February 14-18th Back to Feeling the Burn!

After two weeks of limited access to the gym, I was left thirsty for adrenaline. To quench my thirst, I cleared the evening schedule and hit the gym HARD three days this week. I started out with my latest break though of last week...back fulls

I suspected that perhaps it would take a bit to get back into it...and I was right. One thing that I find very hard is learning a move....then coming back to it. There is always the tendency to oversimplify a move in your mind after you have landed it before...quite disastrous, as it causes you to over think a move...however you must eventually overcome this because ultimately you need to know EXACTLY what is going on throughout the move and be able to manipulate it if you wish to "master" a movement....a tough thing to do that I am sure anyone can tell you only comes with experience and TIME.

Eventually I made it through the struggle with the help of my good friend Colleen who pushed me to land it in "three more or not at all" ...eating my own advice as I often do lol...What a tough girl...she is learning the discipline of resisting the urge to train with an injury, always a hard thing.

The week went by fast but judging by my intense soreness I feel it was a good one lol. I also worked some kick the moons which went delightfully. I hope to keep them up and take them outside when it gets warm.

We had a pretty good close to the week by creating a multi-level obstacle course to be traversed by handstand...epic

Loving the Olympics...

Februrary 8-13th - Beauty Amidst the Chaos

Super busy week this week; however some GREAT training came of it. Due to back to back exams on Thursday, I realized that I would be faced with only one day to train in the gym so I had better prepare for it mentally and stay rested physically.

Tuesday came, and I had visions of backfulls dancing in my head. I got to practice early, warmed up, and set up a stack of mats. Something that I realized, that I noted in a previous post, is the importance of REALLY elbowing/punching hard into the twist for a back full. I spent quite a bit of time in days prior (mostly bored in class) going over how the move should feel RIGHT before I leave the ground.

I played with the move a bit, first just throwing a normal backflip. Then, I moved on to lightly pulling my arms in to see how much twist I would get...ABSOLUTELY KEY that your flip part of the move never changes. With this, I could just pull harder and harder each time as I got more comfortable with the move. Eventually I could estimate how many degrees I would rotate as soon as I left the mat by FEELing how hard the twist was pulled initially. I eventually worked up to getting the twist all but the last 45 degrees of a full....

...I concentrated for a bit on the feeling of pulling into the twist, got up, and threw it again..."YES!" totally landed it, strait up and down...I ended up landing three of them after that and then I did that hard thing again...I quit them for the night.

Later on in practice, Nick and I worked on Butterfly Kick. This is a move he has really been working on lately. After some careful instruction, I tried a few and landed them! Once I get the synchronization of the move down pat I plan on moving up to Butterfly twist...The potential for generating energy at the beginning of this move is FANTASTIC!

Colleen and I worked some of her moves tonight. After recovering from a sprained ankle, she needed a bit of help getting her moves back to where she remembered them...(One thing that I always find funny is that you remember your moves better than they were so you end up holding yourself to a higher standard if you just let them go for a bit in between training sessions.) Her fronts were back (We need to pick a night to just work fronts and slowly work her down to sticking them from a lower and lower and lower height (beautiful way to slowly learn to throw a move more efficiently and with greater power) I would also like to work this technique with my back fulls until I get them to a nice low height...

Moves on the horizon...

-Been watching Chase's cartwheel front tutorial...beautiful stuff

-More KICKS! great moves to combo for continuing energy!

-Back hand springs...mine need more work...I have a plan, so we shall see how it goes

Well, wow, I'm just amazingly pumped for training in the upcoming week, so stay tuned as I plan to be writing more now that my schedule has freed up a bit.

Reading/Stretching/French <3

February 1-7th - San Francisco Baby!

Alright, so I apologize for combining so many days into one post, but I have been all over the place getting ready and traveling to San Francisco. As you may know I was headed to the beautiful state of California for an Seismic Design Competition. Lots of engi-nerd-ing stuff went into that, but I will spare you the details.

I packed light...one suitcase, no cary-on...for the sole reason of trying out a bit of tricking in the airport lol. We got into Indy no problem, with an hour to spare before we boarded. Amazingly I saw one of my good friends Juli, who was on her way to New Zealand for a semester abroad! We actually had the same connecting flight to Chicago, so she did me the favor of filming a few handstands and a backflip on one of the moving sidewalks...Classic. Not going to lie, it is a bit trippy doing a backflip while the ground is moving...if you look anywhere but where your feet are going to land it is Completely disorienting! SO freaking fun, and I didn't get kicked out lol.

We stopped in Chicago for a 2.5hr layover, so I took the liberty of walking around on my hands through the airport and I threw a few backflips...a little more congested so I was hesitant to get too crazy...I mean this is the United States...blah. A few kip-ups later I boarded the plane. Southwest, epic as always, provided all the snacks and drinks I could stand to sustain me along the way, and one of the baggage loaders jumped aboard and sang us a song lol.

Aside from the AMAZING weather, I also found San Fran a never ending training ground full of wicked awesome training opportunities. I took a few photos and videos at Fisherman's Warf...wait back up...did you know you can hang off the side of the cable cars and they don't care? Awesome...I wanted to throw down some movie stunts like jumping car to car with an epic fight scene somewhere in the middle...hey it could happen...

Saturday had the best weather of all + I had the most free time...this = freerunnning for sure. I hit the town with one of my good friends Mike. He graciously took some video for me as we explored the steep streets, parks, and jumped out a few parking garages to take shortcuts.

One of our coolest locations we hit up was Union Square...some interesting stuff went down here. After warming up and throwing a few tricks a man wearing a jacket labeled "Security" started walking towards me...Here we go I thought, so I walked to him, not wanting him to think I was going to avoid him. Classic response, "You are going to get hurt and sue someone." HOLY CRAP WHY DOES EVERYONE SAY THIS? what kind of sick society do we live in now that everyone is trained to believe that people exercising are Deviously trying to get hurt so that they can sue... obviously you can see that from my excellent body control, I have been training for years for this one moment so that I can sue the state of California who has NO MONEY ANYWAY... but this is not what I said...instead I was respectful and said, "Sir, I am very grateful that you are concerned for my safety. I would like to assure you that I am indeed a professional who has spent many years training to make sure that I am in control of my movements. The only thing that I hold more important than my own safety is the safety of those around me. In any movement that you see me perform, I first make sure that I will not get in the way of others. I do not perform any movement outside that I am not confident in to the extent that I can be certain that I will not injure myself. If you will please allow me to continue, all I wish to accomplish is to simply improve my movements and entertain the people around me." Dumbfounded he stammered on, realizing that I had cornered him. Ultimately, he could only allow me to continue...so I did lol. Later he came up and told me that he saw me hurt myself...what the heck? After simply asking him to inform me where I was hurt, I danced about to prove to him that my leg was indeed fine (and it was)...he was less than amused, but left me anyway lol.

I carried on until the shift change where the next guy was not so nice, he just said, "Hey you can't do that here!" Instead of arguing I thanked him for the time I was allowed to train and walked away (I was tired of this location anyway). Before leaving, I met a VERY nice Asian man who talked to me for a while and told me he would see me on TV one day! ha! what a boost for the day. I also met a group of local kids who asked me to "do that again." and a group of girls who wanted me to pose for a shot for their photography class lol. Even the guys at the train ticket booth threw me a thumbs up lol.

I got most of this on video and am planning on putting something together soon!

A whole lot of exploring, and one broken hotel bed later I was exhausted from my trip (mostly the freerunning) and had to return...it was 61 degrees when I got on the plane home....and 18 degrees when I got off...yikes.

all in all I would LOVE to go back, but it is good to be home. I missed my woman very much and it was Great to see her again.

I am sure many details that were worth mentioning we're left out but I am at the end of my memory (and laptop battery) so I will finish this post here. I hope that you enjoyed this LONG post and that you can take something from my encounter with the "Security." Remaining respectful and portraying what we do as discipline is KEY I believe to preserving what fr/pk is REALLY about.

1<3

MB

January 31st - Tips and Tricks (WFPF)

Today was the day of the Celeb chat/tips and tricks w/ Team Momenta (us!) Danny hit the chat about an hour before we we're to go on, which was great. I love his great passion for investing in others, a great encouragement to me in my training with others and in my relationship with Christ and how I demonstrate that to others.

There we're TONS of people online and we had a great time answering questions. Nick got to use a bunch of his personal training/physiology knowledge, which was great. Jerred also got to relate to someone with a knee injury (something he is just now recovered from). Adam was a wealth of encouragement to those who just needed to be reminded why they got into pk in the first place. I really enjoyed discussing fear with a few people, stressing the importance of first training in a safe environment....all in all, a GREAT time and I hope we can set it up again in a few weeks.

Had some great conversations last night, and my mind is racing with new ideas to explore when I get back from San Fran...YES! I can't wait...I really want to do a bit of tricking in the airport...do you get kicked out for that? lol