10th May Jam Write Up

After what seemed like an endless winter of blisteringly cold winds and wet rails, things seem to be taking a huge turn for the better as we move into Lincs Parkours 3rd Summer together.

I arrived at City Hall early in the morning to find a small handful of tracers including Liam Houlden, Jack Ledbury, Johnny YEAH!, Cobie and new boy Connor from the workshops to name a few.  After training here for a mere half an hour, we witnessed a very first in Lincs Parkour history. Kicked from City Hall on a saturday!
After trying to reason with the grumpy policeman i decided it would be best not to kick up a fuss and told everyone they should move on.

Whilst everyone made their way upto the castle, me and Liam made a short detour to Park Court and i attempted the Cat Pass precision there, although a small bail put me off attempting it any more and  we preceded to catch up with the rest of the group.

Stopping quickly at the cornershop by the castle, we stocked up and found it extremely amusing how the woman felt the need to point out that “Lynx Deodorant is 99p” to us Hahah.

We then walked on to a sizeable arm jump which a number of us successfully landed, one of which was cobie who was struggling to jump at first. After a number of variations and practice at this spot we were politely asked to leave by a member of the public we left toward the watertower.

Training here was tremendous fun, and after nailing a double up I began my day long spree of muscling up (more on that later haha) we also tryed different combinations of underbars and dives through the climbing structure. I was particularly pleased with a dive roll through a rather small gap in the frame that i got.

After meeting up with Jack Grange and Ben Oliver we moved on towards the castle and trained on the rails there, i also got a rather dive roll i was pleased with, before moving on to the Lawn where we practiced lots of lovely things. I managed a quite difficult muscle up on a slide frame and also landed a Cat Pass precision on the spinny circle thing one footed which i was quite pleased with, however it was becoming quite apparant to me Jack and Liam that a lot of people weren’t training. Which really is such a shame in the incredible weather we have at the moment.

We then began to move towards town and stopped half way down steep hill at the nice spot there, Jack impressed us all with a nice dash vault taking off the Bar, i landed a nice Cat Armjump which took me around 10 goes, to watch Jack Grange do it in one haha, and me and Liam learned the manoever where you swing up ontop of a bar from the waist arm jump posistion which was a very nice acheivement for the both of us.

After that the group split up and Me, Jack and Liam went and did some hardcore condtioning at magistrates, video to follow then set off towards shaolin

After a brief and chilled out session at Shaolinski, where we coincedentally found the polish boys training. Me Liam and Ben headed to the workshops, leaving Jack to catch the bus back to welton all on his onesies.

On arriving at the workshop i preceded to help a little with the teaching and noticed that this weeks over 13s were doing incredibly well and coming along really nicely with their techniques which was a very nice sight to see.

After that things turned a little sour, after a number of people had gone up and trained on the rooves during the over 13’s session, and had set off an alarm alerting the security guards, this was not good and ended up making dale extreemely pissed off as there is a £250 call out charge each time. Hopefully we wont end up paying the bill however its unlikely the school would tolerate taking a £250 hit.

Despite this the advanced session was good fun at the end of a long day, everybody seemed to have a good time.

Despite a setback at the end i think yesterday has so far been the best Jam of the year, and it was great to see my self and everyone else progressing so well, and hopefully many more will follow

Peace Out!

Mirrors Edge

you may or may not have heard of this title, but it combines 3 of my favourite things in the world together: Parkour + Women + Video games

in the past we have seen many games with ‘Parkour’ in it. for example Assassins creed, Prince of Persia, Ninja Gaiden etc. but none of it has really captured Parkour as it should be. free flowing constant movement. with nothing in your way to stop you going to where you want to go… UNTIL NOW

this new game is called Mirrors Edge, its a First Person perspective game, and puts you in control of a character named faith. she is a female traceur and her sister has been kidnapped (that’s all we know about the story so far)
but that doesn’t matter, because what i am here to show you is about the movement. this game is slick! maybe not always realistic, but it sure as hell beats that crappy ‘free running’ game that was released a year or so ago.

the game asks you to build up momentum with your movements, allowing each thing you do in succession to be slightly bigger/faster than the one before it.

there are no ‘markers’ in the game as such. you are free to go where you want to go. but there is something called runner vision, which makes items appear brighter/more colourful/in focus if it is somewhere that would help your run. pretty much like real life, where you assess your surroundings whilst running, always looking for the best/easiest rout.

anyway. there is only so much you can say about a game that has only been shown off once, but im sure i can dig up some more info if people are interested

here is a video of the game in action

Stream Standard def

Stream High Def

Download Standard def

Download High Def

Sick

So here I am at half 2 in the morning, £5 down on poker, feeling as ill as ever, and without the ability to sleep (even though I know I have to be up early tomorrow) you would probably guess I’m feeling pretty rubbish.

well that guess would be wrong!… to an extent!

I’ve just been checking out our forums, and found something that perked me right up

some back-story….
in case you didn’t know, Joe Hicks from Nottingham (Jiks on the forums) has been popping over to Lincoln for the last few weeks and has been having a wale of a time at our Saturday gym sessions, practising, taking photos and clowning around with all of us in Lincs Parkour we love him

anyway, he made a small video documenting this weeks Saturday activities, and it made me smile. I think its great edit and I look forward to seeing more from him
it made me smile and I hope it does the same for you

click below for his photos

Youtube Takeover

Just a quick post before i head off to uni today
letting you all know that today (may 2nd) is the day that Parkour takes over Youtube
our media loving friends Forrest and Dan over at Parkour Generations have struck a deal with the video sharing site, to get their pick of Parkour videos on the featured list for the whole day

” the YouTube homepage will feature NOTHING but parkour videos for the entire day and a little longer. We now know that as well as YouTube.com at least another 18 countries’ YouTube homepages will be running the Takeover Day, including the UK and France, making this easily the largest online exposure for the discipline in history. The aim is to showcase the true discipline, the training, the community, rather than the spectacle. “

one video they didn’t manage to put on there was the now world famous JUMP LINCOLN

every video is great, and this is my pick of the bunch

its some great PR for them and Parkour, check it out @ YOUTUBE

Joes Photography - Part 2

so, I have been looking through the blog’s stats (trying to put off the essay thats due in for tomorrow) and I noticed that a few of the photo’s that Joe took of us training recently have attracted some attention from the inter-web
I want to say thanks to the people who linked us, and to return the favour (thanks to Scott Bird from straight to the bar)

I know we have a few more budding photographers in Lincs Parkour so I will do my best to give everyone their dues in time, but for now here are more of joes

Energise 2: April 19th 08

Well guys, What a Night eh?

Despite a few setbacks, Lincs Parkour still managed to rock it in front of the Energise Live Audience.

Serious props to everyone who took part as most will agree that it was probably one of the most stressful Jam days in LPK history.

My day started off filming some footage of Stu for a Tech project i was doing, which involved Stu running round looking like some outcast from Marvel Comics. And also involved Me wimping out to do a tiny jump about 50 foot up on top of Minds Eye roof top, which cut my filming short haha.

Then me and Stu head up to find everyone else at the green Rails where we trained for a bit then headed off to Dales. Where we crowned Stu the god of Crash Team Racing, and Lol’ed at a “Red Pills” Old video hehe. Then Me, Tumo, Stu, and Pembrey all took a Taxi to North Kesteven to teach.

We arrived pretty early and had the chance to plan our session whilst the poweriser guys still hung about in the Gym. (A damn sight cooler than badminton i have to say :P) and luckily they had already got most of the equipment out. Which made our job 10x easier, and we proceeded to teach the under 13’s session.

We tried to talk to them about what Parkour really was, Some of the Philosophy involved, and some of the Key facts. And it was nice to see that some of the kids did have a slight idea of what Parkour entails, although it will take them a lot of teaching before they truly know what Parkour is, but for a group of under 13’s its a good start.

Energize Event - Sat 19th April

Due to our incredible success in last years Christmas show, we will once again be working in association with the non profit organisation Energize in Lincoln UK.

Lincs Parkour (more specifically its vintage team + advance class guests) are going to be performing on stage at the Energize Easter event this coming Saturday (19th April)

We will not be the only ones performing on stage, the show is packed with local and national talent

There will be a Lincs Parkour demo,
Street Dance Crews - including Dance factor champions Sincil Survivors,
Performances from WOW (Wonders of the World)
world famous DJ’s.

An event not to be missed!

Date:	Saturday, April 19, 2008
Time:	7:30pm - 9:30pm
Location:	New Life Centre Newland Street
City/Town:	Lincoln, United Kingdom
Price:	£2 on the door

Timing means that the advanced session on Saturday will be cut short by half an hour, to enable everyone to travel to the event and get ready for the show.

I hope to see you all there

To see us on stage at last years show, carry on reading

JM’s Photography

this post was supposed to be all about the conditioning session myself, Ryan, Stu and Tumo had on Thursday while others were in Nottingham. The session wasn’t exactly as it was supposed to be. Tumo had to head off early for his his dads birthday, so we spent most of the time doing challenges at the usher gallery, and city hall, and minimal leg conditioning in the arboretum. The main reason we didn’t focus so heavily on the conditioning (apart from my complete inability to keep up with fitness gods Ryan and Stu) was that we had Joe Marshall (my house mate ) come along with us as our ‘official’ photographer. he got some great shots, a few choice ones are placed on his Flickr Account
let us know what you think of the photos here and if you like them, maybe we can get joe out again some time soon to document our days

Once again,
Thanks Joe

Advanced Sessions (Updated)

the advanced sessions have been creating some controversy with the members who have been attending every week.

we have been fairly lenient on who comes to advanced as we wanted to give everybody an opportunity to practice as much as they wanted. it was supposed to be a community session,
but with a fluctuation in attendance and peoples abilities, it is hindering peoples ability to practice safely and at a high standard.

From now on there is going to be a set register.
no exceptions!
everyone has been informed at classes, on the forum, and now on the blog
the current register is below

Conditioning Success!!!

So on Thursday Lincs Parkour had it’s first OFFICIAL session dedicated to conditioning ! and what a battle it was.

Straight after the Christ Hospital workshop me, Gainey, Cobie and Jack (Ledbury) went and got ourselves stocked up with food and ate while waiting for Ryan to arrive. Once he got to City Hall we went underneath and started with a quick mobility session as it was very cold to just jump straight into conditioning. The mobility included the regular kind of stuff but with a few more side kicks and stretching movements!

Once Finished we started of with about 25-50m sprints with a partner on your back then we did 5 sets of running up the stairs with a partner on your back to get the quads burning (and trust me it did) after the stair sets we then began to lengths of lunges but with some one on your back we did two lengths of about 25-50m.

We had a bit of a rest and stretched of our quads once we had done this then it was on to the monkey leg stuff don’t know the exact name for it but I’m sure you know what I mean, However we did 10 on our right then 30 secs of horse stance then another 10 on our right and 30 secs of horse stance and we repeated it on our left, Then we finished of our quads with a nice tasty jumping circuit at the top of city hall and after 5 times round the circuit it was hard for us to feel our legs !

Now Straight after the leg circuit we had a quick stretch off and while doing so I made up an arm circuit for us around the top of city hall. we had to complete this circuit 3 times, it included handstand push ups, one armed push ups, cat press ups, tricep dips, tricep push ups and also stretched out push ups (to work the lats and shoulders) then you would have to reach from the black rail to the wall and shimmy up the walk way to about half way up! Trust me after doing this 3 times we were all KNACKERED !