October Jam Outcome

I had a lot of fun at the jam today. Different drills and games.

I wake up on a very chilly morning excited about the jam regardless of how rainy the day looked. Put on my favorite parkour pants my new W.W.D.B.D.? shirt, designed by a cool cat at APK and the totally wrong shoes for the day. Ariaki mesh lite.

I get to the school where some of the cats were already waiting, ready to go despite the drops of water dripping from the cold metal of the parallel bars at the very slippery playground.
After waiting for a few more minutes for those who we knew were coming, we started the warm up. A nice jog lead by Ian, surprisingly enough I am still recovering from my ankle, so was Pete who twicked his ankle a few days a go at the gym.

The panting guys arrive from their jog letting us know it was time for some good joint mobility and some stretches. After planning an intense leg conditioning I ended up deviating from my original plan when I started working on low-leg-cross stances. The nice breeze, almost perfect temperature and the tingling of hundreds of light drops of water bombarding our body from up above, led to a very relaxing and zen type of moment. I asked the guys to close their eye, control their breathing and enjoy weather and sounds of silence, it was very mystical, and calming.

The exercise went for a little while, then I figure, lets do some space sensitivity training.

We all made a long line, leaving about 2ft (arm length of one person), then we had to weave between each and everyone of us in low stances while keeping out eyes shut. Front and backward, the latter being very interesting for me.

After having a lot of fun with that, we came up with a game that we called "Predator and Pray"

It is very easy, a lot of fun and helpful to improve sensitivity, breathing and increase coordination.

It is very simple, there is only one Pray but as many Predators, there predators job is to stalk to the pray until captured. The catch is, the predators are blind, the pray is not.

In a low stance position or QM the hunters listen for the predators moves as he maneuver and sneaks around as he please. Some times mocking them or tricking them by intentionally making noise to dissuade the hunters from the Prays location. A snap of the fingers, stumps, heavy foot steps are used by the Pray to give clues of his location, while the hunter follow the sound as they stalk.

Some Prays like to play with the Predators by sitting still in between then while controlling their intense breathing.

Anyway, so yeah, the main idea is to have the Pray weave around and in between the predators as silently as he/she can in order to not be detected. The Predators are to use their senses and work as a tem to capture the Pray.

As the game intensifies, the Pray gets most of the workout, as it tries to skillful and silently move through the Predators undetected. The Predators usually get a heavy breathing due to the workout after a few minutes, asking for another skill set to be use. Controlled and Rhythmic Breathing.

We went for laps of about 10 minutes of "hunt", everyone was a Predator, everyone was a Pray.
I would specify the feeling and how it helps, but I will let you discover that for yourself.

After that we moved to a low wall, where we drilled pop vaults and climb us, which I must say, I have gained the understanding of the timing needed and the use of both feet. It basically has helped in such a way that when I do a climb up my elbows bend very little bringing me all the way to the top on a shimmy position. I also tried a couple clapping climb us and although i didnt succeed I was very close to achieving it. A little drilling and I will get it. I gotta say I was very happy about that.

After the excitement I drilled it several times during the day, the worse of the day after that, was better than any other I had done in the past.

We moved on to a very nice set of rails at the HS's stadium. Where right as I perform a dino on a wall, a lady comes to me explaining how I was not going to be able to that here due to liability, that she thought is was really nice but that the school would love to have you sign some waiver document that will allow us to be there without problem. She also showed interest on what we were doing, and said she knew about it, that they saw it (us) on the paper and that her son was interested on it. We told her about HIpk and what we did and she said it'd be a great idea to have a lecture about PK in her school, that she would totally be down for it. Thats when I asked, - what do you teach in here? She smiled and said "I teach P.E." my eyes lit up. She said that would love to have me consulting and maybe giving a demo to get some of the students interested because they needed programs like that. So I asked about the club and she said we can get it done.

So that was great news, I am also very excited about that.

At the end of the day we finish with an interesting little vehicular parkour adventure. As we approach the car in the parking lot, we noticed the gate had been locked with the car still parked inside. After much thinking and wondering about what to do, Pete hit the AWD no existing in this vehicle and climb the very steep sidewalk, drove through this jungle of 3" tall grass leaving a beautiful tire track to then drop from the 1/2ft sidewalk. That was also fun and interesting.

My foot felt ok but not too ok. I pushed it a bit and it felt the stress. I did however, try at all times to be very careful with my moves and never let pain take over. I should start conditioning rigorously very soon, while letting the ankle gain strength.....

that is another story though. I'll be posting an update soon, I havent been around as I should. Lots of stuff going on that I will share with you guys later.

Here is a video of the climb up and one attempt to the clapping climb up.
(Sorry about the video, for some reason my editor would not open it, so I could not rotate it.