January 26th - Ready...HUAH!

Just a great training day overall! Worked some one-footed fronts (getting them quite nice) and then worked with Colleen to get her front flips back to their previous state. She did quite well. We set up a relatively high set of mats (four and a half feet?) onto a nice soft mat. The key exercise today was landing as close to the starting position as possible. To actually land CLOSE to where you start, it feel for most people like they are going to land right back where they starting...this is because they have that Nasty habit (that I once had) of leaning forward before starting the front. This causes all sorts of problems including lack of height and inability to tuck tight due to "chasing your center of gravity" instead of rotating around it. This exercise it great for any "cardinal trick" (backflip frontflip sideflip gainer etc.) because it teaches you to JUMP UP!

Aside from this exercise we also sat down with Calvin, a new guy this year who is learning quite rapidly, and talked over Ryan's tutorial on kip ups/websters. Kip ups went well and the roll to pop has a bit more practice to get it "smooth" but a cool and useful move none-the-less.

One thing I need to focus on is STRETCHING my forearms out EVERYDAY before and after I train. The large amount of work my body is demanding from them has cropped up muscle pain that is a result from overstressing the muscles in this area. I believe it to be similar to what happens in shin splints, but I will have to ask Nick Z (the expert with a degree lol) to be sure. Thankfully he helped me build the proper muscle in my shins to prevent ever getting those awful splints again...perhaps he can provide an exercise to aid in this as well?

French, stretching, reading, and pullups CHECK!

...backflips taught = 276 as of tonight w/ two new guys who came in! YEAH!