to come out, I think they got the message that I wasn’t going to attend and then I was left in peace.

Around three o’clock I was still in a foul mood, but thought maybe going out for an hour or two would be the best and lighten my mood. So, I was surprised when I got there and no one was training! It seemed they had all trained themselves out or were bored and ready to call it a day? My sullen mood didn’t go unnoticed as I arrived and got asked what was wrong, and why had I bothered to come out if I was going to be a miserable git. Oh and I got stick for wearing my Pure Parkour t-shirt [1] which Ben said looked more like an Asda t-shirt than a Parkour one. It was quite funny to see the sibling banter and quarrels between Adam and Rebecca, both abusing and putting each other down… It seemed like my arrival had given a little boost to the day and we trained, even if it seemed Ben was working more on Muscle ups. After Adam mentioned when I ran and did the strides my upper body was perfectly straight like a robot I decided to over exaggerate it even more with a long stride. I got a few photos of use doing a similar exaggerated stride, as you’ll see by Ben’s example in the photos below. With that, it was time for Ben to set off to work and Luke had plans and left too.

 

Adam – Speed Vault.

 

Adam wanted to train still, at least until after peak time traffic had passed. Adam’s sister was cold and sat in his car while the rest of us jumped. I got some photos of Adam doing Parkour, something I had neglected for a while now. In true Jennings fashion he stripped down to his Myprotein vest for added vanity gains. He wanted some shots of him actually training than just portraits [2]of him pulling silly faces. He was preparing to enter the Ninja Warrior UK auditions and so wanted to train, get better at Parkour and have some good footage for his application. The sun had begun to come out, giving a golden tint to all the images I took. Even though I was tired myself, and strangely drained due to lack of food and thinking I would only be out an hour max. Nevertheless it was great to be out and that the weather had now picked up. Adam looked like a tank in his vest while doing movements, more so the running towards the camera shots. Even with general vaulting images, you could see his muscles tensed and bulging…

David was off to work shortly, Adam would head home if I wasn’t staying out. I said I’d stay for a bit longer until peak time had passed. I got some muscle up images of Adam and we practised them together, doing a few sets. His muscle ups had improved loads since the first time he had come out to the park all those months ago! He was always strong on pull ups, now he has double armed muscle ups, even if he was smashing the bar into his chest at times. He could see and feel them, but they weren’t as consistent as he wanted them to be for multiple reps but it was great progress.

#146 – Mansfield Outing.

 

It was decided that today was to be another Mansfield training session [1] [2] [3] [4] and as always with such an adventure, it was surely to be a great day of jumping and total body destruction! It always feels so fresh going there compared to Nottingham and the trip over on the train always get you excited and hyped for the session ahead. I always say it each time I travel over, but as a community we need to do it more often. I don’t think I’ve been there that much this year. I was meeting Ash, John, Ant and Dave as Sark wasn’t out this time round to be the tour guide.

We trained near the train station to warm up and then it was off to the top of Tesco car park. I hadn’t got my camera out for any photography until that point. We arrived at the top level after using a rather claustrophobic and scraping lift up to the top level. This was the latest and best training spot according to the Manfiddians. It looked like it might rain, if the clouds overhead were anything to go by. I hope not, as we had travelled over and it would suck to then have our day ruined and no where to train undercover unlike Nottingham, even if the likes of Urine Nation and the strong aroma of wee wee is NOT the greatest.

 

Flip – Kong Precision, Catleap.

 

I must admit, the car park looked as if there wasn’t much to do bar some big catleaps and precision jumps from first glance. I suppose it was better than training at the top level of Urine Nation, which had really sharp feeling walls. There was a small kong precision (as seen above) over a wall to a thick yellow railing. It wasn’t far distance wise, but it was a railing and blind as you ran towards the wall to kong. It felt great to nail the movement within a few tries and to me it felt like a proper kong precision with real danger, drop and distance if you failed unlike the ones at Crowne Plaza.

Flip was quick to point out that after landing the kong precision, you could then jump right into the catleap if you wanted too. It would mean putting in more power into the kong precision to almost overshoot it. I was finding it big enough from standing and struggling to jump upwards rather than towards the wall today. Phil got the combination in one, I thought he was trying to precision it with him jumping so high! Which you can see in the above image too. I know that was a movement he wanted to get for a future video and he did crane it a few times but bounced off each time or slid down into a catleap position.

 

Dave – Portrait.

 

#119 – Kongs, Pavement & Posture.

 

Like most Sunday afternoons, I felt worse for wear after the Saturday training session. However, I didn’t feel too bad today and got ready to head out for another day of training in the heat with David and Flip. Like all training sessions in our small, collective group we always had a brilliant time training [1] [2] and I had a good feeling about today’s session. We met at the Concert Hall and then made our way to Houses, moving across the road to the area behind the offices there. After a few precision jumps to and from the metal fire escape steps we decided to get creative. We started by doing the precision across to the stairwell, running up the steps, vaulting over the railing mid way up, landing with a roll. Running up the steps as fast as possible felt brutal and killed the momentum and flow, not that it stopped Flip who had it the smoothest. After the precision across, there was a slight hesitation from not getting enough power and I tried to compensate by pushing off the steps. I opting to do a safer option over the railing, doing a turn vault instead of a kong as the railing felt too high for me to try and kong.

Flip did a precision from higher up on the steps (seen in the below image) to the railings edge. It looked awesome and David and myself both simultaneously ran over to have a look too. I wanted to try it, even though the distance was small it really scared me! I do hate rails for precisions at times, this jump was upwards from the closet step. Each other step you went up levelled out the jump but increased the overall distance. Which felt even worse due to the added height and distance. The other thing putting me off was the fact everything was open and see through, by that I mean you could see the floor through the railings and it was hard enough to focus on the rail we were landing on with the other railings within view too. I couldn’t gauge the jump that well either, usually they come closer to you when you stare at the landing and are sure about a jump, but with this it moved back and forth. David didn’t like it either, I did manage to massively undershoot it, bouncing off onto the steps with an almighty clunk. I don’t know why but I couldn’t stick it, and I didn’t want to overshoot it and drop off, even though that wasn’t a problem to do height wise.

 

Flip – Precision.

 

While taking a few photos, Flip was quick to state I should spend more time setting up the shot, using the surroundings more. As I take the same old style of slanted shots that are close to the action. I have tried to stray away from that since people have pointed it out, but you tend to stick to what works. So with some of the shots, I tried to get a different style of angle to normal, trying to fit in more of the surroundings in. Like you will see in some of today’s shots, I’ve tried to include more, if at times all of the fire escape in a few of the shots. The fire escape railing felt too high for me to kong, so I always did a sort of awkward side vault over even when I tried not too. It was so annoying as David and Flip could both kong it easily, but it scared me too much and I didn’t want to clip my feet and face plant the floor from a height either. I shot similar images while trying to capture the perfect air posture shot of Flip, he did a few kongs while holding his shins as he flew through the air. I quite like how my turn vault images came out today. The photos felt fresh and new, I need to train or photograph more of these less documented areas we jump around at.

We decided to move over to High Pavement for our next destination of choice. I don’t know how we came about it, but I think due to wanting to flow and try more creative movements we came up with a run along the walls before vaulting the main one onto the pebbles. It felt scary to run, stride each wall, there were so many places to look and be aware of what you are doing. Both hands and feet wise, it was a co-ordination nightmare, with anything going wrong. Flip did a very nice stride to lazy vault over the walls. It looked awesome and flowing, I was sad that I couldn’t do it myself.