Plyo and Strides. (New video).

Today I spent most of my time editing a video of Saturday’s training session. The video itself is short and sweet – I didn’t realise I had filmed so little. Although, to be fair after training at IBM/Precision Triangle for hours it was not too long until it was getting dark. I improvised with what footage I did have and worked with it. My aim was to acquire enough footage from the day to produce a small video of my training.

The video has a different feel to the usual montages I have made in the past, even from what you see out there at the moment. The music was different to what I usual use but I felt it worked well within the video. It reminds me of music played in the background of computer games. I’m more open to music without lyrics and which have a more chilled feeling to them, I think they work really well with these sort of videos.

I wanted to film it all as naturally as possible without the aid of a fish-eye, which are so over used in the Parkour community. I am also guilty of using them in the past with videos, not to make gaps look big but because they are an easy option of getting up close and personal with filming.

I feel simplicity is beauty and I would like to make more videos using this concept perhaps over the winter period. That way it keeps me warm by practising the same movement over and over again, constantly improving the overall technique. Also in winter you tend to not be able to do as much training wise, so I revert back to basic movements and conditioning.

 

 

In hindsight there are some things that I would have liked to change in the video, they are listed below.

00:43 Could have get more angles at High Pavement of the strides (I thought I had loads and it turned out I hardly had any). As I felt it was rather over edited or cut too much on viewing it.

01:36 The angles are great, although, I would have liked to get the buildings roofs in and perhaps some sky as well.

I would have also liked to get some more variety of my Precision and strides at IBM overall so had more things to add in the video.

Rainy Days.

After yesterday and the dreadful weather, I awoke to a surprisingly dry and sunny day. I got ready to go out training and arrived in town at the meet up point with everyone else who wanted to join. The sky was now overcast, I really was hoping it wouldn’t rain, we started the jam off at Houses two (New houses) as some people call it. I decided on doing a repetition training day, with my movements today. Doing sets of 15 of a single movement to keep them precise and in good form. Later on I was drilling some old fashioned reverse vaults over a hip sized wall. I had not done any in a very long time and so was scared. In the end they were more like barrel vaults then reverse vaults. Vladimir’s arms and shoulders were looking big today (no homo) I’m envious, damn him, one day I will have the same sized arms! Mark my words Vlad! Yaz was late, arriving wearing his white Freemove t-shirt which was the second time I’ve ever seen Yaz wear white in recent years.

It went against his black jogging bottoms which looked good together. Though it was strange to not see him out in a bold coloured tee, very strange. Tom was doing some kong vaults over the wall, only to then clip both feet (knees) on one of the attempts, falling face first over the wall. Managing to save himself with his hands before hitting the ground. His hands took the impact followed by his knee which hit the ground full force. He got up right after and seemed fine only having a graze on his hand, it looked deep so he said he would go and clean it up before coming back to train. We started to wonder why Tom had not came back once we released he had been gone for some time and maybe he had headed home with Will. It began to not rain, but pour and so we all grabbed our bags and made a dash to Crowne Plaza!

 

Parrish – Cat 180 Precision.

 

We remained at Plaza for most of the day, what with the weather looking set to be rain all day. The rain really came down and flooded the area at one point when all the drains couldn’t cope with the incoming flow of water. People slowly one by one went home due to the day being a washout and I don’t blame them. Some of the guys had gone to the shop and on the return we were admiring Parrish’s long sleeve burgundy top he always wears. I asked if I could try it on followed by Yaz trying it on too, it felt nice and I asked where he had got it from. Parrish said it was from Topman. We all joked about we should all go to Topman and buy the exact same top he worn for the jokes. With this in mind and the weather not letting up, we decided to go on a little shopping spree, only to get there and find out they no longer stocked the top Parrish wore.

So we walked down to UN to train, before we got to the main area Parrish wanted to climb up onto the roofs and ledges that were up there and started to climb up. Once at the top he was telling us how dirty it was and how many feet and foot marks there were. I got some photos of Yaz and James up there before they came back down and Parrish going off to clean his hands which were black. In UN’s main area we were experimenting with doing dive rolls on the small wall, then some of the others had a go at the running upwards catleap. We then went over to the rail precision and started training the downwards ones from the wall to the rail. It was great today as there were so many cars park on the edge of the road beside the rail. If we were to overshoot the rail we would not be running out into the road and get hit by the on coming traffic.

 

Yaz – Hanging Around.

 

After much deliberating we decided to go and train the top of UN car park then go home. We arrived at the top floor only for the heavens to open once again and rain to pour down on us. Parrish wanted to do the big downwards precision so we set up the cameras while he dried his feet before doing it. Once we had a few angles and he was happy that he had done it we moved down a floor into the dry. Shortly afterwards we walked back down and towards Broadmarsh so Yaz could go to Poundland. We said everyone closes earlier to which Yaz didn’t believe, only to find out it was true once in the shopping centre. Stefano and Parrish did some tricks on the floor which acted like a springboard, we then walked up the road and stopped off at the stone circle near the church to train for a while. Parrish was busy doing the downwards precision to roll.

Yaz and Stefano grabbed some food from Sainsburys. Parrish was giving us many speeches about how we can and should do the downwards precision to roll and it’s really easy. No heavy impact or far even if you are tired.