Training 12/30/13-12/31/13 and acro abbreviations

Just realized I've been tracking my training for quite a while in my personal notebook but haven't posted anything here. My new year's resolution is to blog a bit every day because I have a lot of experience writing but I never do it for myself and there are lot of important ideas that I've failed to express to a (potentially wider audience).
SO here's the last 2 days
12/30/13

W. Pull Ups 1x3x50, 1x4x35,1x5x25,
Dips 3x6xBW working back up with the weight due to layoff
Cleans 3x5x135
Deadlifts 3x5x245
Rows 3x3xBW
Mobilize 1 hour- lacrosse ball, and regular ol' stretching, working toward splits, and fixing up squat, etc.
Handstand press ups bent arm
Cycle 6 miles
Not much today as far as parkour goes. I feel like I have to avoid more dynamic movements after the clean, If i do anything after weight training days it should be climbing or swimming or balance oriented with PK
12/31/13
Cycle 12 miles total
acrobatics (2 hours)
FF (fronflips)
Backtucks(BT)
Russian FF
Roundoff (RO) rebounds
Backhandsprings (BHS)
RO-BHS-BT
RO-BHS-Back Pike (BP)
RO Arabians(A)
Backfulls(BF) off mini tramp
acro conditioning
Hanging leg lifts (HLL) 3x6
arch rocks 3x20
hops with 10lb weight (for FF takeoff) 3x20
Situps on parallel bars 3x6
shoulder extensions with 10lb weight for rehab and RFF
hollow rocks 3x10 barely, I suck at these and really need to learn more abdominal tension for this particular shape since the hollow position is so important for acro
handstand hops + snapdowns 3x10 started doing this on panel mats to have a better landing position for the snapdown
bridges 3 x 30s
alot of abbreviations here but I've gotten used to it in my notes and don't feel like changing my ways just yet.
Happy New Year!!

Rehabbing Years of a Sedentary Lifestyle

     I was wrong. I was wrong to stop the structured strength training that made me strong. It's okay though. The freedom of just moving and training was nice for awhile, until I had a harder time climbing up something, or a drop was a little harder than it ought to be, or when a rotation did not spin as fast as it should have. Or when the guy on the fixie bicycle zoomed right by me as I fiddled with my gear shifter. So instead of just freestyling it, I've gone back to adding in more structured strength training sessions. In retrospect, I'm not sure what I expected. Strength training is like wearing special armor with anti gravity rocket boosters that enhance the skills I perform. Without the armor, I still know how to perform my skills, but have a harder and harder time doing them because of lacking strength. The "russian" approach I was going for before may work for others still, but not for my body apparently.
    I've seen it hundreds of times in the students that I teach. I have a whole class of about 7 kids and a new one arrives. Not only does this kid find everything that we have been practicing for months to be super easy, but he/she is able to do things that none of the other kids will be able to do for months to come. I've had a 6 year old come in who could almost do a manna and a 17 year old who can do a 55"+ box jump. Some people just start out with phenomenal strength and fast twitch epicness. Imagine my ego ripped to shreds when I find out that my 17 year old jumper has never even touched a weight before and has just been jumping as he would naturally jump. How lovely it would be if this could work for everyone. I have another friend who could do a pull up with over 100lbs attached to the waist without ever having seriously trained weighted pull ups, only basic climbing. It's confusing examples like this that led me to think that doing all this weight training and BW calisthenics stuff is a waste of time that I could be spending just training parkour and getting stronger doing what I love to do. I was sorely mistaken.
   It's not so obvious from my first person perspective. From the inside, the ego i had built up from the years of improvement told me that I was special, that I was different from the rest of the sedentary people just starting out parkour. To be honest, I am now, but I started out just like them, super sedentary, drinking lotsss of soda, watching movies, and playing video games all day. Then I started training basic movement and getting stronger. I experimented with many different ways of training. I found weight training. Deadlifts, weighted squats, weighted pull ups, weighted dips. I got pretty damn strong but was also training a lot of parkour at the same time. I would be resentful of my weight training sometimes because it would not allow me to train parkour as much as I wanted to. Even though my landings and jumps felt more solid than ever, seeing others succeed without the weights pushed me toward that more natural approach. That approach ended up with me in a weaker position than I had been in years past.
     From the outside perspective, my cognitive bias is clear. I looked toward the outliers of the parkour practitioner population for advice on what I should do. I'm an outlier in several ways, but not when it comes to natural strength. I've got none and have had to fight for every ounce of what I do have which seems to be the case for most people. I think it might have something to do with not living a very active lifestyle at a young age. I always ran around and climbed things I guess, but I gradually lost that throughout my years in high school and only really kept up with skateboarding until I found running and parkour. The "more natural" approach had a very large break in the process. I think that if I had continued my parkour exploits from the time I was six to now, I could be incredibly strong without having ever touched a weight. But I'm still doing rehab for the years that I've spent couped up in my room watching kung fu movies and chomping on abba zabbas.
     One invaluable lesson I did learn from stopping the weight training and focusing on the body was all the biomechanical issues that I had. Training to correct these issues before getting back into weight training has been quite useful. Again, had I been training as I should have since I was 3 or so, I wouldn't have any biomechanical issues. Hopefully people can train their kids from an early age so that they won't face the same problems that so many parkour people have to rehab now.

how the matrix inspired me

I must have been like 10 years old when The Matrix came out but it was such an epic movie, I kept watching it over the years along with the sequels. It had just enough philosophical insight and healthy fight scenes to influence my life. One concept that really inspired me was the idea that there is more to life than what one is given. There is this idea that Neo is capable of more than what his rule driven world suggests. More specifically it was his physical capability that he realizes he can push. The body is not just for walking around, eating noodles, and pushing papers. I probably got into parkour for this reason. In the beginning I was quite idealistic about my potential. I thought anything was possible and always pushed my limits. I still have a little of that idealism in me now, but it is tempered by the knowledge of progression I managed to get earlier on. I mean it was obvious I had to start strength training when I saw some of my peers learning in a day what it took me years to progress to.
     The movie also inspired me to think more philosophically about things and eventually to pursue a degree in philosophy. I think it's important to live a philosophy laden life. There should be deep reasoning for why we do what we do. We should all investigate our motivations and uproot our most basic assumptions in order to grow past our earlier confusion. I'll post more parkour philosophy stuff when i get a chance.

Parkour Experiment

     So i'm experimenting with my training by stopping all deliberate conditioning. This includes classical approaches involving reps and sets, periodization, deloading, volume, interval training. I want to throw most of the exercise theory out the window for a little bit. I'm not throwing out obviously helpful principles involving technique, efficiency, and mobility but I feel like parkour is a different approach altogether. The more we get sucked into the "exercise and fitness" world the more we lose the playful spirit of moving one's body.
     My greatest gains in strength came from pursuing skills with a constant enthusiasm. High frequency training of skills resulted in some damn good conditioning despite not doing any other kind of conditioning. There is going to be a lot of carryover in this kind of approach. For example, if I work on muscle ups for a while without bothering with counting reps, it is still the case that reps have occurred and if one were to observe the total volume of muscle up training, we would get a figure that accords with my current fitness level. This works so much better than a cookie cutter routine or another rep scheme prescription that I'll probably fail due to being too tired, unmotivated, and or bored with said rep scheme. I've come to the conclusion that this is a better path due to my own experience with it in the past. Ever since I got on with the weight training and other static conditioning protocols i've felt the slow death of my training coming on. It has only increased with having to bike everywhere and working at gyms to teach and train parkour. I don't get out as much as I used to and that's such an important part of parkour.
     It also helps to see that some of the best people out there probably don't even know how to spell periodization (at least not in english). These, ahem, russians, train constantly to achieve certain skills. They do some bar calisthenics but even then it's quite free form. I'm going to give this approach a month or so and see how it goes. The nicest thing about it is that I feel like I don't have to wait anymore to work on certain skills. I was trying to get some perfect muscle ups by increasing my pull up capacity to twenty solid reps (I got to 17).  I realize now that I just have to work on the specific details. Parkour is not bodybuilding or powerlifting. The physique and strength should come as a side affect of the training. It does no practitioner any good to get that mixed up and start focusing on all the numbers rather than movements themselves. That's what 'm thinking right now anyways. I might be completely wrong about this but time will tell. I'll be training every day working on different aspects of my discipline.

Edit: So I've posted why I was wrong  in: Rehabbing Years of a Sedentary Lifestyle

It's been awhile

For the last year or so a lot of things have happened with training and life. Some updates:
-Finished school
-Got Married
-Started working at FreeFlow Academy training kids to be awesome
-Stopped weight training
-Went vegan

So that's a lot of change in a relatively short time. I haven't stopped training parkour and acro but the volume has gone down. This last week has been a rest week. I bike everywhere so my stamina is pretty good and I recover a lot quicker. I like challenging people with acro stuff especially the gymnastics coaches at the other gym I work at because they are much more advanced. I can go longer with combos and recover much quicker due to my conditioning though. Stamina/conditioning/aerobic endurance is a crucial component of parkour training but is often neglected for short burst high powered tricks. Just long enough to get video of it. Anyways, I'm continuing this blog as a general training idea bouncer offer, tutorial, and life log . I've made a lot of observations and changes in my training that need to be logged. More coming soon.

Just Bike

Stop driving around people! if you live within 10 miles of your workplace, there's pretty much no good reason for why you should be driving a huge car, especially by yourself. I bike everywhere and I hardly see anyone else on bikes when I go out. When I am stopped at a light, however, I watch car after car speed on by with carrying only one occupant. Giant SUVs, hummers, and some raised trucks. I would be amazed if it wasn't so frustrating and sad. People are having problems with keeping weight off, stress, insomnia, anger, depression, etc. It could all be handled with a nice little bike ride. I often find it takes a little less than twice the time to get somewhere on a bike than it does to drive due to the traffic. Sometimes I can get somewhere in about the same amount of time or sooner. it's often even faster than a bus.

Downside of vehicles: -a vehicle sucks up money even without you driving it(insurance,registration, towing...)
-gas costs a fuckton, you're burning money every time you drive
-cost of maintenance is insane -disconnects you from the environment around you as you speed by at an unnatural 60mph pace
-disconnects from others around you. all it takes to shut others out is a quick window roll up. people aren't people anymore, just giant metal beasts who don't know what they're doing
-pollutes the environment both visually and actually

 Some Benefits of vehicles:
-can go longer distances faster, with multiple people
-emergency situation helper outer

Benefits of the bike:
-get some exercise in and strengthen heart, lungs, etc
-connect with people and the environment -get some fresh air and sun -save tons of money (can buy a good bike for under $500)
- doesn't cost you a thing every time you ride it. the money you save you can spend on fresh fruit with money to spare -get to show that you respect the environment with your actions rather than just talking about it

Downsides of biking:
-if you're an athlete it will take a bit of time to adjust to the extra conditioning
-it will take longer to go further and you may have to depend on others for longer trips, like camping trips. but not necessarily if you're willing to put the work in.
-sweating (eat a cleaner diet and you don't have to worry about smell though)

 Anyways a lot of the downsides that come with biking can really just be construed as benefits. It's good to slow down a bit and not get sucked into the uber fast paced, stressed out, gas guzzling world of automobiles. If you can run or walk that's even better than biking. Remember if your body works, use it. It's a privilege to be able to use your body. Don't neglect it.