Pictures and progression videos

As many of you have probably noticed there is a large amount of text only entries in my blog, this is due to the act that the gym in which we do our training is extremely dark and the camera we use for our pictures and videos cannot properly focus.
We are trying all we can to figure out a way to focus it ourselves without changing the quality, speed and sound settings on the camera enabling us to take videos for me and the other members of WPK to show our progression.
We have not been able to take any videos outside due to the horrendous weather we have had these past few weeks and we are looking foreword to training together soon to take snippets for our blogs.

The Gym

Well, noticing i haven't wrote anything in here lately I've decided to add a post summing up my eventful night with Matty, in all it was a fantastic night and i have never laughed so much in my whole life in a single night.
To begin with Matty decides to ring me approx 5 mins before he needed me to be somewhere and says "Danny, meet me at farm foods in 5 MINS", i get completely changed in less than 20 secs, grab my bag, phone and money and sprint the fastest I've ever ran in my life down hill gathering speed as i go and even had the joy of seeing some dumb ass chavs in the shittiest car I've ever seen in my entire life rolling past shouting something to a woman who turned around and gave him the sticks HAHA! (shot down!). anyway i arrive there and Matt's swinging from the car door screaming DANNYYYYYYYY!!!!! i jump in the car and end up having a conversation about my 'Spoider' video.
After being at the gym for a few mins we decide to do one of the shortest warm ups ever then head off to the weights to gain a little strength, me doing things mostly to build arm and ab conditioning and training. Not to forget Mattys repetitive posing in the mirror.
A few mins later we decided to go to one of the other rooms and do something else, me and Matty basically just had a mess about in there doing random things that we repeatedly rofled at. We got frequent visits from Bullough giving Matt tips on perfecting his flips.
we headed off and randomly decided to go and have a look around the side of 'Go Outdoors' we came across a small spot which wasn't bad for practicing a little balance on, i noticed a difference in the development on mine and Matts balancing skills when it comes to rails and foot work, i practically run along the 2 inch thick bar and matt gradually slugs along it, however Matt does absolutely kill me in various other areas of parkour such as hand balance and a numerous amount of vaults.
Time passes and we grew more and more bored so we decided to end our night and go home using good old public transport... buses, who the hell hires these drivers at all; 2 times the driver stopped for a good old read of his newspaper, which was obviously more important than doing his job.

Friday night =]

it's that time of the week again, Friday night's gym session is over and I'm thinking of something to put in my blog.. well a recap of the night as a whole it went great the others did a lot of training whereas i spent most of the night 'dicking around' BUT if you know me as a person in real you'll know this is what I'm always like if not... get used to it ha ha ;].
i was in a pretty hyper mood. better luck next time boys.
It didn't really help keep having interferences by random idiotic chavs that know nothing about parkour.

Meet up with Scott, Danny and Jamie

The day began with me basically standing around waiting for Matty (as usual), we kick started our day with some fantastic pancakes that Matty talked me into buying from maccies (they were good though i'll give you that) after sitting there for around half an hour talking about the syrup's 'sugary goodness' we decided to make a move.
our first trip was to the civic center, this place is fantastic for training your basic cat leaps, vaults and other random things, after arriving at the civic we both began to... play a game of worms 3D (which i happened to kick Mattys ass in, mwahaha) , random i know but what else are you going to do with over 2 hours to kill?.
Time passes and i run down to the marble to meet up with Scott and Danny, whilst waiting for them i came across a guy called Jamie who wanted to try his luck with Parkour, he wasn't bad but couldn't exactly grasp the main idea of what Parkour is supposed to mean and be, 'he thought that the concept of Parkour was flips and umping from high things to basically nothing' however you cannot blame a guy for trying. about 10 min's later Scott finally arrives with his friend danny, after a short introduction to myself we all set off for our eventful day of Parkour.

First Stop - Civic
Here we taught the guys how to do some basic vaults over rails these being: lazy, kong, monkey, turn etc. Scott and Dannys monkey vault over the rail was done perfectly which was unexpected for someone as new to Parkour as they are. we also taught them how to do cat leaps properly (well i say properly, my feet slipped from the wall and ended up with me sitting on the floor in pain) after this tom decided to show the guys some balance techniques which caught on quickly with them.

Second Stop - Collage
On the way down to the collage Jamie saw a friend of his who 'tagged along' for a few hours. upon arrival at the collage about 10 min's is spent teaching Scott and Danny how to do the various ways of executing the 'Parkour roll' after this we headed over to the 'underground' part of the collage that we usually use for all round training. here we taught cat leaps and palm spins which the guys took to easily. later on was just spent having a general mess about wall running and tic-tacing from a wall to a higher wall that stuck out. most of the time i spent here was spent teaching and helping out other people so i didn't get to do much, however i did get to practice a few tic-tac's and bigger precisions around the area.

Third Stop - The Heron
I didn't do much at this spot as there is not realy much for me to do here, i practiced a few lazy vaults and other random things then decided to move on as it tended to get a little boring after a while

Fourth Stop - The Church/Apartments
This particular spot has helped me develop so many things in the past that i absolutely adore the place. most of my time here was spent trying to learn the 'Helicopter' turn, basically this is a thing that you can do either on a rail or on a wall, it is especially ideal that you practice it on a low wall as i found out later on when i fell backwards from the wall accidentally badly injuring my shin. i am hoping to be able to do this move perfectly within a few weeks of training it. most things at this spot i tried on my own as i do tend to wonder from the others when in training.
Scott and Danny needed to leave us after a while of being at this spot as they needed to go somewhere (Party ;], noice)

The weather took a turn for the worst so me, Matty and Tom spent the rest of the day hiding from the rain around Deanery High School, passing time by just having a general prat about.

Todays Gym Session

I’ve had a brilliant time today with the rest of the team in Ringside Gym.

The night began with some basic warming up, me being late to the gym and left to warm up alone, but I didn’t mind, after all I should have gotten my coursework done earlier in the Christmas break.

It kicked off with:
A precision to a pillar - Pillar to the stack of mats - Mats to some plastic step things - over a rail onto another step

Myself and Ben spent a good hour working on our strength doing basic things such as Bench Presses, Dumbbells, Squats, L Sits (or whatever they’re called) and some other things that I can’t quite remember.

We spent most time doing other general things such as climb ups and hand aye co-ordination with some 5Kg medicine balls that we made some small games with Ben decided to keep throwing at us all at random after we had finished.

Didn’t do much balance practicing tonight as I was too busy enjoying myself.

As the night drew to a close I began trying to kash vault a big stack of mats, I must admit it was difficult as it's the first time I’ve tried a kash vault let alone one as big as it was, I would estimate the mats being at least 6ft in length. I never actually perfected the kash however I was trying for at least 1 hour picking up pointers from Matty along the way.

I also tried a dash vault over the pile of mats width ways, first time i tried it i got my foot caught on a mat which as on the opposite side and nearly landed face first into a wall, second time i tried it i had over jumped at the beginning and put my hands down too late which sent me over the opposite side landing flat on my arse. after a few more tries and fails i finally got the technique and was able to dash correctly aswell as land correctly however i do need more practice.

About Me

I haven't always been one of the most physical of people in school; I regularly skipped my P.E lessons throughout high school. I've never been good at any particular sports except for rugby. My school was one of those where basically everybody is scared of anything new, if somebody decides to do anything different then they never hear the end of it, people get called every name under the sun, take for example when I told my friend I did parkour he just laughed at me.
I am not a very confident person when it comes to new things which is what you get form years of put downs from complete @*$£ holes. This is probably the number one reason I don’t have confidence in anything I do in parkour; I may scream YES!! After I achieve the jump but I don’t value it, to me it’s just another jump.
My parents tried to get me something to do in my spare times such as Judo, Boxing or Karate. All of these sports I quit after just a few weeks of beginning.

Some people would expect me to say something smart about the way I see parkour like expecting me to say something diplomatic or philosophic but to be honest when I do parkour I just feel free, free from all the worries from the past, present and future. it also gives me amounts of time where I get to see my fantastic friends and have a good laugh.
I have been into parkour and free-running even before jump London and jump Britain came out. But the thing was I had no idea how to get started, I was saved by an article that 'Linc' did about parkour in the Wigan area. So I got in touch with my valued friend Matthew and began doing parkour in spring 2007. And that was one day I will never forget. Thank you Wigan Parkour for introducing to parkour.