A mellow Saturday

Last Saturday I met up with Cable, Max and Mike in our local area and headed down to the park for a quiet spot to practise balance. We hid our bags in a tree and headed to a pond-side rail. It was a wooden beam about a foot and a half high, over 100m long with a path on one side and nettles, thorns, rough ground, pond water and various wildlife on the other. It’s a great rail to practise on because you can’t go more than 10 steps without the rails changing direction, height, becoming wobbly, slanting or having to go over, under or round overhanging shrubbery. At one point you have to leap into a tree climb round it then swing back to the rail. We made it challenging for max by always keeping on his heels and trying to distract him but this in turn meant we would often have to stop suddenly and hang back while he dealt with the off-puts. We got to the end and we’re happy to move on, but Cable kept bugging us to do it again in reverse. For once Mike was glad to be sitting out.

Once everyone had limbered up we convinced Cable to get off the rail by enticing him with an even more challenging one. This was a bloody über rail: Long, high, sloping, bent and slippery, a right bastard of a rail! Now I’ve been working on my balance a lot recently but this really was a challenge. Cable happily shot off along the rail while I couldn’t make it more than a few metres. Max just tackled the challenge of getting onto a rail just under chest height without anything to help balance. After about 30 minutes or so despite balancing a lot further, I had begun to dislike the rail that kept maliciously chucking me off. Cable of course balanced the whole thing, but nobody saw, so it don’t count hahaha.

So like big kids we headed to the playground. It’s amazing how much time passes when working on seemingly small obstacles. But it’s often the small things that allow you to really understand how your body works and where you need to build strength. It also allows you to work on the more complex and technical side of Parkour that I love. We ended up spending the rest of the day there. All in all a small but essential day of practise for everyone.


Anyway, that was last Saturday!
Blake