The idea is that you land and allow yourself to not only go all the way down into a crouch but also put a hand down to the side. If you split your weight this allows a bit more strength control on your landing but the real benefit is that you can stick out the inbetween leg in front or in back for quite a lot of recovery, basically going directly into safety/step vault position.

It worked really well on a course I only did correctly without hands once. Surprisingly I found that I started jumping smarter too, possibly because it was easier to choose the target or I was able to relax more knowing I had more recovery room (I was try to imitate doing a bar to bar precision high up enough that you wouldn’t want to come down). Made the series of four jumps four times in a row.

Posted via email from My Progress

I have a lot of articles, photos, and videos waiting to be finished, but I have to figure out how to bring some balance into my life timewise and have fun experimenting with this stuff again.

Again I’m not totally gone, just shifting focus as I learn how to utilize my 24 hours while keeping the play alive. I love that there are people still interested in what I’m doing and if you want to catch up while this site is being made again give me a shout on Twitter and Facebook.

train safe :: play hard
-Tyson

Cold. Raining. Warmup on the roof, quadrupedie through water, pushups in the wet. Second warmup in car lot, Yamakasi jumps, confusing directions, more jumps, slightly less confusing directions, much harder jumps. Catleaps, precisions on wet brick, sliding in the mud with Forrest. Underbars, forwards, backwards, sideways, circles, reverse sideways circles, twisting reverse sideways circles. Follow, run leap vault jump roll climb jump roll vault repeat repeat repeat, do it from memory. Lunch, persimmons! More warmups, bounce, bounce more, more bounce, bounce in a circle, jump and bounce. Run vault vault, play tag, introspection, share love, balance! Two foot jumps, rolling, more jumps, twisting, jumps and precision rolling, more twisting, scary cat balance, low vaults, twisting, backwards vaults, more twisting, crawling! Quadrupedie long distance, feel the rhythm, ignore the cold, watch reflection in hard polished stone, farther! Tricky cat, vault vault vault vault vault wallpasse, repeat, confusing tag game, partner vaults, traversal holding hands, wallpass holding hands, human ladders, crazy games with Yann! Stretching, noodles, sleep.

Indoors, warm, waiting to start. Outdoors, cold, 25min jog, forwards, sideways, backwards. First-ish warmup, mexican wave Yamakasi style, impossible crouching bounces, more bouncing, partner bouncing, run in place until you die, more impossible crouching bouncing. Second-ish warmup, quadrupedie, pushups, quadrupedie, pushups, quadrupedie, pushups, harder pushups, harder pushups, partner quadrupedie jumps, pushups, a blur of crazy ab work. First station, jumping, catleap, vaulting, finding icepacks for Nick’s ankle, ouch. Scaffolding, swing jump underbar twist precision repeat remix repeat remix repeat remix repeat remix. Big vaults, hard precisions, big jumps, tie them all together, faster faster, go go, again again, harder vaults, harder jumps. Outside, cold, balance on wobbly things, follow the leader balance drills, squat turn pistol squat turn turn pistol stand squat remix repeat, wallpasse, drop, cooperative wallpasse fail fail fail fail fail success! Free time, play, scaffolding!!! Stretch, more stretching, answer emails, write blog post, sleep.

France Tuesday? Worth last minute expensive train ticket?

Nice job to Chase, Morgan, and Daetan who did the original shoot (and the excellent Ninja followup)! I’m a big fan of Chase’s blog as he is a ridiculously good photographer who’s very open about his work. Hopefully in the future we can get him out to shoot some more Parkour shots with us, possibly donated to the PNWPA…hint hint….

-See Levi’s picture’s here-

Parkour Generations in Ohio was crazy awesome. Some random photos oh mine -here- and a full writeup soon.

The last Parkour class of five for Billings Middle School went great! I didn’t really blog about these because Christian was the main guy heading them up, but I joined in for the majority of the classes and he did a great job. The last class had a longer time slot and the ability to split them up between four instructors which made everything really smooth. These have a great story behind them, will be up here or http://pnwpa.com

I’ve trained hard every day since coming back from Ohio except for these last two and it feels great! Been transforming the local jams a bit as well, getting everyone to push through a hard conditioning warmup and finish with a challenge and cooldown. Sounds like people have been really enjoying that, hopefully it will stick when I’m not around.

I’m moving my YouTube account and am going to start using it more, the new one is -here- . The PNWPA also has one which is being updated as well.

The 1023 is finally (just about) done! All five billion pages of it! When submitted and allowed to cook for awhile this turns into an official 501(c)3 certification which instantly gaining us thousands of dollars in donations and grants! Ok maybe not instantly….

Meetings! Coming up: UW Outreach Committee’s first meeting, first Board meeting after Ohio, first follow up meeting with Seattle Parks and Rec after WRPA conference. Guess who’s going to all of them!

Travel! MOVNAT with Rafe and Erwan in Bellingham on 14-15th. NYC for training with friends and PKNY 16th-23rd. Washington DC for training and Tribe meetup 23rd-27th. Chicago for national jam 28th-30th. Cya there!

The program on Pangea Day, May 10, is a celebration of the power of film to unite us all. You’ll see films that are funny — sad — gorgeous — stark — powerful. Voices that have never been heard before. Things you’ve never seen. Scenes from worlds you didn’t know existed. A cross-section of our amazing, complicated, noisy, beautiful world. Tune in or find a viewing party to watch on May 10, 2008, at 11:00 AM PDT.

-Click here- to find the many ways to watch. I know there is a big thing going on at UW, should be easy to find a local showing to see with a group, or just tune in yourself!

A few months back I was featured in a new project of the UW Career Center called myStory:

The path to discovering one’s passion and/or a career is, for most, far from a linear process. During the college years, experiences both in and outside the classroom shape us in unexpected ways, offering new perspectives and creating new interests that can profoundly impact our future. The UW Career Center’s myStory project is a collection of stories from students just like you. In their stories, we hope you will find inspiration and ideas that lead to your own personal success story! Below our stories of other students who have found success in their career, internship and schooling. Do you have a story for us?

Which is hilarious to me because…well…I’ve dropped out of UW because of my current career (Or how the article describes it, I’m on hiatus). But I can see where they are coming from, my passion for parkour did come to fruition during my time in college and it was an endowment from the school that encouraged me to follow it fully (they probably didn’t expect I’d take it to this level when they awarded it to me though).

The article is actually really good though, and the one I’m probably the most proud of with everything considered. Thanks Cara and Alyce!

There you are, trudging across campus and dragging a 40 pound backpack behind you. It’s just another ordinary day here at the UW, when wait, are you kidding? Did you just see that guy swing over that railing, leap up onto that wall, grab a tree branch and after flying through the air, land gracefully on his feet? What was that?

Well, you likely just encountered Tyson Cecka who emphatically does not trudge anywhere.

Read the full story…

Janine called me a workaholic the other day…and it’s weird because she’s totally right. I used to be the biggest slacker I knew throughout high school and college. I seriously had it down to an art, only putting the minimal amount of time into working as possible. That must have all changed big-time with parkour. I spend entire days (and nights) on the computer sometimes now, working on the never-ending amount of work that comes from running a nonprofit, moderating two parkour communities, working on APK/Tribe stuff, running promotion, learning video production, learning photography, and smuggling miniature chihuahuas across the border (harder than it sounds)…

It’s hard to describe, but I just really believe in this stuff and how important it is. I’m willing to spend all my free time working on IRS 1023 forms for the PNWPA or developing new articles and resources for the community. It’s really exciting to feel like we’re all on the frontier of a massive movement, and I don’t want to get left behind (or the community to be left behind). I tend to migrate from coffee shop to coffee shop during the day, utilizing their wifi to put a dent in my inbox and communicate with the other volunteer soldiers who are slugging through this stuff with me. I train at night as much as I can.

I go to jams nowadays not to train for myself, but primarily to meet the inevitable first timers and run them through the basics before unleashing them upon the world (about 5 per Gasworks jam, and much more per gym jam or clinic). I go to teach, and even when I don’t go with idea of teaching, I end teaching anyway. I just can’t train off on my own while watching others make some of the same mistakes I did when I started, that’s the responsibility of the experienced. I really don’t mind teaching (in fact I actually love it), but I don’t end up with much solid training time of my own any more. Ironically, I had more time to train as a student in college than I do working on parkour stuff full time….

I expect that to change though. My time demands are all self-imposed, I don’t have to be working this hard, and I am learning how to delegate. After the nonprofit has some funding and we can actually hire people I expect the workload to go down a lot. But I don’t mean to complain, this post is about how much parkour has changed my life. Even if that change means buying internet for my phone so I can tether wherever I am to get emails or learning how to code php to add streaming video functionality to APK