Tyson Cecka

Times Square

From: Tyson Cecka

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I know I know, I disappeared for awhile. But all is good and I have lots of pictures and posts built up that I just have to sit down and get out there. Unfortunately this blog is not a high priority for me right now as I’m straddling some very important projects at home that require as much attention as I can reasonably give. That and I’ve just been having too much fun and training really hard

Anyway, we got Times Square as part of the K-Swiss tour! I’ll be performing and teaching right in the middle of it along with a bunch of friends from the Tribe this Friday the 4th from early AM to 4pm. My plane leaves in a few hours and I’m psyched to be going back to NY. We’ll be there all Saturday as well before heading out to Hawaii, so let’s get a big jam going!

Do Not Climb

Looking down on Hong Kong, I did not obey the sign...

From: Tyson Cecka

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Well, I didn’t get the projects I was hoping to finish done before returning to the blog, but it looks like I’m going to have a bit of time to work on them on the various plane rides this month… Check out my schedule with the Tribe for March:

• 4th-8th in San Francisco
• 9th-11th in LA
• 12th and 13th back in Seattle (with a live interview on the 13th with KOMO)
• 14th-28th in Las Vegas
• 19th-20th in Dallas
• 21st-25th hopefully in San Antonio
• 26th-27th in Houston
• 28th and 29th in Seattle (conditioning jam anyone?)
• 30th-31st in Miami

Busy!

Things are getting busy! It goes without saying though that I’ll be updating this blog will all the juicy details as they become known. If you are in any of those cities, toss me a shout so we can go training and come to the performances/workshops at these Universities:

• University of San Francisco March 6th 10am to 4pm
• University of Southern California (Los Angeles) March 11th 10am to 4 pm
• Southern Methodist University (Dallas) March 19th 10am to 4 pm
• University of Houston March 27th 10am to 4pm
• Florida International University (Miami) March 31st 10am to 4pm

And if you came to one of the jams I was at this last week, keep up that conditioning and train hard!

Here is a short (~1m) sampler I put together for a few different sites, the first time I’ve actually had a time restriction on an edit. The footage at the beginning is all old video memories, and the footage after that is a mix of FloShizzle, the K-Swiss commercial, the Tokyo doc, and the Mervyns commercials. This is also my first edit using Final Cut Pro on my new MacBook Pro, and it kicks ass

You can view and download the high quality version (480p) through torrent -here- or by using the button on the right.

Enjoy!

YouTube, Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Veoh and Viddler

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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Credits

As promised, this is the Director’s Cut from Ken Arlidge of the K-Swiss commercial “Even Playing Field” featuring Tyson Cecka, Victor Lopez, and Anna Kournikova advertising the new Ariake freerunning shoe.

We also had Mark Toorock (from my team - The Tribe) behind the scenes acting as the parkour consultant (scouting, choreographing, managing), as well as Frosti, Skynative, and Xin jumping in whenever needed for additional stunts (none of their stuff made it into this commercial unfortunately, but you can see Levi’s whole other commercial here).

More to Come!

Ken went through around three days of footage to cut together this 49 second version for his personal reel. He even sent me to a sound studio in Seattle to get the first second of audio. But we were doing a lot more than just sitting around for those three days of shooting, there is still some really good footage out there that hasn’t seen the light of day yet.

But no worries, that extra footage is definitely not going to waste. In a few weeks I’ll have both a higher quality version of this commercial (both TV and Director’s Cut) up for download, as well as all of the original footage from every shoot day to put into my new stunt reel! Thank you K-Swiss and Aero Films!

Check Back

You can find out more about this commercial on my media page, or keep checking back here because the full write-up of the amazing experience is coming soon. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed for automatic updates.

Ninja Warrior is a pretty crazy obstacle course challenge in Japan. My good friend Paul Darnell may possibly be going there to compete! Every time I watch the show, I wish there was a good traceur or freerunner competing on it, and now there may be!

But he needs your vote, check out the video, register and vote at:
http://www.g4tv.com/ninjawarrior/contest_video.aspx?ninjawarriorentry_key=11

It took me approximately 3 minutes (minus the time seeing the cool video), how long did it take you? Voting ends after this weekend so get that in!

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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Is now up on http://kswiss.com (as TV commercial #1), which means that it’s showing on TV! Now I just need to get a TV…

The last one showed on ESPN, TNT, and MTV so I’m guessing this one will as well. It certainly was a lot of fun to be in, and the finished product is amazing! I also have the director’s cut (which is awesome) prepared by Ken Arlidge, and I’ll get it up here as soon as I have permission.

Just want to say again how great it was working with Ken and the stunt coordinator Gary Jensen, both are so good at what they do that I actually feel honored to have been there. Check out some of Ken’s other work on Aero Film’s website, and you’ll see what I mean. The other principal in this, Victor Lopez, was also really fun to work with on this spot and on the Taurus Stunt Awards.

You can find out more about this commercial and other work on my media page.

Enjoy!

IMG_2718

From: Tyson Cecka

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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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