In another one of my highly occasional posts, here's my latest video, "The Path Of Least Resistance"

Strength training and conditioning for parkour 2

It's one of those rare times when I actually update my blog!

Some of you may remember the strength training video which Dave & I produced almost 4 years ago:



Since we originally uploaded that video, it has had well over 500,000 views and has proved much more popular than we ever expected. It was shot in one night, and thrown together relatively quickly, so we were pleased that it got so many views.

Many people have requested a sequel to this video, and over the last couple of months, we have finally got round to actually shooting it. This time around, we've tried our best to demonstrate a variety of exercises at various levels of difficulty to cater for a broad range of practitioners. As per usual in my videos, there is also an element of stupidity. The production process seems to get more & more complex from one video to the next, and this one incorporates some special effects for the first time, including chroma key and rotoscoping. Anyway, take a look:



For an insight into the filming of the fake jump, this video may also be of interest:

Parkour - The Nature Of Challenge

Weekend In Lisses 2008

A couple of weeks ago, we were lucky enough to visit Lisses again, this time courtesy of K Swiss. With everything paid for, and some free trainers, who were we to say no? We didn't get to meet David Belle this year, or even the fake Yann for that matter. We did however, get to train with many great traceurs from the UK and much further afield (ie Sydney). The video is hosted in two parts on youtube:

The usual low quality youtube versions are embedded below, but I recommend watching these higher quality versions:

Part 1
Part 2

Updating this blog

If you read my blog from time to time, you'll no doubt have noticed how infrequently I update it. This has been largely due to the fact that I've been busy with training, which I suppose is a good thing really. I intend to start updating this blog more regularly to keep you informed with recent activities. A couple of weeks ago, 6 other traceurs and myself took part in a sponsored crawl for sport relief. We set ourselves the target of crawling one mile, with the rule that if we wanted to rest, we had to remain in a squatting position. Thanks to a few training sessions of preparation for this event, we successfully completed the mile without too much trouble, and managed to raise a reasonable amount of money for Sport Relief. If you would like to contribute towards this, it's not too late to do so. You can sponsor us online at: www.mysportrelief.com/n.p
Thanks!

By the way, if you haven't already seen our recent Manchester video and you've got a spare 10 minutes, have a look:

TRace Gathering video finally finished

Somewhat later than planned, the video featuring some of the footage I shot at the Trace Gathering 2007 is finally finished. Over new year I had some spare time, so decided to spend it finishing the edit which I actually started before going to Lisses back in August. If you've seen the official Trace video, you might recognise some of the footage seen in my video as Jason used some of it in his edit (which was excellent by the way!). Anyway, here's some of the highlights from my perspective.

Pull-ups update

Some of you may remember my post about the 100,000 pull-up challenge. Basically, the idea behind this was to do a number of pull-ups on the bar in my studio each day, keeping a tally until I reached a total of 100,000. Unfortunately, the studio was never finished and the building changed hands meaning that we no longer own that room, and I don't have regular access to it (although it is not currently occupied). Still, whenever I've had a spare few minutes I've been venturing down into the dark basement room to continue my pull-up challenge. This has had to fit in around my work, so I'm currently well behind schedule with the task. Today though, I reached the 15,000 mark. Most of my colleagues tend to go to the local pub at lunch time for a beer and a burger. This is always a good opportunity to add a couple of hundred to my pull-up tally. The way I see it, when they're eating and drinking rubbish and making their bodies worse, I'm improving mine. The lunch time sessions don't happen every day, but when they do, it usually takes me half an hour or so to get 200 done. As you can see from this badly lit, out of focus photo, the room has no lighting and so I'm doing this challenge in minimal light. I set the timer on the camera to get this shot. It's the best I could get in the poor lighting conditions, but you get the idea.

Over the coming months, I'll continue to work on this challenge, still with the ultimate goal of reaching a total of 100,000. It will just take me a little longer than I originally envisaged.