Taken with iPhone

From: Tyson Cecka

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I’ve been pretty depressed the last few days. I think what happens is that I come back from these trips (quite a bit I haven’t been blogging about, sorry!) to a larger workload than when I left, and I usually reserve the day or two afterward for resting and recovering which lives quite a lot I have to catch up on. The last few days all this random crap weighed down on me and I started procrastinating and sleeping a lot, which just makes everything worse

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Tree monkey

This was an awesome tree in Stanley Park that had been knocked over by a storm but left to stay. Made for some excellent precision jump training along the branches. In the geotagged Parkour training spots group.

From: Tyson Cecka

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If I could give only one piece of advice to someone in order for them to stay in shape, to be a well-rounded person, or to keep their mind sharp, it would be to challenge themselves to learn something new every single day.

This is how our mind and body are meant to work in my opinion. We are by nature inquisitive animals with a great power of adaptability. The more you challenge yourself to do something difficult, the easier it becomes and the better you get at it. The more you stick to doing the things that are easy, the less adaptable and active you become.

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I had an excellent day of training a few days ago at the Thursday UW jam. There is an area where I used to some balance challenges next to a hallway somewhere over on south campus. I had always glanced over to the hallway looking for possibilities but I always figured it was rather bland and there wasn’t much there.

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The Urban Ninja

From: Tyson Cecka

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I was trying to find nice quote from someone wiser than I to start this article off, but then I came across this little gem:

/*****When talking about the Urban Ninja video*****/
…God I hate that guy, think his name is socal ninja or something, real jerk. I don’t actually think his stuff is very good, his form looks so tense and jerky to me…

Wow, pretty crazy right? Being judgmental enough about someone you haven’t ever talked to or met to actually say you hate them, who could have said that?

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Wow, yesterday was one of the longest training days I’ve ever done. I was out at UW from around 12:30 to somewhere close to midnight, minus a few hours here and there for the requisite intake of food of course. Mostly just jumps, rolls, and more balance/precisions.

Think I found some good advice for roll training. First of all, if it doesn’t hurt than move to something harder, when it doesn’t hurt on concrete that means you are doing something right. To improve the roll in general and get more speed out of it, you have to make it smaller and curl more into a ball. I find myself extending my body more with the more momentum I have coming into it, and that tends to flatten it out and make it slower. Normally for low jumps into rolls I would land with my legs split to enter into the roll easier. But now, to avoid flattening out I’m trying to land all high momentum rolls two-footed while leaning forward and pushing/jumping directly into a tight roll. This is closer to how David Belle does his and I’m making some good progress.

Progression with control does come not quickly. If a movement is difficult, break it down into simpler steps. If a movement is too big, find a way or a place that makes it smaller. That is how you progress safely, one step at a time.

It’s nice to see that even really amazing traceurs follow the same idea in their training even when they are doing things that still scare the shit out of me (kongs to railing precisions). Thanks DC from Team Traceur!

Whenever I’m heading somewhere without a backpack I try to always get a bit of running and jogging in. It’s nice to warm up when it is raining and it’s always good exercise. But for some reason up till now I’ve never really considered running on the grass next to the sidewalk. I mean occasionally I’ll run and balance on the curb or on top of some wall next to the sidewalk, but I still spend a lot of time smacking my feet into concrete. I ran to UW today and had a great time running on the grass, dodging trees, jumping over the sidewalk, and avoiding puddles. Why run on the grass rather than the sidewalk you ask? Continue Reading »