Thirteen

Thirteen, fuckin' A.

Leg update - skin has superficially grown back to the surface now and it feels a lot stretchier, but it's not healed over completely or anything - still a lot of damage beneath the skin which is getting repaired, but it definitely looks a lot healthier than when I did it.

I ate really late tonight, so my session revolved around a lot of stuff to strengthen my wrists and forearms - Working shoulders tomorrow morning at the gym, with chest this morning + last night.  Figure it best to let them rest and it gives me a chance to focus on an area I tend to neglect.

Warm up

21 unweighted wrist curls, moving to 2kg for 21
21 unweighted reverse wrist curls, moving to 2kg for 21

Main session

21 4kg weighted wrist curls,
21 4kg weighted reverse wrist curls
x3

It was once again a tiny session - keeping my training isolated from what I'm doing at the gym the next morning means I can't do as much as I'd like to whilst my legs aren't open for operation.  Once my leg heals I'll be doing a lot more parkour related + compound exercises so I can get some more trennin in.

How things are going so far

Still pretty pissed I wrecked my leg, so at the moment I feel mostly like I'm bolting on an extra work out routine onto my day instead of doing specific parkour training, but hopefully once it's healed I can get past this.  It's becoming a lot easier mentally to do it now, I find that doing this from 9 - 10pm has really helped my motivation for it, and it's giving me the boost to look for better things to do earlier in the day so I can go a little harder.

Next week on Monday and Tuesday I'm up in Stoke on Trent working so those two days are going to be quite interesting!  Hopefully my leg will have healed plenty by then so I can at least go out and work a couple of vaults, if not I'll stick it up for an hour or two at the uni gym.  We'll see!

- Freff

Twelve

Twelve.  YEAH.

Saw a marked improvement in my leg today - no limp and the bruise seems to have healed.  The only problem with it now is overextension which seems to be stretching the skin a little further than it's healed yet.  Hopeful to have it healed mostly by the weekend / within the week so I can get back to proper training.

So today, once again, was an upper body day.

Warm up

40 sit ups
20 crunches
60 sit ups
6kg dumbell bench each arm, 21.  Moving to 9kg for 15 x2

Main session

ALL OF THE PRESSUPS.

Press ups to failure, 2 min rest - 10, 6, 8, 6, 2.

Leg started aching a little bit after this, so I decided not to push my luck and ended it there.

In other news I'm starting to put together my "This is my week" spreadsheet so you guys can see what I'm doing most days and where I'm trying to fit this training in.  Hopefully will have it by the weekend.

- Freff.

Days Three - Eleven.

So I posted day two, then forgot for three and it has persisted until now.

I've forgotten pretty much most of the things I did, so this is mostly a high level overview.

Monday - Friday was mostly my normal routine for exercise, fitting in as many parkour related exercises as possible.  Seemed to go okay.

Saturday I went out with some of the guys from Soton to do some parkour round town.  It was a great experience, now got some guys to meet up with weekly and get some tips from and it was good just hitting the walls again.

Eventually I took that a little too literally - I set myself the challenge of strides ( which I'm awful at ), tried going from bench to bench to wall.  The first two went fine - on the wall I planted my left where it slipped out and my right leg went straight into the wall.  Tore out a nice chunk of flesh, ending my session.

Sunday I decided best to take off completely and let my body repair itself.  Don't want this injury hovering around longer than it needs to.

Yesterday, day 10, I went to the gym and focussed on chest - upper body is generally one of my weakest areas,  so I've been pushing a lot in it lately to improve.

And this brings me to today, I did this :

Warm up -

4kg lat raise, 21 reps each side, moving up to 6kg for 15 reps.
6kg bicep hammers for 21, moving up to 9kg for 15 reps.
40 sit ups, 20 crunches.
6kg Goku punch, 21 reps, moving up to 9k for 15 reps

Main -

Speed sit ups - 84 in 2 minutes.

Three sets wide pull ups to failure, 2 min spacing.  4 reps, 3 reps, 3 reps
Three sets wide chin ups to failure, 2 min spacing.  4 reps, 4 reps, 3 reps
Three sets close pull ups to failure, 2 min spacing.  3 reps, 3 reps, 1 rep
Three sets close chin ups to failure, 2 min spacing. 3 reps, 3 reps, 4 reps



That was it really, tris + lats are toast after my pull ups.  Will be doing this set every two or three days as I really need to work on those areas.

I'm going to start putting together a post on the rest of my training - what I'm training for, how I'm training for it, what I'm eating, full schedules if I feel like it.  Will be helpful for me as well so I can find out where I can squeeze more hours out of my day to train parkour, as I feel quite rushed at the moment when I'm training it.

Anyway, sorry for the lack of updates!  Will make sure there's one tomorrow.

-Freff.

Day two

Another house session today, still doing a lot of conditioning so I can hit town hard next week.  The original plan was to do handstand training + start learning the webster, which isn't strictly parkour, but I like the move and a little bit of flair never hurt anyone.

My efforts were a little hampered after doing a little damage to my wrist in the first couple of handstand attempts, so I decided I'd switch things up and start training rolls.  They're coming along okay, I've started getting my shoulder in the right place now so it doesn't smash into the ground most of the time.

I've also started training pistol squats, at first I was only doing it for some added squat challenge but now I realise that my balance is way off and they're helping a hell of a lot.  I think in the dying hours of the day I'll see if I can train rolls a little more and then do some general balance training.  

Tomorrow is gong to be tough - I'm in my job 9 - 5, then Mondays after work I usually code with a games group.  Since I'll be out of the house from 8am to 11pm, I think I'll try and get to the gym at work and use some of the mats to train rolls, then see if I can't find any way to link in some training at any other time in the day.

We'll see how it goes!

Freff.

Day one.

Don't jump onto footrests kids, it doesn't end well for anyone involved.

So today was the first day of the year and I'm still trying to get my head around what I've just gotten involved with.  It was definitely odd - usually Saturdays are a complete rest day for me, so headed out and doing what I did, as little as it was, was a shock to the system.

I thought I'd start the year off by heading into town to see if anything I used to know had stuck, it hadn't.  I ended up practising some basic rail vaults before moving on to the stairs to work on jumping technique.  Once it started getting dark I hit the gym for a quick core session then came back home to work on precision jumps with the most hacked together equipment I could find - some shelves out of a kitchen cupboard and a footrest.

It was a very basic drill - jump from one shelf to the other, then again onto the footrest ensuring I was planted each jump.  It was going well before the legs in the footrest gave out, which ended the session.  I think tomorrow I'll get outside and see if I can't find anywhere to train them instead of the house.

Highlights

Breaking the footrest,

Was great to get going, getting excited for tomorrow.

Downsides

Breaking the footrest,

Getting back to find I can't remember much.

Tomorrow I think I'll be doing an early morning session if everything is looking okay, for now I think I'll watch Rocky.

Freff.

Parkour 365

Starting Saturday 12th November 2011, Frankie Shrieves and I will be embarking on the parkour 365 challenge - I will commit to an hour of training each day ( on top of other training ) then document, video, picture, give samples of torn clothing, every session for the world to see for 365 days, ending on the 12th of November 2012.


I'll probably focus on these things:


Content,
When/Where,
How it felt on top of other training.


Big points of the year:


Tankuary,
Run every day in January + First marathon,
Iron Man.


Goals:


5% body fat,
Pistol squats,
hand stand push ups,
learn to parkour,
Become better.




Anyone is welcome to join!  Doesn't have to be an hour a day, can be as much or as little as you like, just get out there and enjoy it!  My first day is Saturday, I'll probably be in and around town looking for some places, if you're in the Soton area I'd love to see you there too.