January 27th - Lightsabers?

First Annual Prop Day!...ok so I made this day up, but the gist of it is, I remembered that I brought a plastic lightsaber back to school to take to practice and mess around with. TOTALLY AWESOME.

Jerred was here for a bit today and after trying out both backflips and frontflips while drawing a lightsaber...we decided to step it up a notch lol. He threw me the lightsaber, and I caught it mid-backflip! How great of an idea is that? Then we messed with doing a front hand spring into grabbing the lightsaber and drawing it. Jerred pulled the coolest trick by throwing a Kick the Moon with it lol. I should have gotten it on video! Promise I'll catch one of it next time....

To the more serious side of training, I had the idea today that if you turn vault a rail and need to get down to a lower level (very common) you can 1. jump down 2. backflip down, but both of these then require you to turn once you hit the ground...so why not backflip half twist down?! so today I worked on back halfs from the awkward position of a crouch at the top of a wall as if I had just turned and was holding on to the rail...and it went pretty well...a little more work and I think I have it! I also worked on sideflips...as you may have seen in the Xe video, I tuck under my legs. I would like to change this and tuck in front I think because I can get tighter and then use that to move on to more difficult movements. Attempts went well today, but I need to tuck tighter so I shall revisit this soon. Also we worked one-footed fronts to try to sit back down on the object you left from...easier said than done as you must push back to achieve it...

...video watching homework for me will be watching Daniel Ilabaca's step to sideflip in his WFPF video and to rewatch Doyle's front to sit in his webster tutorial as well as Dan's in the Never Netherlands video...I swear my mind never forgets the moves I watch in their videos :) ...or maybe I just watch them A LOT!

In any case good stuff today that I hope to work on outside when I travel to San Francisco next Wednesday! I will need to heal before then so that I am fully strong and safe, but I am so excited. Do not be surprised if a few entries get lumped together while I'm away.

ALSO I went to the French Cafe (a get-together of French students and professors and a time of eating and conversing) with Nick, Adam, and Melissa! There I tried out my French, listen, learned and ate! a GREAT TIME and I can't wait to go again!

French!, stretching, reading, pullups CHECK!

Also, I LOVE MEGAN WENGER <3