Swimming: 7/30 - 8/4

Sorry for the late post.

    Last week I got no real swimming in. I went to the doctor on Monday because of a soar throat and he advised not exposing my throat to the chlorine. Instead I did some research on swimming and practiced Parkour everyday.
    I also practiced swimming on dry land and worked on the muscles that are used in swimming. Mainly the muscles used for the butterfly. The abs and shoulders.
    I can't wait to get back in the pool. I'm a little nervous about it after Micheal Phelps and Ryan Lochte took the world by storm in the Olympics again. Hopefully, I won't look too bad.
    My diet has gotten much better after last week. I have nearly doubled my fruit and vegetable intake while cutting highly processed grains in half. I have also severely limited my pop consumption by only drinking it on special occasions.


 

Swimming: July 23-28th

    My very first week of cross training I discovered something. Swimming is hard. When  I started this journey I had no assumptions that any activity I choose would be "easy." I did think that out of all of them swimming would be one of the easier activities.
    The reasons I thought it would be easy were simple. To begin with I have some experience swimming. Sure that is experience is limited to one summer in the pool and many more at the river swimming freestyle while canoeing. It is still experience. Second I am in decent shape. As I said I am not where I want to be but I am not 'fat' by any means.
    Sadly none of these really helped prepare me for just how hard it is to swim for fitness. As I mentioned I am in decent shape. My legs less fat then any other part of my body. What this means in the water is that my legs are constantly pulling me down to the bottom of the water. This makes it very difficult to swim and, as of  right now, impossible to do the back stroke.
     I am nowhere near reaching any of my goals. I have made it two laps swimming freestyle but then had to rest for ten seconds to start the next one and a whole minute before I could finish it. I have same half a lap doing the breast stroke but haven't been able to do a back stroke or the butterfly.
     As far as my parkour training is coming a long. The first day of conditioning was almost a waste of time. I had planned an intense day of upper body conditioning and top out practice but, after the first day of swimming I was so tired that I could do one climb up and a few cat hang pull ups. I instead decided to have a light day of ankle conditioning.
    I was unprepared for just how tired the swimming would make me. My lower back was sore and my shoulders are already more defined after one week but my muscles were just so fatigued I couldn't do as much as I wanted. 
    Swimming has indeed helped my flexibility and has also strengthened my hips. I plan on leaving out one pool day next week and instead practicing the strokes on dry land to try and get the motions down. If anyone has any good swimming tutorials leave them in the comments please! After next week I will have a concrete swimming workout I will post here.
    I do have one confession. I have been trying to watch my diet very carefully. I am doing paleo, with one exception -cheese. I cheated Tuesday and Friday. Friday I purchased Oreos but, they were double decker chocolate mint Oreos. I also has potato chips. The reason I cheated Friday was because my sister is quitting smoking and it is my job to sit with her and distract her with "comfort food." Tuesday, I cheated because my fiance really wanted dairy queen and I don't care how healthy you are. When your betrothed wants Ice Cream, you get the ice cream.
     Thanks for reading!

Cross-Training: Swimming

    One of the most cross trained sports in the world is swimming in some form or another. Swimming like Parkour uses your whole body and requires practice to get better. Unlike Parkour it cannot be done anywhere but is much easier on your joints.
    For many tracuers who prefer fast paced and fluid motion the repetitive back and forth of Olympic swimming may not be appealing. Why then is swimming a good choice for cross training? According to the CDC  Swimming can improve mood in both men and women. It has also been shown to decrees anxiety in people with Fibromyalgia. Most traceurs don’t have a problem with mode so what about the health benefits.
    Swimming has a plethora of health benefits. One benefit that is very beneficial to freerunners is increased bone density. Discovery health reports “that swimming will increase bone strength.” Swimming also improves flexibility. “unlike machines in a gym… swimming puts the body through a broad range of motion that helps joints and ligaments stay loose and flexible”. When you are swimming you are stretching the whole time. You lengthen your body, swing your arms and move your hips and spine as you kick and turn.
    Aside from those tertiary benefits some benefits that affect myself and other traceurs (especially starting traceurs) are improved muscle tone, improved muscle strength and joint protection. Swimming is actually resistance training.  When you run or vault you are running through air. When you swim you are going through water which is about 12 times denser. I’m not saying that when you are done swimming that you will be able to bench 300 lbs instantly, but have you seen professional swimmers?      
    Apart from noticeable muscles swimming also helps keep your heart in shape. It decreases your bad cholesterol (LDL) and because it is an aerobic exercise swimming helps the heart to stretch larger, and makes it more efficient in pumping -- which leads to better blood flow throughout your body.
Swimming does all of this while protecting your joints. In addition to the flexibility increase discussed earlier swimming is easy in joints because it is low impact. While you are in the water up to your waist you are only supporting 50% of your normal body weight. Up to your neck and 90% of your weight is being handled by the water. This makes any kind of exercise you do in the water much easier on the joints.
    How is this beneficial to traceurs though? Increased muscle tone while not necessary for parkour is something that everyone wants. Increased muscle strength directly benefits everything else you do with your body from climbing the stairs to that 10 ft running precision you have been eyeing for months. Joint and bone strength and longevity are required to stay in parkour very long. I’m sure there are lots of people that had to retire early because they didn’t take to time to build up their joints properly.

   Why I chose swimming is a little more personal and unnoticeable. For me the cardio vascular improvement is a top priority. My father died when I was 9 from a heart attack his father did years before as well. There is a long history of heart disease in my family and for a long time I didn’t take care of myself. I’m am also a victim of my mother’s second hand smoke which recently helped hospitalize my step-father. I need to strengthen my heart because, it is better than it was when I was overweight but it is not where it needs to be.        

Goals:

To be able to swim one lap using each of the major strokes (breast, backstroke, butterfly, freestyle)
Be able to swim at least 5 consecutive laps using one particular stroke.

Hypothesis: By the end of the two months I will be able to swim five laps freestyle and will be able to do all the basic stokes. I will be able to swim one lap using all the strokes except the butterfly.

My week will look like this: Monday: Swimming (Endurance)
                                                 Tuesday: Parkour conditioning
                                                 Wednesday: Swimming (specific stroke)
                                                 Thursday: Parkour technical
                                                 Friday: Swimming (open)
                                                 Saturday: Parkour (play and flow)

If I miss a day of anything it will be swimming.

Sources:

http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/aging/retirement/10-health-benefits-of-swimming2.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/swimming/health_benefits_water_exercise.html

http://swimming.about.com/od/swimworkouts/a/swim_benefit.htm

The Premise...

   In the short time that I have been training I have heard the question “What is a good background to have before starting Parkour?” many times. The obvious answer is “It doesn’t matter. “ Parkour is first and foremost a method of training to overcome obstacles in one’s path. (1) It has never required anything other than a person willing to push themselves to do things that society may have deemed unacceptable. That is one of the most wonderful things about the discipline.
              
 There is still no need for additional training to be a good traceur. There are many people that only train by doing Parkour and are great at it. Some would even argue that it is redundant to train for training. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with practicing other sports, disciplines, training techniques, etc. to get better at Parkour. If Parkour is designed to create functional strength that fulfills the ethos “etre forte, etre utile” why stop at Parkour?

 In general, cross training is beneficial to the human body. According to the AMMA journal “[training] variations trigger new neuro-muscular adaptations or, in other words, new pathways from the brain to the muscles.” (2) These new connections allow the muscles to work faster and more efficiently. Cross training also reduces stress on joints and bones by changing the direction and amount of force applied to the bodyThis change of direction can be good to facilitate recovery. Runners, for example, use cross training to stay in shape after an injury. According to Runners World Magazine when you get injured “cross-training comes to the rescue in two ways: by helping runners maintain fitness despite being forced to run less or not at all and by correcting the cause of the injury.” (3) (Please remember if you receive an injury to seek medical advice before starting any more training.)
Parkour should increase your success at many activities and the effect works both ways. If playing basketball increases your vertical jump and stamina, which translates well to Parkour, why wouldn’t practicing Parkour, something that also increases your vertical jump and stamina, make you a better basketball player?

Many traceurs come from various backgrounds. Billy Hughes of the Tribe has a competitive diving background which makes his flips spectacular. Many have wished they had the upper body strength Tim ‘Livewire’ Sheiff gained from his break dancing experience. Dylan Baker has amazing skills on a slackline. Ryan Doyle has Martial Arts experience and ‘Frosti’ Zernow has taken up rock climbing to increase upper body strength for American Ninja Warrior.
Even David Belle practiced Kung Fu. This was not necessarily to better his Parkour but I’m sure the two activities were mutually beneficial to each other. On top of that Traceurs all over the world are using weight training to better prepare their bodies for the physically demanding portions of Parkour.
Consider what exactly you are trying to improve when doing Parkour. Parkour Generations’ Dan Edwards  says “Parkour aims to develop … the critical elements of coordination, body control, agility, strength, balance, spatial awareness, accuracy, timing, speed, rhythm and the sensitivity which comes from  practice, all of which are core to overall functional fitness.”(4) Many sports can improve these things. In my opinion there are few, if any; activities better at developing all of these attributes simultaneously than Parkour but, that isn’t to say other sports would not be useful in enhancing these attributes. Ozzi the founder of Hawaii Parkour says this about the subject “anything that challenges your body in any way will definitely help you, not only in Parkour but many other aspects of your life.”              

As I mentioned earlier there are Martial Artists, break dancers, competitive divers, rock climbers, and slackliners. There are also weight lifters, yogis, runners, soccer players, gymnasts, and even basketball players who practice Parkour. Most of which would say that their sports background helped them in some way.

Over the next year I will cross train in some complementary sport/discipline for one to two months. At the beginning of every new sport I will write an article giving an overview of the sport, what it should help increase, my workout plan, baseline measurements, and goals that I will try to achieve during my time practicing. My goals will be based on increasing my proficiency in Parkour skills and foci (using the American Parkour definition found here) as well as my “usefulness” in life.

After I complete the allotted time for each activity I will write a follow-up post about how it helped me, whether or not I achieved my goals, variations I took in the training routine I laid out, final thoughts and anecdotal evidence which I will attempt to keep as scientific as possible. In addition to all this I will also detail how, in my opinion, Parkour training helped with that activity.    

Note: I have always believed that Parkour is a personal discipline. I cannot tell you how to train and am not trying to get you to sign up for gymnastics classes. Nobody has Parkour training down to an exact science. There are good and bad things about every school of thought. In the case of cross training, American Parkour and PK Generations both support Cross Training to some degree. (5) Again this is one path and you don’t have to believe in its validity or results, just as I don’t have to be held back by views about the usefulness of other activities to train for Parkour.

    

---

Sources:

(5) Edwards, Dan. "Off The Wall - Articles | Parkour Generations." Off The Wall - Articles | Parkour Generations. Parkour         
                        Generations, n.d. Web. 13   June 2012. <http://www.parkourgenerations.com/article/wall>;.

(4) Edwards, Dan. "Parkour as Functional Fitness." Parkour as Functional Fitness - Articles | Parkour Generations.  
                        Parkour Generations, n.d. Web. 13 June 2012. <http://www.parkourgenerations.com/article/parkour-functional-fitness-through-movement>;.

(3) Fitzgerald, Matt. "Eight Benefits Of Cross-Training." Runners World Aug. 2004: n. pag. Www.runnersworld.com. Web.  
                          13 June 2012. <http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-263--7420-1-1-2,00.html>.

(2) Krause, Paul. "The Benifits of Cross-Training." AAMA Journal (2009): n. pag. Web. 13 June 2012. 
                    <http://www.ttmg.net/sites/default/files/Cross-Training%20Article.pdf>;.

(1) Toorock, Mark. "What Is Parkour?" American Parkour. N.p., 12 Oct. 2009. Web. 13 June 2012.  
                       <http://www.americanparkour.com/learn/faq-english/faq/155/221-what-is-parkour>;.