In this past week I have learned a few new things and was able to enjoy a large amount of time doing many great things. Some of the things that happened are Canada Day on July 1, Parkour class on Saturday, and finding out that Cassandra from Parkour is doing her own Parkour 365, you can find it here, just like another friend of mine named Rob has done (find his Blog here)
Let us begin!
Saturday June 28, 2014 - DIVE, DIVE, DIVE!
On Saturday I went to the Breathe PK gym for the Level 1-3 class, which happened at the normal time of 11:30 to 12:30. It wasn’t pushed back this time because there wasn’t an event happening that conflicted with the class like last week where Varkour day was happening. The class had five people in it, one of whom I did not know. Austin, a young Asian boy joined us again after taking an extended break because he was suffering from pain in his knee. Luckily the worry that both Brodie, the teacher, and I had over whether or not he was really hurt was dismissed when he told us that his doctor had diagnosed the pain as just being normal teenager stuff. There was only one girl in the class this time, Isabel, because Isabel’s sister was off on vacation.
For this class we broke off into two groups, Austin and I who are level three, and the three other people who are level one. Austin and I worked on our dive rolls, which are the same thing as a forwards roll except you dive first, and the other people worked on dropping off of a box, landing and then rolling to dissipate the impact. This is a very important skill to have while when doing Parkour.
Dive rolls are one of those things that I really need to work on because I am not very good at rolling over my shoulder properly when I dive, and that can be a big problem if I went to do a dive roll on anything harder than a padded floor.
As always happens when practicing something that I am not good at minor mistakes were corrected, and the quality with which I performed the movement increased. I am still not the master of dive rolls, but any improvement is good improvement, and I will be happy with that, after all, as the Chinese Proverb says:
“Be not afraid of growing slowly, be only afraid of standing still.”
Digital pictures found here, here, and here.
Austin made some good improvements on his dive rolls, so we were proud of him for that, and the people working on the other skills made some good improvements as well, so it was a good start to the class.
The next thing that Austin and I did was work on Vaults to Precisions, while the other group worked on a different skill. The two of us started out with doing Kong’s to Precisions, Austin struggled with them a little bit because the obstacle was pretty tall compared to him, but we put an extra block in front of the obstacle to give him the extra height he needed. After doing Kong’s to Precisions for a while we moved on to using Side Vaults, and Dash vaults. I also attempted doing one Reverse vault, but that ended up being a lot harder than I thought it would be, so I will be practicing that one a lot more before doing it outside.
After we had done this for a while Brodie, the teacher, taught us something new, a reverse safety! It is basically the same thing as a Safety vault except you go over the box backwards, which is AWESOME! I got to practice this move a few times, and it is still a work in progress, but it is a move that I am going to be sure is in my repertoire.
After class had finished I pulled out my homemade granola bars, and shared them with my class mates. If you are interested in the recipe you can find the recipe I began with here.
Overall I feel that it was a very good day, I came away from the day tired, I was able to refine some of my moves, and I even learned a new move.
Monday June 30, 2014 – Parkour for Brazil
On Monday I was informed that there was a family that needed some help moving out of their house, so another guy named Bryce and I went over to their house to help them load up the U-haul truck with all of their furniture and other things. The day was hot, but we got as much into that truck as we could, despite there being a severe language barrier when conversing with the grandfather, who was in charge of the loading of the truck, because he spoke Portuguese, and very little English. The grandmother made us all a lunch of rice, beans, broccoli, eggs, and noodles to say thank you for helping, and we had a good time talking with the rest of the family while doing the move.
Part way through the day while I was talking to the youngest son and the boyfriend of the daughter of the family that we were helping move it came up that I did Parkour. After these two guys found out that I do Parkour they immediately began asking if I could do some demonstrations for them. The son asked if I could climb the side wall of the U-haul truck, and when I said that I couldn’t because there wasn’t a proper edge that I could grab to pull myself up, he and the boyfriend asked if I could demonstrate something else. So I ended up showing them how to do a Kong vault over a low wall and how to do a proper roll.
I really enjoyed showing these two young men how to do some basic Parkour because Parkour is my favorite hobby and I love sharing what I can do with people.
Art is not my strong point, I am much better at things like Physics and Chemistry, but Parkour is the art of movement, and if it is the only way of expressing myself in an artistic form then I will darn well do it!
Tuesday July 1, 2014 – Canada Day
July 1st was Canada Day, which means it’s time to hang out with friends and go do stuff. On this Canada Day I went to a swimming pool with some friends and then we all went back to my place and played Zombies!!! 11 and Twister on a homemade “board” until 10:00 at night, which was awesome. Before you start thinking “But that is so early!” I had to wake up at 5:40am the next day so that I could get to work the next day.
So the pool that we went to has a large wave pool and also has a dive tank, and we spent most of our time in the wave pool, but we went up to the dive tank at one point and while there I began thinking “I need to do a side flip into this pool, so I did just that! I did a quick practice of the walk up for the flip so that I could be sure I was familiar with the ground I was on. When I did this the lifeguard came up to me and asked me if I knew what I was doing, which I do, but it was good that she was checking to make sure that people didn’t hurt themselves. I got a round of applause from my friends after I surfaced, which made me feel good.
Once at my house we played a good game of Zombies!!! 11, ate a dinner of pizza, and then I got to experience the joy of being part of a human pretzel while playing twister. (I actually really enjoy playing twister, because I am good at it, so I make it extra difficult for myself)
Wednesday July 2, 2014 – The Day after Canada Day
On Wednesday I went to open gym at Breathe PK because I wanted to practice some of my skills. When I got there I saw someone I hadn’t seen in a while. Her name is Haley, and I met her friend named Alex if I remember correctly, Cassandra also joined us at Breathe PK so we had a grand old time doing some Parkour.
I worked on my lache’s to start with, I am working towards clearing a 2.4 meter (8 foot) lache, which is really far. I am slowly getting there, but I need to increase my upper body strength so that I can get the distance, and angle of my body, needed when I jump by giving an extra pull with my arms.
After I spent a good amount of time working on my lache's I moved on to working on my kong's, dashes and reverses. I was able to make some good progress on getting my legs up while doing my dash vaults, as that is something that I have always struggled with I see this as a great improvement.
The final thing that I did was work on my precision jumps, and did that for about 20 minutes until I was too burnt out to continue doing anything.
The final thing that I did was work on my precision jumps, and did that for about 20 minutes until I was too burnt out to continue doing anything.
It was a great day because I pushed myself to the point of not even being able to stay standing long enough to constitute a proper landing after I did a 2.4 meter (8 foot) precision jump.
The End
That is all I have for you this week, I hope you enjoyed, if you have a question or anything feel free to leave me a comment, or send me an email, or a social media message.
Quote of the week.
“No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.”
– Regina Brett
This one is pretty self-explanatory, also I am late with the post so no time to get philosophical about it, maybe at a later time I will.
Later everyone,
– Nathan Aris
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