Power and Flow

Week 16: Day Two
The warm up started with 50 split foot "dunks" using tennis balls and the high bars.  This was perfect for me because my split foot take off needs some serious TLC.  It's still a bit of a struggle but I'm not outright failing anymore so there's progress.  To complete our warm up, we did some joint mobility and got ready for our first exercise.

Vault, touch the wall, turn and vault.  First for speed.  Then for minimum steps leading up to and in between the vaults.  This helped us focus on efficiency and flow.  Then we combined these concepts and aimed for speed and flow.  While trying to find the most efficient way to do this route without slowing down, I figured out that tic tac-ing off the wall was easier than halting enough to touch it and push off to go back the other direction.

Our course was expanded to include a few more obstacles—some rails, vault boxes, and mats. Again, we went through for speed, minimum steps, flow, and efficiency.  Because most of us were still struggling with the flow concept, P gave us 1 burpee for every awkward momentum-killing pause we took on the course.  I was trying not to kill my flow so I was very focused on continuing my momentum no matter what.  So focused that when I mentally paused at the rail, my body did not and I got completely tangled up.  After laughing at myself, I was able to get myself back on top of the bar and finish out the course while the class cheered me on.

After we finished playing with that, P announced that we were going to work on his (least) favorite vault—dash vaults.  I actually got so excited I started bouncing a little bit.  I love dash vaults.  As P started explaining the mechanics of the vault to some of the class, I started running dashes with a few others.  We started taking off from farther away to challenge ourselves.  To really push this concept, P turned the vault box so there was more obstacle for us to clear.  This worked really well because it forced me to lean back a little more which helped me fly over the box.  Next, we tried a couple of dashes for height instead of distance.

We had four of the squishy blocks on top of each other.  I didn't know if I'd make it over but the first one I tried I flew across the obstacle, bouncing a teensy bit off the end.  Holy S***! I yelled as I came out of it.  P wanted to catch it on film, but I couldn't do it again.  I get weird when I know the camera is watching for something specific.  If it's there and filming in general, that's fine.  But when it's like okay, do move x then I get distracted.  I did it a couple more times but kept bouncing my butt off the end.  It was still a very impressive butt bounce.

We headed downstairs for the second part of class where we brought out pretty much everything you can vault over to set up a course.  After one practice run, we started running the course for time.  It always takes me a couple of times before I'm really comfortable and flowy, which means it took me a few rounds to shave my time down from 20+ seconds to 19+ seconds and finally to my best time which was a little over 17 seconds.  To give you an idea of what on earth that means... P and B were the most efficient on the course last night and they were running just under 15 seconds.

It was a cool exercise because it pushes your strength physically and mentally.  Physically, because you're running at max. speed while staying in control.  Mentally, because there were some obstacles that I knew there were more efficient ways to get over, but I wasn't quite comfortable trying those ways.  I knew I could do it, but it freaked me out.  Especially when I was going so fast.  Something I'm constantly working on.  Controlling my fear and trusting my body.

Check out this awesome video of class on the APK Academy Facebook Page.  I'm the one in the green shirt and obnoxiously bright shoes :)