Blog: A Day In The Life
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Thursday, 15 March 2007
Conditioning Update
Conditioning has really taken a priority over a lot of things for me lately, I've been making sure I get to Hell Night every Thursday, and even when I've been going out on Tuesdays and Saturdays to just do parkour I've ended up doing strength exercises and such. We now meet on Sunday mornings for a 9 to 12 conditioning session as well as Thursdays, which is great.
Tuesday 13th March
Parkour session. Came straight from school and met Shane, Danny and the others at about 4:30 and got warmed up. We moved on once Dave arrived, and as it turned out we ended up playing with a tennis ball for about 20 minutes on the Crucible forecourt for some reason, which was fun but rather unproductive. After doing some parkour on the Odeon and Hallam, we headed over to some new scaffolding near the old Red Wall Gardens, which was pretty sweet. Dave led some climbing exercises and we all reformed our callouses by getting a few lachés down. We spent quite a while on there, and as we were starting to tire out at about 7, Jin texted me asking where we were 'cause he was coming into town, so we arranged to meet him, and on the way, the entire group split off in different homeward directions leaving Will, Dave and myself to meet Jin. Bored from waiting and eager to go home, Dave headed off with Will, leaving me doing handstands in front of the Cathedral.
Jin turned up a while later with Tom, and he said he was feeling really able and in the mood to train and do lots of parkour for the first time in months, thanks to all the rehab for his knee injury and back problems. We headed towards the station to train, after a short while I decided to go home, but came back once I realised there was no bus for another hour, so I stuck around to train some more.
Just up from the bus station, some chavs asked me for a quid, and when I said I didn't have it, threatened to stab me, then said to Jin "Oi...give us a quid or we'll stab your mate!", I edged my way towards the stairs and we all ran away, they chased after us but had blatantly picked the wrong people to run after hehe.
"Welcome to Sheffield" I said to Jin once I got my breath back.
As I went for the bus later on (9pm) after some more training, I bumped into the chavs again and they asked me for a quid, then followed me into the toilet and stopped me from getting out by blocking both doors after trying to nick my stuff out of my the bag on my back while I was using the urinal. They weren't too smart, so I managed to get out, and they followed me to my bus and kept pestering me for a fag and asking me why I don't smoke:
Chav: "Got a fag?"
Me: "No"
Chav: "Do you smoke?"
Me: "No, and you wouldn't if you knew what's good for you"
Chav: "What? Why?"
Me: " 'cause it kills you"
Chav: "What? Are you scared of dying?"
Me: "What!? No"
Chav: "Then why don't you smoke then?"
Me: "I'm not a fucking idiot"
Chav: "Yer what?"
Unfortunately this chav just about sums up the intelligence of the average Sheffield teenager.
Thursday 15th March
Conditioning session - Hell Night. Met Dave at 4pm after coming straight from school again, we weren't expecting anyone else to turn up since Will was resting and JIn had texted me just before the session saying his back was not feeling great (most of the Sheffield lot go to the gym on Thursdays and pay £6 to do flips).
Dave and I got started with some rail traverses once we'd done our initial warm-up, then launched straight into our (now weekly) set of 50 climb-ups from a dead hang on a 7-8ft wall. I learned how to do double-arm climb-ups the other week when Jin was showing his brother the technique, now I can do 50 of them one after the other continuously, and today it took about 10 minutes, maybe less, we didn't time, perhaps I will next week to give myself a target to beat. Dave managed 50 struggled climb-ups with his weighted vest on, what a beast.
As we were moving on to the next exercise, traverses down a stair set with feet on the vertical of a wall, Donald turned up and joined in in his impractical converse shoes (errr yuk!) which he found extremely difficult to do this exercise in, as they have no grip whatsoever and are completely purposeless shoes.
York Will turned up part way through this and I got him warmed up with some simple exercises, and he had a go at what we were doing at the time. We moved on and completed a technical buildering traverse at the Millennium Galleries, and kept making it more challenging by doing it without certain parts of the wall, which was great fun! I took off my shoes to do a hanging traverse at the Odeon, as Dave suggested when I complained that my shoes were so pointy it made it impossible, and I managed to complete the length of the wall there and almost back. We did some leg exercises next, which were extremely difficult for me, as they were new to me and I'm not used to doing them like that every week, but I'm sure if I keep trying them each week I should be able to cope with a whole set.
The final exercise we did was the one I hate more than anything in the world. It's where you bend your knees and hold in a precion takeoff position for one minute to build up the lactic acid in your legs, then jump to a wall to release it and releave your legs of the shooting pain and agony. We do four sets of this (a minute then a minute rest inbetween each set), I decided that in order to lose focus on the concentration on the pain I was enduring, I had to keep my thoughts on something far far away, so for the first set I spent the whole minute thinking about something to think about, and the time flew, for the second set I tried to solve difficult maths problems in my head and then for the third set I thought about the different grades I can get in each Maths module and the outcome of what final grade it would be at the end of the A-level, which passed the time nicely, then for the last one I imagined myself doing my favourite parkour runs around Sheffield, which was fun but didn't last long before I started wishing I was actually doing them, and I couldn't keep my mind off the pain which was actually shooting up my legs like warm blackcurrent under my skin, and I was sure Dave should have stopped us by now...he was taking his time...I didn't like this...30 seconds, I heard him say...all I could think about was wanting to stop...I needed to release from this awkward position...Come on, Dave...COME ON!!!! 10 seconds...I was fit to burst, but I knew that it was a mere ten seconds until I could release, so I decided to hold it in as hard as I could, I counted down from ten slowly, and Dave got to five before me...four...three...two...one...JUMP!...Relief.
After a short relief rest, Dave took us for a jog around the Odeon area, he was in P.E. teacher mode again, I felt quite good by then, and when we stopped I checked the time and had to go right then, so I thanked the others for the great sesh and left.
It was weird today without Jin there to lead us, as I'm usually the one who struggles with the exercises and can't complete them properly, but I found myself leading a lot of the exercises and motivating the others to make sure they completed as much as possible, like Jin does with us.
Here are a couple of photos from a Hell Night a few weeks ago:
Jin in his weighted vest
Will being sick after one of the exercises
Tuesday 13th March
Parkour session. Came straight from school and met Shane, Danny and the others at about 4:30 and got warmed up. We moved on once Dave arrived, and as it turned out we ended up playing with a tennis ball for about 20 minutes on the Crucible forecourt for some reason, which was fun but rather unproductive. After doing some parkour on the Odeon and Hallam, we headed over to some new scaffolding near the old Red Wall Gardens, which was pretty sweet. Dave led some climbing exercises and we all reformed our callouses by getting a few lachés down. We spent quite a while on there, and as we were starting to tire out at about 7, Jin texted me asking where we were 'cause he was coming into town, so we arranged to meet him, and on the way, the entire group split off in different homeward directions leaving Will, Dave and myself to meet Jin. Bored from waiting and eager to go home, Dave headed off with Will, leaving me doing handstands in front of the Cathedral.
Jin turned up a while later with Tom, and he said he was feeling really able and in the mood to train and do lots of parkour for the first time in months, thanks to all the rehab for his knee injury and back problems. We headed towards the station to train, after a short while I decided to go home, but came back once I realised there was no bus for another hour, so I stuck around to train some more.
Just up from the bus station, some chavs asked me for a quid, and when I said I didn't have it, threatened to stab me, then said to Jin "Oi...give us a quid or we'll stab your mate!", I edged my way towards the stairs and we all ran away, they chased after us but had blatantly picked the wrong people to run after hehe.
"Welcome to Sheffield" I said to Jin once I got my breath back.
As I went for the bus later on (9pm) after some more training, I bumped into the chavs again and they asked me for a quid, then followed me into the toilet and stopped me from getting out by blocking both doors after trying to nick my stuff out of my the bag on my back while I was using the urinal. They weren't too smart, so I managed to get out, and they followed me to my bus and kept pestering me for a fag and asking me why I don't smoke:
Chav: "Got a fag?"
Me: "No"
Chav: "Do you smoke?"
Me: "No, and you wouldn't if you knew what's good for you"
Chav: "What? Why?"
Me: " 'cause it kills you"
Chav: "What? Are you scared of dying?"
Me: "What!? No"
Chav: "Then why don't you smoke then?"
Me: "I'm not a fucking idiot"
Chav: "Yer what?"
Unfortunately this chav just about sums up the intelligence of the average Sheffield teenager.
Thursday 15th March
Conditioning session - Hell Night. Met Dave at 4pm after coming straight from school again, we weren't expecting anyone else to turn up since Will was resting and JIn had texted me just before the session saying his back was not feeling great (most of the Sheffield lot go to the gym on Thursdays and pay £6 to do flips).
Dave and I got started with some rail traverses once we'd done our initial warm-up, then launched straight into our (now weekly) set of 50 climb-ups from a dead hang on a 7-8ft wall. I learned how to do double-arm climb-ups the other week when Jin was showing his brother the technique, now I can do 50 of them one after the other continuously, and today it took about 10 minutes, maybe less, we didn't time, perhaps I will next week to give myself a target to beat. Dave managed 50 struggled climb-ups with his weighted vest on, what a beast.
As we were moving on to the next exercise, traverses down a stair set with feet on the vertical of a wall, Donald turned up and joined in in his impractical converse shoes (errr yuk!) which he found extremely difficult to do this exercise in, as they have no grip whatsoever and are completely purposeless shoes.
York Will turned up part way through this and I got him warmed up with some simple exercises, and he had a go at what we were doing at the time. We moved on and completed a technical buildering traverse at the Millennium Galleries, and kept making it more challenging by doing it without certain parts of the wall, which was great fun! I took off my shoes to do a hanging traverse at the Odeon, as Dave suggested when I complained that my shoes were so pointy it made it impossible, and I managed to complete the length of the wall there and almost back. We did some leg exercises next, which were extremely difficult for me, as they were new to me and I'm not used to doing them like that every week, but I'm sure if I keep trying them each week I should be able to cope with a whole set.
The final exercise we did was the one I hate more than anything in the world. It's where you bend your knees and hold in a precion takeoff position for one minute to build up the lactic acid in your legs, then jump to a wall to release it and releave your legs of the shooting pain and agony. We do four sets of this (a minute then a minute rest inbetween each set), I decided that in order to lose focus on the concentration on the pain I was enduring, I had to keep my thoughts on something far far away, so for the first set I spent the whole minute thinking about something to think about, and the time flew, for the second set I tried to solve difficult maths problems in my head and then for the third set I thought about the different grades I can get in each Maths module and the outcome of what final grade it would be at the end of the A-level, which passed the time nicely, then for the last one I imagined myself doing my favourite parkour runs around Sheffield, which was fun but didn't last long before I started wishing I was actually doing them, and I couldn't keep my mind off the pain which was actually shooting up my legs like warm blackcurrent under my skin, and I was sure Dave should have stopped us by now...he was taking his time...I didn't like this...30 seconds, I heard him say...all I could think about was wanting to stop...I needed to release from this awkward position...Come on, Dave...COME ON!!!! 10 seconds...I was fit to burst, but I knew that it was a mere ten seconds until I could release, so I decided to hold it in as hard as I could, I counted down from ten slowly, and Dave got to five before me...four...three...two...one...JUMP!...Relief.
After a short relief rest, Dave took us for a jog around the Odeon area, he was in P.E. teacher mode again, I felt quite good by then, and when we stopped I checked the time and had to go right then, so I thanked the others for the great sesh and left.
It was weird today without Jin there to lead us, as I'm usually the one who struggles with the exercises and can't complete them properly, but I found myself leading a lot of the exercises and motivating the others to make sure they completed as much as possible, like Jin does with us.
Here are a couple of photos from a Hell Night a few weeks ago:
Jin in his weighted vestWill being sick after one of the exercisesLabels: Parkour
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 23:55 
