The holidays are on us, and 2011 is almost over so for us that means taking a break to spend some time with friends and family.

Which means  that our open sessions held at Witham Hill Gymnastics (Lincoln), and Gym Magic (Leeds) are closed until the New Year.

So enjoy your Christmas break, I hope you get everything you ask for and we will see you in the new year – 2012 looks like the best year yet!

remember check out the SingleBound Facebook page for all the latest videos and news over the holidays

Dale
SingleBound

After the page break is part 2 of the conditioning excecises we have laid out for Leeds Met Parkour, remember move onto these when you can easily complete stage 1 

Day 1 – Full press ups

The most important aspect of performing this movement is control, we are working up to one armed press ups so complete body tension is the goal.

Place your hands shoulder width apart directly under your chest/shoulders with your body tight and straight, feet together in the standard push up position.

Begin your descent keeping your elbows close to your body (do not allow them to splay out) reach the bottom (chest about one inch from touching the floor) pause for one second then slowly press back up. Its important that your body stays straight and you don’t bend at the back when you come back up.

Build maximal controllable strength and explosive power will come easily.

Day 2 – close squats

Stand with your feet together, toes pointing out slightly. Bend at the knees and slightly lean forward as you descend to balance your weight. Reach rock bottom so your hamstrings touch you calves. (or come close to) pause slightly and slowly stand back up. The most important thing here is that you do not bounce. Reach the bottom slowly, pause, then come back up slowly and under control. Again, this strength will sky rocket your explosive strength for jumping and landing.

Day 3 – leg raise/twist

Lay flat on your back exactly as in the last exercise with your hands either by your side or holding something behind you. Keep your legs together, toes pointed and straight. Left them up to 90 degrees. Then like a windscreen wiper in a car, slowly descend your straightened legs to one side and before you touch the floor bring them back up and repeat on the other side. When you bring them back up for the second time, lower them back down straight out. This up,side,up,side,up,down set of movements count as one rep. As usual keep your focus on complete body tension and slow control.

Raised bridge

Bridging is an odd exercise but will build superior strength in the entire back, something that will give you complete control of your core as a whole.

Find a chair, sofa or the edge of a bed and sit in front of it. If you learn back and rest your shoulders on the sofa and lift your body off the ground so you are supported by your feet and shoulders only. This is your start position. From here, lift your waist/stomach towards the ceiling as if you were being pulled up by a rope from your belly button. This will form a bridge from floor to chair/sofa/bed. Descend back down slightly then repeat.

Day 4 – Jack knife pull up

Find a bar you can hang from that will take your weight. (a door frame chin up bar is perfect) if you can find a chair or table about waist high, place this near the bar so you can rest your legs on it. Perform a standard pull up (chin above the bar/palms facing away from you) but use your legs on the chair (or whatever you can find) to take some of your weight, this will get your whole body used to this movement, in particular getting your lats involved in pulling because this strength will be vital for muscle ups later.

Day 5 – handstand half press ups

If youve made it to the point where you can hold a 30 second handstand against the wall whilst keeping your body tight and straight then its time for presses.

Get to your normal press up position, body tight and straight, against a wall. Slowly descend to the point where your elbows form a 90 degree bend, this will not seem very far at first but going all the way to the bottom will be incredibly difficult. When you reach this point (elbows at right angles), grip the floor and press back up to the straight handstand position.

Day 6 – conditioning session

Attend LMU strength session to bring it all together

Day 7 – rest day

Training lay out

Decide which days of the week are best for you (if you have your own training) and perform one exercise a day.

For every exercise perform 3 sets of each number listed below, as with last step, work through the numbers week by week, don’t skip a step but when you can perform that number for 3 sets and can do it under control, tick off that number and next week go to the next one. This whole thing should take 4 weeks at least if you manage everything first time (which I don’t expect,  these progressions are hard and some will take weeks to move on.)

Day 1 – full press ups

3 sets of:

Step 1 – 8 reps
Step 2 – 14 reps
Step 3 – 20 reps
Step 4 – 25

Day 2 – close squats

3 sets of:
Step 1 – 10 reps
Step 2 – 20 reps
Step 3 – 30 reps
Step 4 – 40 reps

Day 3 – leg raise twist left + right

3 sets of:

Step 1 – 8 reps
Step 2 – 12 reps
Step 3 – 20 reps
Step 4 – 25 reps
Raised bridge

3 sets of:

Step 1 – 8 reps
Step 2 – 12 reps
Step 3 – 20 reps
Step 4 – 25 reps

Day 4 – jack knife pull ups

3 sets of

Step 1 – 5 reps
Step 2 – 8 reps
Step 3 – 12 reps
Step 4 – 15 reps
Day 5 – Handstand hold

3 sets of:

30 seconds ( perform 3 sets of 30 second handstand holds every week that you perform the handstand press ups, its important you get used to holding this tension and the more you do it the stronger you get)

Handstand half press up

3 sets of:

Step 1 – 4 reps
Step 2 – 6 reps
Step 3 – 8 reps
Step 4 – 10 reps

Day 6 – conditioning session

Day 7 rest day

Ever since moving to Leeds, the community’s abilities have constantly impressed.
The video below was made as a pure Parkour video, and involves almost every single one of the biggest jumps and movements in Leeds.

The movements are so smooth that more often than not it overshadows the size of some of these areas. but with almost 5000 views in 4 days I’m sure you agree these guys have talent.

All credit goes to Kuba Szlas, Michal Szlas, Dan Bridge, Ben Reddington, four of the hardest training people I have met in my 7 years training.

enjoy the video, and make sure you check out some of their others on Dan Bridge’s Youtube Account

In Parkour we use our entire body to move so to become stronger and more efficient we need to train all of our body and learn to cope with that entire weight. Simply practising parkour will, over time give us that strength but in order to progress faster and, more importantly, to prevent injuries it is essential that we start conditioning our bodies for the stresses of Parkour.

For those serious about strength we will be building full body strength over the course of the year with the classes, one weekly conditioning session and this training routine. To be performed 5 days a week, only 20-30 minutes is required at first and the bodyweight exercises start off very simple and easy. The ease of the first months exercises are not to be taken lightly because here we are building form and total body control as well as strengthening the joints. This is an aspect of strength usually overlooked but without this essential step, more advanced training is likely to result in injury from lack of joint strength.

This training routine is to be performed once or twice a day (dependant on free time) unless otherwise stated it is advised to perform 4 sets of each number of exercises listed below. We are using a tick off method, even if you can do more of the required exercise, start off with the number given, tick it off and next week move on to the next number and perform that. If you are unable to perform 4 sets of that number of exercises then stay on that number until you achieve it. After 4 weeks working through the exercises, increasing the number and ticking them off, we will do a recap session at the start of one of our conditioning sessions and those who pass will be taught the next step of the exercise and repeat. After a few months you will be performing hard exercises easily and will start noticing your strength increase.

The weekly conditioning sessions are the hard work portion and without it, the 5 day routine will only get you so far. So a typical week includes 5 days home training, 1 day conditioning, 1 day off.  At the first conditioning session you come to you will be taught how to do these exercises properly and how to structure your training.

Exercise routine (4 sets of each number, 30sec-1 min rest between)
(Tick off number when complete. DO NOT SKIP ANY STEP)

Day 1: Press ups (follow correct technique as taught in conditioning)

The fair was a huge success with record sign ups for many established clubs and societies and a huge turn out throughout the day. Leeds Metropolitan University, famous for high standard athletes in a range of sports including gymnastics were understandably very happy to work with such a new and exciting emerging sport deciding to take on Parkour within its athletic union.
Add the LMU Parkour on Facebook to stay up to date with classes.We spent the day signing up new members and playing/demonstrating in Carnegie’s awesome gymnastic centre that hopefully will become the new home of LMU Parkour.

we will start with our video of the month, nothing special in production values, and no insane tricks just a guy moving (Anthow)

fancy a creative more tough/hardy style then check out “dont do it from Aleksandre Bayturin

This is part 1 of a story based piece starring everyone’s favourite celeb Traceur Daniel Ilabaca,  this is an advert for something called Fast break bags, and to be fair the bag looks pretty cool (part 2)

Do you like watching madmen jumping of high things and doing more spins than you thought possible!?  thought so, this is Erik Mukhamentshin (wrote that from memory) and really I should just stop describing and let you watch

ok so something different, we dont just have parkour on Singlebound some of our members also practice other things so here is an example of something serious followed by something fun
Ben Christian Fight Night

SG Stunt Team

Just a quick post to say that today we started our partnership with ProVision Sports based in Leeds.
What this means is we now have the opportunity to teach in over 50 schools across Yorkshire in which to offer Parkour Classes to.

This is a great development as not only will we be offering sessions to the usual demographic but also to under 9′s. This will help us to give the children a positive start in fitness and hopefully lead to a whole new generation of young Traceurs.
We at SingleBound look forward to a long partnership with ProVision Sports.

If you want to know more about what schools we are teaching in, have a look at the Classes page to see where we are teaching over the next few weeks.

Oh and in case you didn’t see it there was a little thing called concrete circus, where Storm ,a free running group made up of some of the highest profile practitioners across the country, have put together their second masterpiece.

all I have to say is do you think you could outrun fire…

Singlebound, in association with Groundwork and Local Businesses are hosting an outdoor Parkour session for the local community at Holt Park Leeds on the 25th of august between 11am and 3pm.  If you’re looking to try your hand at Parkour/Free running or want to see what else is on offer from Groundwork then come along to the free beginners session.  Use the contact info on the poster to book a place or find out more.

Holt Park Session

Visit  http://www.groundwork.org.uk to find out all about Groundwork’s amazing community work in your area, from hosting events like this to environmental work and getting young people involved in their community.

For details on the event see the above poster and contact Ellie Branch-Evans.