This shouldn't come as a surprise, but I talk about parkour pretty often at work. And at home... and to my friends... and to random store clerks at lululemon... Anyways. My fellow intern, E, gets to hear from me particularly often because her desk is right next to mine. I've been trying to get her to come out and try it sometime and I finally succeeded the other night. She ended up loving it which made me happy and she came back in one piece so that's good. Although, she's only a little bit sore so maybe we were too easy on her!
Class started with some QM movement at which point E looked at me like hello, are you going to teach me what this means? so I forced myself to start thinking like a teacher (I say forced because I'm horrible at explaining things sometimes so I usually defer to someone else when I'm asked for help). I found various opportunities throughout class to take E aside and teach her some of the basics so she could keep up: parkour landings, QM (frontwards and sideways), parkour rolls, balance technique, cat leaps, and precision jumps. It was a lot for her to take in in one night but she was a quick learner. If you didn't know her, you would've thought she had been training for months already! I'm going to give myself a teeny bit of the credit for teaching her, but she's clearly naturally awesome. It was cool for me to see her do a movement (and do it well) after I explained the technique or the general concept of the move. I was really excited for her. I was also really excited for myself when I figured out that I'm not totally incompetent when it comes to teaching. Yay!
Back to class... we did a field games-style warm up of leapfrog, piggy-back rides and wheelbarrow racing down to the other side of the room and back. Then, continuing with our theme of balance for the week, we moved on to some fun challenges on the bars. We broke off into teams of two and during each round, one partner held a position on the ground (hollow hold, plank, handstands, frog plank) while the other took on R's various balance challenges.
The first round was just balancing in a squat on the rail, but soon we moved on to harder positions and transitions. Balance standing up. Squat then stand and turn. Balance in a cat-like position on all fours. Go from that position to standing without falling. If something looked too easy for one of us then our instructor, R, would give us something new to try. Points for each round were given to the last one standing, or the first to do something without falling. I was really excited that I got two points (E got two... too) until we got to the last challenge of class which was walking around the set of rails... with objects in your hands to match the number of points you had. I was given two foam rollers, one in each hand. I didn't realize how much I relied on my hands for balance. Not necessarily for holding onto anything but just to stabilize myself in the air. Plus, in order to keep myself balanced I had to keep the foam rollers balanced in their own way so they didn't throw me off. It was an interesting exercise.
I like mixing in game days like this with the hardcore training days. Especially childhood games like leapfrog. It's a nice reminder that you're there to play and have fun on top of the workout. When was the last time you had a wheelbarrow race?
Here are a couple of photos from class, courtesy of one of our awesome instructors:
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| Leapfrog! (I promise I didn't land on her) |
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| Pistol Squat on the Rail |
Nice blog :)
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