Saturday, January 2, 2016

Is Parkour for You?

"Parkour is for anyone, but not for everyone." I've been saying this for a few years now and it's entirely true. Still wondering if Parkour is for you? There's one simple question to ask in order to figure it out:

Do you want to improve?


If you answered yes to that, then Parkour training has an abundance of benefits to offer you. Maybe your aim is to get into better shape, to lose weight or to gain strength... but you want to have fun while doing it. Perhaps you want to move more efficiently or more safely? Do you want to finally find a true method of "functional fitness"? Would you like to have a stronger mind and a better understanding of yourself and what you are capable of? Do you want to face your fears with confidence and a clear mind? Want to improve your coordination and balance? Care to improve your creativity, your problem solving, or your reaction time? Parkour can do all of this for you.

What most people don't realize is that Parkour is not just moving around, and it is certainly not just about learning cool tricks or attempting dangerous stunts. Parkour is actually a mentality, a mindset, a way to go about your daily life and your physical training - no matter what it is that you're training your body or mind to do.

Want to get involved? Getting started in our classes is fairly simple:

  1. Create an account.
  2. Find a Class and sign up or request private training.
  3. Show up and train!

Yes, it's that easy! So, what's keeping you from trying it out? Maybe it's the cost? This should help: we're offering your first class for $10 right now for a limited time.

If that's not enough to help you out, we also offer discounts for financial hardships. Shoot us an email to ask about this type of discount. Tell us your story and we'll do what we can to help out!

You've signed up - now what?

You're coming to the classes, now become part of the community!

  1. Join our Facebook group.
  2. Join our Meetup.com group.
  3. Follow us on other social media channels! We're on FacebookYouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr.

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Friday, January 1, 2016

Routine & Challenge: Finding Discipline


A story of how a lack of discipline actually helped me to find more discipline.

This one is my own story. If I'm being honest, I am often very hard on myself. Looking back at 2015 now, I feel like I haven't done much or progressed at all. That's probably not true, but it's hard for me to tell myself that I've done enough. It wasn't until I was looking for things to share in this Weekly Training Inspiration that I remembered something I was very proud to accomplish earlier this year...

A Routine: 301 for 30

Feeling like I needed something to add as a routine to my daily life, I decided to start a challenge with myself and the team of our instructors to do 301 push-ups every day... for 30 days. That's 9,030 push-ups if you like math, or "OVER 9,000!" if you're into Dragon Ball Z or enjoy rounding because it's easier. The challenge started off well, though I must admit that doing the 301 every day in the first few days was leaving me quite sore.

Occasional Forgetfulness

Like probably everyone, I forget to do things now and then. Throughout the 30 days of our challenge, I would occasionally forget to finish my push-ups for the day, and so I would tack the remaining reps onto the next day. Some days it was something like 321 that I had to do, some days it was more like 361. Eventually, as we got into the end of the third week, I was starting to get a little too comfortable with the idea of being able to just rollover any missed reps to the following day. I started to use that to go to bed without finishing the day's push-ups, telling myself it didn't matter because I would do them the next day.


Piling Up

As maybe you've predicted by now - my push-ups began to pile up. I was missing large sets and pushing them to the next day. Always keeping track of what I didn't do (and being honest about it), but I started to worry even myself that I wasn't going to follow through with the challenge. And so... it was somewhere in that final week, I think we had 4 or 5 days left in our 30, and I had managed to pile up 883 push-ups owed. Yikes!

Excitement

Those of you who know me from the classes know that I usually enjoy pushing myself (and others!). I had 883 push-ups to do that day and I thought "well, I may as well go for 1,001". And that's what I did. My arms had gotten surprisingly accustomed to doing many sets over the course of the challenge. They were recovering quicker than... well, ever! I wasn't doing huge sets - I would mostly do sets of 10-20 at a time. It was a long night and I didn't have to be up early the next morning. I had knocked out 170 push-ups throughout the day, and finished the rest later in the night. It was a great feeling to know that I could accomplish this. It wasn't a part of the challenge originally, but I really enjoyed it. I was able to put a great deal of focus into something and get it done.

Pushing It

A few days passed after having done the 1,001 in one day. The challenge was still running, and I was still feeling good about it. Really good... in fact, I purposely skipped full days and I ended up racking up another 943 push-ups owed just 4 days after I had completed the 1,001. This time, it was already about 8:00pm and I was just starting my sets. I knocked out a few hundred, and then decided to kick it up a notch. I put on some old Yamakasi videos to watch, set my phone on the floor, and set up a 1-minute timer. For about an hour and a half, I was knocking out sets of 7-10 push-ups every single minute. You know what I realized? Minutes are quite short! However, my arms were still very accustomed to what they'd been being put through, and I wasn't failing on any of the reps. It wasn't until the last 101, when I decided to do all sets of 10 (except the last, which would be 11), that I nearly had my first failed rep. This time, when I finished, I was even more proud than the last time. Why? Because, this time I had done 1,001 push-ups in just under 4.5 hours.