19.11.06

Sponsored Cat Crawl



Decided that I am going to do a sponsored cat crawl some time early next year for my dads charity
  • New foundations
  • .
    So yeah, ive started training every weekday morning at about 8ish for 30 mins before lectures around a field in front of my hall.
    Aiming to do about 3 miles for the actual crawl, not sure where, cambridge or london i think.
    Anyway, so thats something im currently training for as i was thinking of ways to help people through training.

    1.11.06

    Focus

    First post for a fair while, just thought I would update so that people thought i wasn't dead/not training.
    The knee is improving a lot and I have been able to move onto more impact related movements recently, but still keeping up with rehab 3 times a week at the gym.
    When I got here it was pretty exciting, and i wanted to start learning so much, so i took up Breaking and bouldering. Only last week did i stop breaking to concentrate on parkour as my main discipline, a decision made after much thinking since i enjoyed it so much, but in the long term, its no good. I dont want to be average at a few things, so I am back on focus with parkour.
    The course is going well, very intensive with a lot of work set every week and doing about 20-30 hrs a week of it, but luckily i enjoy it a lot and there are some cool people on the course.
    Went with Blane, Rip, timmylee and yakob to perform and teach at 'White Air Extreme Sports Festival' last weekend. I wasn't such a fan of performing as I was for teaching and thoroughly enjoyed helping people to learn. The weekend was really enjoyable though, and DC held it down by himself for 3 days before we all arrived so much kudos to him. Hopefully get some photographs soon and more info up at www.teamtraceur.com
    Finally got a fairly rigid schedule down for the week in terms of training which is as follows (not including lectures and study). The gym includes about 40 mins of rehab, strength exercises(pullups,dips etc to failure on all), running(fartlek/interval OR longer steady sessions) Gymnastic Basics are handstands, presses, planche, front/back levers:

    Monday: Climbing, Gymnastic Conditioning, Leg Rehab
    Tuesday: Stretching, Core, Climbing, Leg conditioning,
    Wednesday: Climbing, Gymnastic Conditioning, Leg Rehab
    Thursday: Intensive stretching 1/2hrs, Leg conditioning, parkour conditioning(Hell night) 3hrs
    Friday: Climbing, Gymnastic Conditioning, Leg Rehab
    Saturday: Parkour conditioning, Non impact training
    Sunday: Leg conditioning, Gym session in Leeds(acro/conditioning)

    Also purchased a 20kg weight vest from reebok wich I wear everytime i go to the gym to train, but currently just on about 10kg and will slowly work up to avoid injury.
    Also, my dad and I are now on the waiting list for the Marathon Des Sables for 2009, so running is essential at the moment.
    The parkour conditioning nights are inspired by Blane's 'Hell nights' which is 3-4 hrs of solid conditioning with many of his fellow comrades throwing up in the process!
    Anyway, enjoy the below picture!
    Ninja backflip in club ;)

    21.9.06

    Uni etc,

    Well its my 6th day at uni, and its cool so far. Been climbing at the local bouldering wall and going to the local gym which may i add is awesome. Also met some wicked guys, just taking a bit longer to meet people who are into as much training as i like. But yeah, starting breaking again as there is a local crew here and regular practice sessions that they do so im well looking forward to that. But man does my chinese course sound hard as helL!! they expect about 40 hours of study a week!! Damn its rediculous.... But anyway, main reason i am posting is cos two days ago i did my first proper one arm chin! Just my right arm but i got right up to full flexion from dead hang so im well happy. I warmed up first by doing loads of negatives and lockouts with alternate chins before resting then trying one arms, i got to 90 degrees flexion on my left, so i gotta get that to catch up, but anyway yeah. Knee is still really really shit, not really improved, but i am writing a proper training schedule for it to get it on top form, otherwise its just random rehab here and there with nothing concrete.
    Happy training everyone,

    14.9.06

    Presses and pullups

    Just a quick video showing what i am up to in the last 2 days before uni....dear me.
    Well for about a year i have had a really inconsistent 1 arm pullup on my right side only, usually not getting past 90 degrees. So i thought i should work them properly on both sides so i started using the towel technique to build up and negatives. Also my handstand presses are much better, i have tuck planche press all the time, straddle lift and occassionally pike lift so i need to get to work on that more as well. The tuck planche position before the press is really quite shabby on here but i am tired from gym sesh yestarday and reps before i filmed.......excuses eh.
    PS: i am spitting out a pen on the pullups lol

    11.9.06

    Mat and Jin Cycle trip

    Statistics:
    Days: 5
    Days Cycling: 2.5
    Punctures: 4
    Brake tampering: 2 hours
    New wheel
    Buckled wheel repair
    Brake repair
    Broken light

    Just got back in after a 5 day trip away from home. Basically, Jason and liv are now living in Canterbury (south east) so I wanted to go and see them. So I rang them up and said i wanted to come and see them this weekend and said i'd just get the train down on friday or something, and they said ok sounds cool. Then later that day, I thought why not cycle there instead? So on tuesday I phoned up my mate, Mat, who knows jason and liv also and asked if he was up for it and the first thing he said was...."sounds like hassle". But it took little pursuasion to convince him to come, so on wednesday i went to town with him to sort out stuff to bring, the first thing i needed to buy was a bike! So i got a cheap second hand one, which i can aslo take to uni.
    After buying inner tubes, a pump, lights etc we went back to mats house where we planned the route on the A-Z map we bought and multimap on the net, then went to bed. The next morning we spent about an hour and a half fixing up mats bike then set off on our 140 mile trip with about 10-15kg each on our backs and minimal knowledge of bike maintenance. It took us about an hour to get to our first stop, Royston, at which point we realised how much harder this was going to be after getting there fairly aching. My wheel had busted so we had to find a local bike shop, and he managed to get the wheel fixed, meanwhile we waited an hour practicing handstands and consuming chocolate and lucozade and stocking up. After paying 25quid for my new wheel, we set off again to bishop stortford.
    We arrived after about 2.5 hours of cycling, reaslising that Mat had been cycling with a flat tire for about 6 miles up hills. So needless to say we went to sit down and eat something, by which point it was about 2/3pm. After getting some bananas for cramps on the BASTARD hills, we went back to the bikes to fix mats puncture by changing the innertube. After 20 mins we set off, but mats brakes didnt work for some reason! So we then spent about 1 hour fiddling about trying to figure out what the hell to do cos we didnt have a clue. We finally got them to work to an extent and thought we should carry on to Chipping Ongar. So with the amount of weight, hills and heat i think we were burning about 800-1000 calories an hour, and basically topping these up with boosts, mars bars, flap jacks, kit kats and lucozades. We couldnt really find any decent long acting carbohydrates in the local corner stores and i needed the fast acting sugar to keeping my blood glucose levels from dropping dangerously low. We stopped at Chipping Ongar at about 5/6ish to eat and drink something, at which point i was starting to get cramps in my quads when going up the hills. Then we set off for Brentwood to find somehwere to sleep. I forgot to mention, we brought a two man tent with the intent of sleeping in some random field or woods along the way, with no planning for sleeping anywhere excepte somehwere random and isolated.
    It began to get dark at about 8:00 and Mat got another puncture! So we had to find a small path in the country lanes and do an innertube change in the dark, with a torch to see with, which took about 30 mins. At this point it was getting fairly cold and we were getting quite tired after a collective of about 7 hours cycling for 40 miles. It was really the wieght of the bags and the rediculous inclines that were taxing. So we decided to cycle on till we found somewhere to sleep, and we saw a campsite sign after 10 mins of cycling. So we followed it and found a really great campsite at 8:30 in Kalvedon Hatch and pitched up after paying the really nice owners a fiver each. They gave us the number for a chinese take away and we ordered some chow mein, and were eating it by about 9:45! That was seriously sweet, and there were shower blocks and toilets! Amazing we though, what awesome luck, we can shower and we dont have to take a crap in some bush! We then went to bed feeling very content and tired.
    In the morning, mats brakes were playing up again, so we took about 30 mins sorting it out with the help of a fellow camper. So after using our previous days tops as towels, we showered and packed up and were out at about 9. We cycled to Brentwood after 10 miles and then mats brakes locked the back wheel completely, so we had to find a bike shop and wait an hour and a half for them to fix the brakes, practicing handstands again hehe.
    Our next target was Dartford crossing, to cross over the border and into Kent. It took about 4 hours to get close and then we came to some very scary dual carriage ways, and unfortunately i got a puncture so we were walking along the side with huge lorries and trucks screaming past. It took about 40 mins of walking to get to a petrol station where we got a flap jack, double decker and lucozade to replenish our energy. I spent about an hour changing the innertube and messing around with the brakes until we finally got on our way to reach the crossing about 20 mins later. We were driven across by the "crossing Control" and went on to cycle further south. Our aim for the day was to get to Sittingbourne, about 20 miles from Canterbury where we would find somewhere to sleep for the 2nd night. So we went on for another 5 hours or so cycling when it started to get dark, about 20 miles from Sittingbourne, so we went to a tesco and bought some food for the evening.
    We thought at this point we should find somewhere to camp since it was about 7 getting dark. Switching on our lights and with food in our bags for the evening we set off to find a place to sleep for the evening. We were travelling on A-roads almost the whole way and this one was cutting through every village and town so we were not finding anywhere to sleep at all, but we kept shouting "just keep going we need to find somewhere!". We had already decided we were not going to make it to Sittingbourne since it was dark so we were really trying to just find somehwere to sleep. We were really going as fast as we could at this point, cutting through villages and towns desperately trying to find a wood or field. It was dark at this point and despite the fact we couldnt find anywhere we were feeling amazing, we had pushed through the fatigue to a new kind of energy and were going really really fast, powering up hills and just slicing through traffic, we were both shouting to each other how amazing we felt and just going "yyeeeeeeeeehaaaaa!!!!" down the hills and through traffic, it was amazing and we were both really amped.
    Suddenly, we came to a town and saw a sign at about 9pm that said Sittingbourne, we were like "no WAY! how the hell did we get here! we must have been cycling for at least 2 hours, we have covered 20 miles!!". We then saw a public footpath which we took for about 600 metres in PITCH black, pointing our lights at the ground to watch out for pot holes. We came out into a village road which was really dark with no lights, and we both mentioned how creepy this was with our meager bike lights, and we were now really trying to find somehwere to sleep. It was about 9:45 and we were thinking what the hell can we do, so we came across a big house and mat said we should ask where the owner of all the land lives so we can ask if we can sleep somewhere, as we couldnt find anyway to get past the bushes and fences with our bikes. So we knocked on this huge houses door in the middle of nowhere to be answered by a rather aprehensive woman, who called her husband. We explained the situation and he said we could sleep in their back garden, trying to convince his wife who just looked shocked and walked away, at which point we were insisting it was fine and we didnt want to impose. But he lead us round into his garden where we set up the tent about 20 metres from the house. It felt very wierd but we were very thankfull for his generosity and got into our tent to eat our sardines and bread, thn getting into our sleeping bags and falling asleep at about 11pm. We woke up about 10 times because it was rediculously cold, i had ALL my clothes on from my bag, shorts, trousers, beanie, tees jumper socks, and i was FREEZING.
    We set off at about 7:30am after having a kit kat and left a thankyou note for the family, his son saw us emerging from the garden and put his face to the window in awe, thinking "what the heck?".
    So then we set off cycling, but my tire was flat and i had to change the inner tube after about 20 mins of cycling, at which point we had some peanut butter and honey sandwhiches, and also came up with the ingenious idea of mixing honey and peanut butter to make a super energy paste to dunk or kit kats in.
    We cycled for another 2.5 hours to finally reach canterbury after the most intense inclines we had experienced on the whole trip. We were elated when we found the sign for canterbury and thought it appropriate to get a photo standing next to it. We then found the train station where we used the toilets to relieve ourselves and then met up with jason and liv!
    The next two days we trained hung out together, which was really great seeing them before i went off to uni. Mat had a motorbike test on tuesday so we decided to gett the train back, and on monday at about 4pm, we arrived home, tired but very satisfied and happy with ourselves.

    Planning the trip route


    Handtsand at royston while waiting for wheel replacement

    Supplies for the trip (and tent)

    First of many bike problems

    Handstand at Bishop Stortford

    the tramp eats his food haha

    Puncture+nightime+unfamiliar place-Knowlegde-energy = FUN

    Handstands at the campsite

    Handstands while waiting at Brentwood for mats bike repair


    Scary ass dual carriage way near the Dartford crossing

    The fun continues! The pertol station at dartford crossing.

    The knife we used for eating, fixing, and living. Cleaned with an old sock and saliva. you think im joking...

    Beautiful view at the top of a BASTARD hill


    Peanut butter kit kat dipped in honey and peanut butter mix, the king of health food.

    Mat morphs into some kind of Humanimal when reaching for the spanner

    Mission accomplished.

    hello.

    Training on the goal post with techniques Jason brought back from the guys in lisses.

    Cat crawl down posts

    Muscle up combo

    pals

    pals v.2

    on the way home.

    21.8.06

    Change of Direction

    Ok so its 5pm and i have just finshed training for the day. Meanwhile a bunch of my friends are in Lisses, which should be really cool with the people who are there, im looking forward to see the pics and video footage when they get back. Bit gutted i'm not with them, but I had the privilige of training there last year, and I am keeping myself busy anyway.
    With the knee, definately getting much better, doing rehab everyday and going to the gym to strengthen the legs. BUT, I have developed what i think to be Osgood Schlatters in the course of half a day, which has really put me out of any impact what so ever, it twinges going up and down 2 feet, so i am really resting that, pretty pissed about it because thats two knee injurys, fractured tibia and strained ligaments all on the same leg, whilst the left is so damn good. Well what can you do but work with what you have, so I am trying to get much stronger legs and body, but now, also really trying to get my cardiovascular fitness a lot higher.
    Marathon Des Sables.

    Something which has really caught my imagination (before i saw jack osbourne try it) to do is an extreme endurance foot race called the "Marathon des Sables". This is a marathon in the Sahara desert in the summer which lasts 6 days, totalling 240 km, or 5.5 marathons. Its meant to be "the toughest foot race on earth" with temperatures reaching 60 degrees c. Thats rediculous. Most people who do it have toe nails drop off, wrecked feet with bad blisters and some people have even died doing it.

    A lot of people have to be put on drips from dehydration. Throughout the whole race you must carry your own food, water, sleeping bag and supplies. So thats about 10kg on top of the sand dunes, heat and sand storms. Anyway, I thought it would be amazing for me if i did it, and i would really love to, and being diabetic would make it all a better achievement for me, but also much harder. 2007/2008 are all full, so i will either try and enter 2009 or 2010. Would also like to try an Iron man trialthlon at some point, probably before im guessing but yeah, thats what im thinking about at the moment.

  • >>Marathon Info<<

  • But thats a good while off, so i am concentrating on getting strong legs and a decent level of fitness.
    Training at the moment is such:

    Monday, Friday: Leg rehab, lower body, cardio
    Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday: Stretching, Leg rehab, Upper body, core
    Wednesday: Leg rehab, lower body, cardio, basic gymnastic
    Sunday: Leg rehab, Basic gymnastic

    Eg) Today I Rowed 3km, cycled 20km, swam 2k and did leg press, leg extension/curl/adduction/abduction, glutes on resistance machines, and leg rehabilitation exercises.
    So thats my direction at the moment, I have had to put parkour on the side for a while, but the strengthening exercises i used to do im still practicing regularly each week such as muscle ups, balance, dips etc.

    6.8.06

    Knee problem

    I have for a while had a very slight niggling of my right knee which i have always suspected to be mild jumpers knee. However, after the 10k it worsened somewhat and for the past month i have been doing very very little impact training and more conditioning and balance, but after thinking it felt better, decided to do more technique practice and go to the gym to train flips. The next day it hurt a bit, and I decided enough is enough, even if its not THAT painful its obviously not good for me, so I went to a physiotherapist the next day to get it checked out, and BOY do i have more crap than i thought wrong with my leg. So after the fracture in china, I have apparently weakened all the ligaments, and something which is new to me, is that even the freakin ACL is damaged slightly! So she said there is more 'joint play' (the knee can move around more than it should) because the ligaments are not keeping it fixed in place, unlike my other knee which i love so much, i wanna clone it and get rid of the right one! But yeah, so those will never heal being ligaments and that they have little or no blood supply, so im stuck with slightly dodgy ligaments. Okay, and on top of that, I overpronate (which i already new), and that turns the knee in slightly, my right glute is weaker than the other and my right ankle is slightly more inflexible which also turns the knee in! I was pretty suprised to hear all this, you think your in ok shape then you get told this, but she says its only because of the nature of what we do, if i was an average person it wouldnt matter at all. So, she a bunch of glute exercises to do, some ankle stretching and said basically i gotta just get strong legs to compensate for the ligament damage. So now i am at the gym every two days, and doing the exercises every day, along with balance and a lot of general conditioning. Im training just as hard, but i have just shifted the angle of how i train, so there is a lot of low impact and a lot of strengthening over the next few months. So yeah, in about 3/4 weeks im gonna go back and we will see what she has to say then.
    At the moment i am at risk of osteo-arthritis if i dont get on top of the problem, so please this just shows how fragile our bodies really are in this activity and everyone must keep themselves very strong and do a LOT of basic work! Look after your bodies everyone!

    24.7.06

    New arm jump etc

    Here is a little video which is just a collection of video phone clips over the past 4 months that Owen edited impromptu style. Its me and owen with a clip of jason doing a running crane precision. The first armjump we just did for the first time today, its pretty cool 8:

    16.7.06

    Peak District trip

    Was away in the peaks from last thursday till today with mike, jason, liv and my bro. Ok, so we arrived after a 5 hour coach journey to be greeted by will and ben of SPK. Burdened by camping gear, we made our way to the first spot where we were introduced to the others such as danny. The rest of the day we were taken around some of the spots by the guys, and im happy to say that i made a good choice by picking sheffield for my university :)
    The spots are reallllly sick, we all trained from about 1ish till 7 or so before heading off to the campsite. We caught the train to a village in the peaks and walked a half hour to the site where we pitched up for the night. The leeds guys scott and MART arrived and it was cool to meet them. The next day we all walked to one of my favourite places i have ever seen, a spot with rock formations EVERWHERE. we found natural cat pass precisions, arm jumps etc, but the BEST thing was just running through the rocks like an obastcle course with speed. We then hiked a bit further to a really sublime place, a stream with rocks everywhere, dripping with oriental atmosphere and excellent weather to further the blessing, it really was an amazing place.
    Anywa, check the photos im too lazy to write, big thanks to everyone, and it was great to meet new and old friends again, and im very happy with the sheffield scene so i cant wait to start training regularly there!
    Natural cat pass to precision

    arm jump

    arm jump again

    Handstand on a rock peak

    much peoples do many trainings

    Traceurs dominating the path

    The stream with rocks.....absolutely amazing, especially when jason lit up some insence 8)

    soooo NICE!

    blam

    doesnt get much more ideal than this....

    12.7.06

    I am owned.

    Last night after watching UF3 (freaking good by the way), me and jason (sinclan) felt very inspired by it. The main thing was the repetition aspect, and since jason is round mine for a couple of months, we are both working on getting hench. So today we set ourselves some goals, which took the day to complete amongst other trainings, all in all about 8 hrs. Here are the days accomplishments:

    Jason: 510 pullups
    Jin: 250 muscle ups/planche, 100 pullups

    It was as such where we first spent about 1 hour doing sets of 5 or so reps with about 1 min rest, the occasional 5 min break, i got the muscle ups to 150, jason got the pullups to 250. We then trained balance and precisions for about 5 hours or so, then came back to complete the task in the next sitting, which was about 1.5 hours.
    So now we are fairly owned....

    2.7.06

    10km London Run 2006

    Check out the link

  • for before and after photos

  • Owen, liv, my dad, some friends and I did the London 10k today. First of neither owen liv or i have trained for this at all in any way, so we are happy we did it without much problem.
    There were about 30,000 participants today, which made the run really packed. Throughout the whole day people were at least a metre within each other, which was suprisingly ok, it was enough to keep your own pace. There were some serious mentalists, like guys running in full army gear with backpack etc, and people running in massive costumes like disney ones etc, caught a guy with the head of his costume out leaning under a bridge sweating SO much. It was about 30 degrees which did make it a bit harder, sweating a LOT.
    Overall it was a really good day, and the atmosphere was amazing, with everyone cheering each other on etc, so it was a cool day. The money was raised for my parent's charity (www.newfoundationsuk.com)
    We JUST managed to pull off a back somi within about 10 mins of finishing the run.



    Bodyfat % : 5.1 (measured by the lucozade people there)

    The kool kolour kids after at home

    15.6.06

    Ghosts in the streets...

    Me and owen went out at 2am to train in the centre of town this morning. We ended up finishing at about 4:30, just as the sun was coming up. Most of the training was balance, small jumps, climbing and tree work. In the tree, it was pitch black, so we had to move by feeling our way around. When we first got into town, there were still a few drunks lurking about, but by 3am they had almost cleared up, leaving the town deserted.
    We took photos, and filmed on owen's video phone, we didnt want the hassle of taking a proper videocamera in. We did a few new things, which was nice. You see more things when the place is deserted, probably because there is no one to distract you from training such as public/security. Very nice and surreal time to be out at, especially at this time of year when there is actuall daylight coming through, but no one around.
    Got home at about 5am and went to bed at 7, getting up at 12 to upload this. Didn't feel too bad at all which is good.
    Me and owen decided to make this a weekly/bi-weekly thing, and about 3 times a week of training from 6am. Training just during the day isn't really sufficient i dont think, you need to be able to adapt and training at various different times helps this.
    I must add to anyone who wants to do this, that I phoned the local police station to notify them of us before we went out so i obtained a reference number and recorded the call, had we been burglary suspects or something. We did have a couple of town cameras actually follow us about, just keeping an eye, as i had told them the clothes we would be wearing, so it kept us in the clear should something have happened.
    ps> song is Futureghost by Braintrax





    6.6.06

    Tricking session

    Just a small casual video of when me, jason and owen went tricking on our local park.

    31.5.06

    I.LOOK.COOL

    hahahaha, my mum found this top in the house, god knows who it belongs to, someone must have left it. But its so funny! You put it on and look like some stupid jock straight away, its the kind that those guys who go to the gym wear who are really big up top and they just smash away at the free weights, well i thought it looked funny as hell. Yes this DOES deserve a post.
    (please excuse the state of the room, things are being moved and changed)

    25.5.06

    Adventures at Dale's

    So the past 3 days I have been at Dale's flat in Lincoln training and catching up after a good while of not seeing him! We trained everyday which was really good, Dale is getting back into real training after a while of being out the loop. The spots in lincoln are pretty nice, they are not exactly full of obstacles, but the sheer volume of places to go makes up for that. So we pretty much trained all day, then chilled in the evenings maybe watching some family guy/southpark/parkour videos. On the second evening, Cecil (c-man lol) came down, and it was really good to see him after an equally long time! All in all, really good 3 days, and thanks a lot to Dale for putting me up in his room and being cool, and was really good to see you again man, you are always welcome round mine remember. :-)
    Dale looking super fly:

    Me looking awesome in Dale's room:

    Arm jump to the rail, about 10.5 feet:

    Cat precision to the higher wall, 6 feet, level:

    Precision, 9ft:

    Arm jump, 11ft

    Precision, 9 foot (scary height):

    Climbups: