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!