Friday, January 26, 2007

Back To Business and... Lisses.

Filming for the past four or five weeks has been fun at times but mostly it was a chore to carry around a camera and tripod with me. I'm looking forward to getting back to just moving around without worrying about my stuff.

I'm going to Lisses again in 15 days with all the guys I train with regularly. There will be 7 of us and we'll spend a week developing ourselves as traceurs in the best possible company. Although it's my third time visiting Lisses, I still look forward to it just as much as ever - as each time I go, I come back with a new understanding of Parkour, how I should be training and with a refreshed and focused mind.

Over the next two weeks leading up to Lisses I'll be focusing on balance, foot placement drills, strength maintainance and very simple basics so that I'm 100% when the time comes.

I'd like to thank everyone who contacted me and left messages for me on forums, by email and by leaving comments on my blog about my video... I'm glad you all enjoyed it. My next goal is to capture Hell Night some time in the near future to help all of the people contacting me with questions about it, to set up a similar program in their local area. :)

Have a good weekend, train hard and eat well.

-Blane

Monday, January 22, 2007

Video Release

I'll finish editing the footage and release it tonight...

EDIT: It's up! YouTube link - Docendo Discimus

40mb Permanent Host (right click save as) - Thanks to Andeh for the hosting.

Enjoy.

-Blane

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Stepping it up with protein!

It seems as though it's time to step my strength training up again - last night I completed the most demanding workout of the week (besides Hell Night) and at the end I hadn't broke a sweat! It's obvious that Hell Nights are truly doing great things for my body but it's becoming harder and harder to challenge my body on the other nights that I focus on conditioning. I may need to invest in the 20kg weighted vest as I don't think the 10kg version is tough enough now for pushups, pullups, chinups etc.

I think another contributing factor to my increased strength and recovery is that I've started taking whey protein shakes after my workouts to maximise muscle recovery and feed my muscles with high quality protein when they need it most. I highly recommend investing in a tub of whey protein if you take strength training and conditioning seriously. I bought mine from Holland and Barrett for about £20... if you wait until there is a sale (usually every two months or so) and stock up then apparently you can get the same big tub for as little as £8. I started taking the supplement a week ago and there's no doubt I'm recovering faster and gaining lean muscle mass and definition with no side effects.
If you're worried about taking supplements to boost your training then there's no need with whey protein, there's no steroids or 'weight gain' involved, all it's doing is whacking 40g of protein into your bloodstream to feed your muscles after a workout. It also comes in four flavours; strawberry (I can vouch for this one being gorgeous), banana, vanilla and chocolate to suit your personal tastes.

So if you're struggling to eat enough chicken, turkey, eggs etc. during the day to keep your protein levels high, then consider looking into protein shakes - you won't be dissapointed.

Video Update: It's 90% done. I have 2.5 minutes of edited video ready to go and with another 30 seconds of footage and some polishing off, I'll whack it all together and release it. ETA - 1 week.

-Blane

Monday, January 08, 2007

Busy Busy Bumble Bee

Although still in very early stages, I attended a meeting in London about the discussion and formation of a governing body to oversee and maintain the quality of coaching for Parkour in Britain.

It's dissapointing to see and hear of many people getting injured at organised events and hopefully the creation of this body will help to bring about a standard of teaching and emphasis on safety, never before seen in this country.

The goal is to create a qualification that people can earn to become a certified coach, so that new traceurs have the facts in front of them and an option to choose a quality and trusted teacher over someone who may not have their best interests at heart.

Being a non-profit organisation, aimed solely at trying to guide the development of Parkour in Britain (and perhaps other countries in the future) in a decent direction, I trust it will grow into a solid building block for the future of our discipline.

Representitives from experienced groups all over the UK were present at the meeting and it was very refreshing and satisfying to see we all had the same goals and hopes for the future. It was also great to catch up with some people I hadn't seen in years, such as the Saiyans (link to their blog on the right).

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Video Update: I now have almost two minutes of edited footage for my new video but there's still loads I want to capture - most of the stuff I have so far hasn't been planned - I've just spotted the movement, drilled it until it's clean and filmed it on the day.
The majority has been filmed at a new spot recently discovered near Leicester that is absolutely brilliant. It is entirely under cover so everything stays dry even when the weather is at its worst. Not only is this a great place to go and train when it is wet, it is also a very good spot in itself. I would have been happy to find somewhere with a couple of dry walls and a dry rail but this place has so much to offer... Finally I have a reason to smile when I see rain on a Saturday morning!

With a couple of dry weekends (fingers crossed) to film the rest of the stuff I want, my video should be finished some time this month. Expect plenty of weird scaffolding variations, strange underbar 'things' and hopefully a big improvement on previous videos that will inspire and give some people ideas on new ways to move other than the usual 'cat precision' epidemic I've seen recently (I think I was temporarily infected myself).

Remember - when travelling to a new spot try to find an obstacle and practice passing it, rather than trying to find a place to do your favourite technique.

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Trace: I'm happy to announce I'm now officially a member of the newly formed Trace team alongside a handful of very talented and exciting traceurs.

Trace has been created to provide practitioners with quality clothing and equipment for Parkour training for a good price. Profits will be used to produce tutorials, physical training guides, diet advice and run workshops to help new guys and girls get started in the discipline.

Check out Tracehq.com for more information.

-Blane

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Diary

Happy new year everybody!

Just a quick update to say I thought the new year was a good opportunity to start a training diary; detailing my daily training, thoughts, progression etc. I'm going to spend 5-10 minutes every night writing and it should be fun to look back on in years to come.

Why not start your own diary? You only have two days to catch up on and from there it will only take a few minutes per day...

Filming for my new video began last week and I'm happy with the movements I've captured. Once edited, it will be about 20 seconds long - so there's still a long way to go to get that up to around 3-4 minutes that I'm satisfied enough with to release.
There's a lot of new stuff I have planned that will not only be fun to film, but will mark a definite progression in my ability as I refuse to just repeat movements I've shown in previous videos.
Half of the movements I want to show in this video I haven't ever done before but I feel ready for them now, more than ever (one thing in particular I've been looking at for over two years).

More filming this weekend...

-Blane