Advice and Training by Tyson — Aug 02, 2008 at 02:42 am

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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Training by Tyson — Nov 24, 2007 at 03:21 am

I hope every had a great Thanksgiving! I traveled home for the holidays and had a great time, and even got to follow it up with some fun training the next day.

Highschool

It’s kind of interesting actually. The group I was training with are kids who are currently going to my old highschool. Apparently a few of them were freshman when I was a senior, back when I was first starting to get into parkour. It’s pretty strange to go back to your highschool and find a parkour scene growing up there, or at least it is for me, I’ve only really been out of that place for two and a half years.

The Training

But anyway, the best part of today that I wanted to share with you guys is some tree training I’ve been doing recently. The idea simply is to jump into a tree, traverse around the outermost branches (without touching the ground of course), then jump back to where you started. The trees we found were great because they were really strong but low to the ground, forcing difficult cat leaps and maneuvers around the tree so that you wouldn’t hit the ground.

Trees

I find trees to be the best test of technique training. If you want to be sure of your precise cat leaps, gap jumps, underbars, etc., try them in a complex tree. You have to be very adaptive and precise to avoid slipping in a tree with all of its crazy angles and slippery bark, it’s great training.

Training and Travels by Tyson — Nov 11, 2007 at 12:19 am

Great night of training and exploration today. I was all by myself but had lots of time to explore all around Northeastern and Wentworth Universities. Well, not all around since there is always a ton of stuff that you miss, but I covered some good distance and am definitely sore now. Here are my favorites of the night:

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Training by Tyson — Aug 03, 2007 at 05:56 am

Had a great day training today (well yesterday, man it’s late). Have found an incredibly difficult (but scalable) floor-is-lava type challenge that covers quite a distance at UW. It’s mainly a lot of balance challenges with difficult precisions and really draining climbing traversals thrown in.

Trying to walk on a railing for a fair distance after your whole body is shaking from a really difficult climb is really fun! I can’t wait for the day where I can take this whole line without slipping or falling, it’s an amazing challenge.

UW Map

The route (so far) goes down the bike racks south of Red Square, across the bollards to the long railings. Precision across to avoid the tree, balance all the down, precision back, precision to the smaller railing (haven’t tried this one yet). Traverse across the arch to the inside of the hallway, out through the window, across the next arch (really hard), up onto the curved railing, precision to handrail (it works using one foot, but it’s shaky), precision onto the next railing (not perpendicular, haven’t tried yet), walk down, precision across. Leap to bench (or follow bark to bollard challenge), run through the grass, leap over the concrete, cat leap to the bicycle containers, get to the railing, quadrupedal it’s length avoiding foliage, leap to parking stop, then to the bark, then to the railings, more precisions and walks down (try some duck walks), get to the concrete, standing jump the gap (I one-foot it). Follow the fence around, traverse the side of the building, walk the rail, jump to the concrete edge, standing cat, vault over, and jog to the slanted wall (phew!).

From there I’m not sure where to go but you could follow the white lines wherever, or if you weren’t destroyed yet you could traverse in cat position down the wall, do the cat to cat, and traverse as far as you can to the road. ;)

Oh and I think ending each session with some light barefoot training and stretching is really helpful, thanks for the idea Nathan!

Photos and Travels by Tyson — May 07, 2007 at 12:42 pm

We took a break from the fast-paced Central district today to explore Lamma, an island where no building is allowed to be over three stories tall and there are no cars. The contrast was immense, it was actually quiet, amazing! We took the ferry to Yung Shue Wan and spent the majority of the day hiking across the island to Sok Kwu Wan.

Click through for pictures!

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Photos and Travels by Tyson — May 06, 2007 at 08:07 am

Today was dominated by our trip to “The Peak” of Hong Kong. And luckily before we left I picked up a wide angle (10-22mm) lens I’ve been drooling at for awhile, it’s fantastic! This blog may just turn into a big photo blog of me learning how to operate new toys…

Click through to see the photos!

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Photos and Travels by Tyson — May 02, 2007 at 04:16 am

I slept in today. I didn’t have to get up at 4am to film fish. I didn’t have to almost die doing a Primal workout. I didn’t have to spend more than half a day in a plane. Today consisted of sleeping, wandering around Hong Kong, eating good food, and meeting the awesome people we are working with to put on this performance, this trip kicks ass! Seriously, we have around 12 days here in HK with about 3-4 of those actually being about work, and *almost* everything is covered by our wonderful hosts :)
I got some great photos today. Hong Kong surely is an amazing place, Continue Reading »