Ten Jallenges.

 

It was meant to be a day of much sun, cold with a wind but sunny nevertheless. That is what the weather forecast had predicted, though like each weekend it is the complete opposite! I woke up early and got ready, I couldn’t wait to be out this weekend for some reason. The last time I was out had left a bitter taste in my mouth [1] but for today I had my passion back for movement. Well, that was until some unexplained, unwanted explosive diarrhoea had come on and left me glued to the fecal splattered toilet seat. Just what I needed before going out… James was feeling a bit injured but was still going to head out. Even though I was running late, had emptied my bowels, I still had stomach ache and wondered if to risk it. I started to feel a bit better and then got a lift to town, which shaved off time waiting for public transport. Everyone was still at Plaza warming up, but it was cold, much colder than I expected it to be.

Micheal was out again this weekend, the same fro-friendly chap that had come along to the blue themed [2] training. I had assumed that he was from Derby, seeing as he used to be out at the same time they were. Yet, he wasn’t from there at all and instead from Burton Upon Trent. He was wearing some Feiyue shoes [3] too. What a brave, brave guy for wearing those while out training. Even though, I went through a phase of liking them for training myself, many years ago and they always seemed to pull the sole of my feet. This led to us talking about shoes and what people prefer to wear while out training. I tried to get warm by moving around and doing some skipping. Phil arrived, he seemed to be in a rather jolly mood for training today, it reminded me of the times gone by when we would always be training together. Minus the silliness and banter, as I’d like to think we have somewhat matured these days.

 

Zade – Portrait.

 

James arrived, as did others, slowly but surely. I didn’t mind being at Plaza today (I know right?) for once and I was okay with this. Practising kong precisions with Phil, James and the others. Trying to sort out my own technique with them, as they were currently not feeling as good as they should. James was getting them, but he wanted to have them consistently each weekend as well as going through the various ways people did them. I think we confused him a bit when Phil would do them one way, then the rest of us had different ways to generate power and how we did them as a whole. You had two parts to do them on the medium sized wall, each between the shrubs. The left side you had to run along uneven ground, while the right side was close to the diagonal wall overhead. Which you didn’t hit your head on, but it put most off doing it there due to thinking that, that would happen. It was interesting to do on them both sides, trying to get more comfortable with the movement again.

We ended up moving over to IBM. The slabs were still dotted around the area from a previous RAW video (seen below). We used the existing ones for a small run, with everyone giving it a go. Then we created variations to it, like Phil doing a tic tac off the wall and people skipping slabs and spinning while sitting on the wall were all creativity of the run. There were so many possibilities, most found it hard to turn quickly on one slab due to the sharp direction change. It was something which pulled the ol’ legs and groin. It was funnier as the more we tried to be precise, the worse we became. Oh and Pete couldn’t stride them, what the hell? James was busy doing standing cats to the wall, where he has previously done it as a running precision. Perhaps he was preparing for the Audo same level catleap?

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.