Fence + Scott + Hypergravity = Hilarity?

Thursday: Thursday I went in the gym at school which is something I haven't done in ages. Funny watching all the muscle-heads gawping at me doing pistols, muscle ups and negatives (they'd never seen any of them before!). It has a silly split pullup bar which I can't describe but is pretty crap for muscle ups, did planche en momentum on it a while ago, this time I focused entirely on planche en force. Did 10 reps with a friend gently pushing me through the transition. I still feel really, really weak during one little phase of the transition, I guess I'll just have to keep on doing it until it goes away. About a year and a half ago in the gym I tried to lift 40kg overhead from the floor, did one rep and dropped it. For fun, I did the same weight again this time, did 10 reps with good technique. So I suppose that's progress. Worked more on my squatting technique, going deep with 80kg. Focused very heavily on upper body stuff because that's my current priority. Also realised that finally I'm consistent with pistols, did 10 reps on each leg unsupported with no balance issues. Which is cool since a month ago I couldn't even do them on my left leg because of my history of knee troubles.

Friday: Friday night was a mate's 17th at a bar so I knew the evening was a writeoff for training. Fortunatley there was still good ol' after school waterpolo fitness so I did an hour of that. Did loads of evil swimming stuff designed to trash your stamina. Felt really good afterwards. Realised that I need to re-learn racing turns and improve my head-up front crawl technique. We did ballwork after that to cool down, it's amazing just how good our passing is as a team now, very accurate, controlled and fast. Oh and I came up with yet another method of training for planche en force. People suggest doing muscle ups on the edge of a pool to train for them. Well the ends of our pool are raised about 30cm above the water level for the starting blocks and I can happily do en force on it and not really feel anything. However, I realised that I could simply use collumns of floats on the poolside to raise my arms and increase the resistance. I guess by the end the tower was about 1 meter tall, perhaps a bit lower. Varied the height and did lots of planche en force and momentum on all sorts of different heights. It's actually amazingly good training and as part of my drive to get en force, I'm going to be doing it as often as possible. So at least I made something of the evening training-wise.

Saturday: Had to be up at 6:00am on saturday for the first of the sessions I need to do (20 hours total) over the next two years to renew my NPLQ. Actually felt surprisingly good but was annoyed to see everything looking rather wet. Got into Leeds about 11 after the lifeguarding session and in those hours, everything had dried up majorly! So that was pretty cool. Did the same sort of stuff as usual, for me it was more a day of watching other people achieve their goals rather than doing anything new of my own. But congrats to Ben for doing two armjumps he's been wanting to do for ages in the same day and also to Hollie for her first ever muscle up other than on a springy gymanstics bar. I love seeing other people progress. We also did a bit of tricking and buildering, I'm an aweful tricker and I know it but I'm trying to improve and everyone is being really helpful with trying to teach me. Worked mostly on b-kicks, having difficulty keeping my upper body horizontal. Whilst doing this apparently I did a surprisingly good 360 crescent by accident. Did some stuff that should help me build up to the 540 kick as well. I've got a long way to go but I'm having fun. Buildering was fun, how much stronger both Hollie and myself are now is amazing, the court wall seemed like a stroll in the park when previously it was an achievement for me to make it across it once. Ben Anderson the amature photographer who shoots a fair bit with us was out for a bit with us today during the tricking and buildering. He captured this incredibly surreal one of me on the court wall doing the "corner" problem which seemed like a massive achievement 6 months ago. There's a fisheye lens and a remotley triggered flash gun being used which is why it looks so crazy. He's an awesome guy to work with and he's talking about doing some more focused sessions in the future which should produce some incredible results. The rest of the set (including two more of me) is here. So yeah, the day went pretty much as normal. There seems to be a new trend for clearing off early in Leeds which is a shame. But fortunatley Scott can never say no to some more training so after everyone else had gone we did some fantastic stuff at a covered place in the university (by now it was raining again). There was a big set of low bike rails we experimented loads with finding new movements on. As ever, Scott managed to push me a bit to try stuff I struggle with mentally, this is why for me training with Scott is great, he makes me push harder. We did some fun little plyometrics drills over the rails as well. Oh and as for the title, earlier on in the day, Scott was giving me a piggy back (in the style of part of our Hell Night), came to a lowish fence and of course being Scott decided to try to running jump it. He clipped a foot and went flying, good stuff. Now I have some idea why Hollie hates it so much when I do precisions with her on my back!

Hopefully I'll get into Leeds sometime during the week with Scott and we can have a really, really focused session like the tuesday one ages ago. There's stuff I can physically do in Leeds that I've let my underconfidence stop me from doing. And somehow with Ed, Jamie and Hollie all wanting to film stuff for videos at the moment, people wanting to visit different spots than me and other stuff that I won't go into, I haven't found the mental focus on a saturday to go get big stuff done. With Scott there shouting "Get it done!" at me and reduced distractions, I think that's exactly what I need right now.

Oh and I forgot to mention, I discovered the Leeds Half Marathon is at the start of May. I think I might enter it just for the experience, I know my time will be pretty poor, currently I can run a long way, just not very fast. It would be interesting to see how I cope with it. Planned out a very hilly 12 mile circuit locally, will try that asap, if I survive it I know I'm up for the half marathon haha!

Over and out.