Variety

• When changing a spot to train, your concetration increases. In other words, if you are always training on the same obstacles, you get used to it. Thus, the often you train there, the more is the opportunity to get hurt. So, the solution is to search new places to practice parkour!
• Furthermore, variety is required to keep your different muscles in the right balance. That means, they have to grow in the right relation to each other. That´s unhealthy to have a great six pack compared to a weak back without muscles.
• It is just more fun, when your training is not monoton and allways the same, but varyable.
• Die unterschiede machen dein leben lebendiger, vielfaltiger und interessanter, das leben lauft langsamer so erscheint es einem

active relaxation

If you try something too hard, a monkey, a roll or whatever and make it too frantic (verspannt). Then you use too much energy for this exercise and you stress certain muscles, which don't have to be used. So the exercise becomes hard and you lose your flow. The solution for this problem is the active relaxation by each exercise you practice. Try to relax you body, don't be too frantic. Do it with ease and grace. So everything will become more fun, easier for your body und will also look awesome. Michael

sunrise in Nuremberg at the Burg

Dawn in Nürnberg

Few days ago, I have decided to get up today at 5:30, cycle to the Altstadt to the Burg in my city Nuremberg. The castle is somehow a town's landmark, from which you can oversee almost the whole city. The sun had to get up at 6:34, so I cycled to the castle, climbed up to the viewing point, and just enjoy the silence and the moment, when almost nobody is on the street but sleeping in their beds :) It was a astounding view from this point, I can't describe it in words. Unfortunately, there were to many clouds to see the sun rising. But I am confident that the next time I will be able to see the sunrise! :) However, I had a great time training on the burg and I also have seen some great spots. I am looking forward to the next time on another spot maybe. But I definitely will repeat the early rising. Michael

Side-Flip

At least I have started to learn Flips. The time before I was somehow afraid of them, but I have just started, while a training session in the gym on the mats, and then kept doing 'em. I'll try to move as fast as possible to doing the side-flip outside on grass or sand... Michael

(For me) New kind of training

In the next time I will try to test a new king of training way. While jogging I start accelerating and maybe doing a few parkour moves, and then I have to keep in motion and must't stop.
I think it will be pretty hard, as the wish to stop after a small but hard run must be very huge. Well, I will try it out!

Michail

Jogging

I usually don't like jogging around, because it so too boring and too monoton. But if you want to come forward and cover a great distance, in order to come to the next spot, it is a perfect method.

But you must consider, that the faster you are the less spots you will see around you. So sometimes it is really nice to walk and looking aroung, where I can do something.

Yoga/Streching for more agility

hey, I have just begann to strech myself more. I do it before and after the training, but on the days without parkour I like to strech my legs, too.

I had a cramp in my lower right leg, when I was swimming some months ago. Well, so my doc said, that my muscles are too short, as I wasn't training some time, because of my injuries. He told me to stretch, and I did. It just felt well...

Check it out!

Michail

4 Reasons why trying parkour can ruin your self esteem - funny

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-reasons-why-trying-parkour-can-ruin-your-self-esteem/

Training since injury - great; flow; creativity; body control

Well, I didn't write a pretty long time. I just haven't been training since the "My pain and injury"-article. Summarized I have some problems on my right arm and my left leg, as I have unfortunately landed in April 2011.

So on Tuesday I finally went jogging and decided to do a little parkour by the way. I was astonished, when I find myself training for about 15 minutes on some rails, because I felt the creativity, flow and body control just like before. I didn't expect to have so much fun training parkour again.

Unfortunately the problems are still there, perhaps only in a mental kind, you know, only in my head. But what should I do?

Eventually I decided to beginn slowly doing parkour again. I take part in a pupil's triathlon on 13 July, so I am jogging, whilst I do parkour on places I like or those which are new for me and my body.

I hope the problems will go away, as I am just 18. We will see.

Michael

A 3 minutes talk

In some days I have to give freely a small talk in English on a topic of my choise. I decided to speak about parkour, as I write a blog about it and have read quite a lot material about it. So there occurs a very interesting and important question: what exactly I should talk about? It has to be compact! And here it is:

Now I would like to tell you something about a special hobby I have. Maybe you have seen people doing risky jumps from rooftop to rooftop or doing crazy flips from something high. Well, I am talking about parkour, but at this point we have to distinguish between parkour and free-running. The last is a discipline where the show is everything, you jump around and the show how nice and how many different movements you can do.

In parkour the speed and flow are more essential. Here you have to come from point A to point B and overcome all obstacles in your way fast, fluently and efficient, it mustn't cost you much energy.

The training plays a very important role in this sport. On the one hand, there is a physical training, like workout, it is for pushing your limits further. On the other hand, there is a mind training, like evolving discipline and getting to know your body. And only hard training in both areas, brings you safety while practising parkour.

If you like, write some ideas, what would you say in such a short period of time.

Michail

My pain and injury

hi,

I like seeing that my blog has got some visitors.

I haven't written for some time, perhaps because I haven't trained for 4 or 5 weeks, as my left knee was hurting. Then I watched some videos about parkour and the desire to move returned immediately. I just wanted to move! (You must know, that there has been pain in my right elbow for about 1,5 years.) So there has evolved a certain process in my life:

I start doing parkour and then I would do it for some weeks, then it would become to painful and at least I would do again a big break within some weeks or even months.

Eventually I decided to bring regularity in my training again, in other words I conclude to train twice a week. Not to much so my pain shouldn't get to big.

First training after many weeks on tuesday was such a great thing, I just enjoyed the nice weather and went to some favourite spots, so I felt awesome, since a long time, again. Nevertheless, my pain returned, and I was a bit depressed.

However, the second training, yesterday, I decided to visit a new spot, so I cycled there. The weather was nice again. I started stretching, and whilst it I wanted to do a speed vault on a rail. This was really thin, and not thinking about it further, I just did it. And then - BAM - I missed with my left hand the rail and have miserable landed on my left leg....

Now I am sitting in front of the PC again, can't train, nothing to do, as I can't do the things I have planed....

Now, however, I am thinking about what has happened there. I believe there are two issues.

1. I didn't stretch my legs! That was a awkward mistake! So I only can advise all traceurs always to stretch first! There will be still enough time for parkour, don't worry.
2. As not training for a long period of time, I think I lost the right feeling about my limits, what I can do and what is very, very tough for my body. I hope you can understand, what I mean. Many traceurs did a lot of risky things as starting with this sport. You know, today you go around, see the spot and remember that you did something crazy there. And you just can't believe, that you have done that crazy jump 2 years ago here. However, while training longer, you recognize your limits or you just see what could go wrong there. My failure was the strong desire to move, without thinking about other things, what could go wrong or where I could get hurt. Now, thinking back, this jump was so crazy, because this damned rail was only about some centimeters wide. And it was quite obviously that after such a long time without training I wasn't in my best condition...

Well, I hope I will learn something from that, hopefully you, too.

Michail

Confirmation

I think we all need confirmation in main areas of our lives. It is important in order to know that you are not just loosing your time by doing that things.

Confirmation is possible by

• persons
• teammates (compliments, how great I can do sth.)
• parents
• friends
• spectators (while your practicing parkour)
• reporters (e. g. interviews)
•  my body
• fatigue (A powerless feeling means I have given everything in training.)
• stiffness (the same)
• Solution: Variety; In other words, different exercises/training sessions mean different strains on my muscles. Thus my muscles aren't ready for that as I am not training them over and over again (because of variety!). The result is fatigue/stiffness and confirmation.
• goals
• These are often unconscious, for example, while training you have managed to do a king kong.
• But you can set conscious goals, too. (100 pull-ups)

By the way, if I am in a good physical condition, I don't feel confirmed or happy, what I actually should be. A probable solution would be to set a goal, like 3 months without injuries or exaggerations.

Big parts of parkour

Inertia

"Every body remains in a state of rest or uniform motion (constant velocity) unless it is acted upon by an external unbalanced force. This means that in the absence of a non-zero net force, the center of mass of a body either remains at rest, or moves at a constant speed in a straight line." Isaac Newton, First Law of Newton's laws of motion.

You can can apply this issue on parkour, too. I believe that my training and one of anybody else proceeds in fact inertially. In other words we tend to train

• on the same spots (e. g. playgrounds or trees)
• the same things (e. g. strength training or favourite technique like dash vault) and
• in the same way (e. g. in a team or alone)

You can call it 'habit'. Nevertheless, in order to become an experienced traceur in all areas of parkour, you must break your habits, open your mind to other possiblities of training and try to involve them in your sessions!

Remind the Newton's words:  "...unless it is acted upon by an external unbalanced force", so it is not easy!

Thanks for reading

Michail

Balance session on the dark side

Yesterday, I tried out to balance a quite long time in the evening. As having accomplished a one-hour-balance-training two days ago, I felt pretty comfortable on the rail.

Nevertheless it was a completely different feeling as compared with balancing in the daytime. Furthermore I have noticed, that when I went to the bright areas of the rail, my tempo got faster. To the contrary when my own shadow covered the rail, I felt very unsecure on it. As a whole I think it was a much bigger effort as compared with saturday.

Michail
PS: A mysterious white-black cat was observing me on the two above-mentioned days. Perhaps she liked watching me balancing :-)

Motivation

Here come some ideas, how to raise the motivation for doing parkour. Motivation means, I am interested in something or doing a kind of stuff. (Wikipedia: Motivation is the driving force which causes us to achieve goals.) Thus the motivation takes place a long or short time before an event occurs.

In other words there are two main topics on that:

1. the time before the training
2. while practicing parkour

to 1)
Motivation with the help of media (often Internet, then TV and at last books or magazines) is one of my favorite.

Watching videos of very experienced people on YouTube, whom I can look up to or even of some amateurs, where I often recognize my real skills and don't understimate them, is a real source of delight, I must admit.

Sometimes a documentary or a article makes me feel comfortable with the thought to be one of that fantastic movement, too.

I have almost forgotten the music. I believe the music is one of the strongest motivation sources. Nevertheless I haven't trained (except only balance-training) with it yet, as I think it can distract me from the stuff in parkour, which requires my whole concentration, in order to prevent injuries. Nevertheless a nice earworm isn't bad from time to time.

to 2) (while practicing parkour)
In other words, how your training proceeds.

Training in the group or alone can be both very inspiring. In the group you just have more fun and alone there is that great atmosphere, where you are alone and no one else, nobody except you and the obstacle...You know that stuff, don't you.

There are two types of keep doing a exercise a certain time. Firstly, I say to myself, to do balancing for example one hour long. That means I determine a certain time, which I want to stay training.
The second, is to determine a certain number of repetitions. For instance, 100 set-ups. So I will stay motivated until I have finished my targeted objectives!

I hope you enjoyed reading and you will keep motivated in parkour now.

Bye

Michail

Lower body conditioning video

Here is my first training video. Enjoy watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9HqFOOF1n0

In the video I have mentioned the "battery effect". That means, I do any exercise as long as possible, until I can't anymore. Then I take I small break, maybe few seconds, and start doing the exercise again. So I can use the last power reserves in my body, in order to reach the best results.

This "battery effect" can be used in almost all workouts!

1500 m - balance training

Today, my knee doesn't feel alright, so I decided to do a special training session on this sunny saturday midday! To this one I was inspired by Blane.

Here is the statistics:

Total distance walked: about 1500 meters / 1,5 km.
Time needed: about 1 hour
I fell 7 times down from the rail.
And I had 1 break after 750 meters.
Distance walked before first fall: 300 meters.
Distance walked before second fall: 660 meters.

After that session, when I was focusing under the bar, the marked areas where "swimming" in my eyes. Terrifying! lol.

Michail

Training influences

Every parkour session is different from another one. Sometimes the feeling of the flow is great, another time you have a feeling of being an unexperienced amateur....

Here I have listed some influences and I believe the differences in parkour depend on this listing:

• Internal influence:
• After a meal or before a one (I think, after I have eaten, my training is going more calm)
• Psychic/physical condition

• External influence
• Wheather
• rain
• snow
• sleet
• sunshine
• after rain time
• ice
• different temperatures (cold/hot)
• Clothes/shoes
• Location
• gym
• outside
• Workout on a hill or on an even ground
• Daytime
• night
• day
• dawn/dusk

Of course, these influences depend on each other. For example, if it is a rainy day, you will usually feel disappointed. Another one: If it is cold and your clothes are not keeping you warm, then it will, naturally influence your training.

Nevertheless, I can use these information, in order to make my training harder or easier

For example, to make an exercise harder, I can perform it on a hill.
Or if I feel safe balancing on a rail at 12 o'clock in the daytime, then in the dark time of a day it will be for sure another experience!

Thank you for reading!

Michail