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)
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:
So this is the first benchmark in my flexibility updates. The pictures below are some of the key stretches that need work. (the pillows are to stop friction between my feet and the floor)
Below is a front split, with the left leg leading and right behind. This is my current max.
This is another front split except this time my right leg is leading and left behind. The lack of flexibility caused by my tibial fracture and ripped tendon/hamstring muscle in China is evident in the right leg. After the first month of the injury I was starting to get full extension back, and it has needed a lot of stretching to get this far. It lost about 80% mobility (extension and flexion) for about 1-2 weeks after the injury.
This is a box/chines/side split. I am about 8 inches or so from the floor.
This is just showing hamstring flexibility, ultimate aim is to get head to toes, but im not sure if my body is long enough, otherwise, this is about as far as i can get in this stretch. Just need to progress it through front splits training and other more demanding stretches.
My bridge is diabolical. Its really terrible. My back extension and shoulder flexibility are by far my weakest areas. They need a lot of work. So hopefully with this picture and can look back sometime when i can actually do decent bridges and be happy. Main thing with this is my shoulder flexibility, it really prevents me from pushing out and up.
Ok, so the aim is to post up new flexibility every 1/2 months to track progress. I aim to move beyond this current state of flexibility. At the moment its acceptable for maintenance and for general health, but I would like to achieve full range of motions with my muscular system, so need more training. My main methods of stretching are gentle ballistic (lol contradiction), a little dynamic, PNF, static and passive. I would say I need to practice mostly dynamic and PNF stretching to start making better gains.
Yay, after practicing these every now and then in the gym, I tried them in an empty mall and nailed some rotations. First decent mills on a hard floor. Things that i need to correct are wider legs, lower legs, and less stabbing. But I am happy with them at the moment and will work on them. Just trying to build a little repetoire of power moves, but honestly i dont practice them enough to make any real progress so this is a bit of motivation for me.
Also achieved a slow, no momentum muscle up today on some scaffolding after being inspired to train it from seeing blane in the new TT video. So thats another skill i will be pushing to achieve, hopefully I will have it more consistent in the near future.
Ok, to start things off I have a few of pictures, namely a tuck planche, front lever and a v-sit. So I have been working on the tuck planche quite casually for about 2 months or so and have got a max hold down of about 25 seconds, but the legs start to drop near the end.
My maximum hold for this is 15 secs, give or take a few seconds either side, which means I have a lot of work to do on both holds. Good progressions for this exercise is to work from l-sit upwards, slow and controlled raising and lowering, which is also a good exercise in itself. Leg raises from a bar are good also, but you also need strong triceps to stop you from falling backwards, you can see mine are really trying to hold out in the picture below.
Right, the front lever is another gymnastic technique which requires a lot of strength. At the moment I can hold this position for a modest 3 seconds at best, but with straddle legs, a while longer, 5-10 seconds maybe. So to work this up, you can start like a tuck planche, legs into chest, then straight back, then straddle, until finally straight legs. Even more extreme are one arm front levers, or with a kettle bell in one hand etc. So I didn't have enough room here for straddle FL, so here is my full but short FL.
Toward the end of this clip I begin to dip my hips involuntarily. This is because my muscles start to tire, but the beginning is good form and is what I am aiming to achieve for a longer time.
These techniques provide a good staple of strength training, the full body tension tires the muscles fast, but progress is relatively fast with diligent practice (something i need to take up with these exercises). So I'll be tracking my progress on these exercises over the next months on here, hopefully making gains in the not so distant future.
Give or take a few seconds either side:
TUCK PLANCHE: 25 secs
V-SIT: 15 secs
FRONT LEVER: (straight leg) 3 secs (straddle) 6
