'A Parkour Life' video series

I recently spent a few days filming with one of my good friends, Dr Julie Angel in and around London to make a short series of films talking about Parkour, the way I train, how my training has evolved over the years and how I think it is possible to last a long time in Parkour without getting seriously injured or burning out.

The three part series can be seen here:

More articles coming soon too! ;-)

All the best,

Blane

A Call To Arms

(Click to read this article in Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, Greek or Bahasa Indonesia.)

When did a 30 metre traverse with a kid hanging off your back become less important than some 18ft jump between two sheds with a 'sandpit landing'?

I don't give a damn about your long and loud strides, that 43 year old guy over there is twice your age, twice as strong.. and just dropped from 2 metres and didn't make a sound.

The things that should matter in Parkour, do not - and the things that are widely considered impressive are not, after you scratch the surface. Our value system is being corrupted. 

I try to look at Parkour from a neutral point of view sometimes, as if I had never heard of it before.

What would I think if I found it now as a 17 year old, in late 2012? I imagine I'd think it looked like fun and I'd probably find myself being drawn to a part of it but I'd see something very different from what I saw nine years ago and I know it wouldn't appeal to me as much as it did then.

If you finish this article and believe in the values I believe are to be found in Parkour then you will hopefully agree that if we don't make more effort to share them, then they will be lost. Newcomers will just see big jumps and not an accessible and extremely versatile practice for anyone with a desire to challenge, test and better themselves.

What I saw in Parkour in 2003, at 17:

• An elite few with a quality of movement and attention to detail in every action that is only achievable through thousands of hours of deliberate practice and training.
• An unyielding warrior-like spirit in training and in approach to any challenge faced, whether physical, technical or mental.
• A flourishing, positive community inspired by those who went before them.
• A system of training and a community that valued all aspects of Parkour equally, and a collective consciousness interested in the practice of Parkour for a lifetime, not just a few months.

What I see in 2012, at 26:

• A massive increase in the amount of people training around the world.
• Big jumps.
• Bad landings.
• Competitions.
• A precious few holding on to the old ways and doubting their reasons for doing so...
• and ultimately, a shift in what is valued in Parkour.

It is those precious few and the shift in what is valued that I care about most.

I'm responsible for letting this shift happen unchallenged, as much as everyone else is from 'my generation'. We all stood by and let Parkour evolve and change and grow on the Internet without standing up and saying, "Wait a minute, that's nice.. but what about all of the other parts of Parkour I fell in love with? Where are they?"

I try to coach with these values I'm talking about in mind when I work with others and I know a lot of experienced men and women do the same, but it's not really enough to keep these values that some of us hold so dear contained to some Parkour classes in a few cities around the world. There is a need to show this on a bigger scale if we are to keep them alive, and more importantly we need to make a big enough statement that we can be found by those coming to Parkour for the first time looking for more than big jumps.

In the past few years, instead of holding on tight and believing in what we valued and appreciated in Parkour when we first found it, day-by-day, video-by-video our value system is being corrupted and even those few people who still believe Parkour is for everyone can end up feeling like they're falling behind in their training, not as good as this new guy, or that new guy because they can make that jump and you don't think you can, or maybe you don't even want to.

But if you remembered what it is you valued in the first place then you wouldn't care about not being able to jump as far as 'that new guy'. Remember what you once thought? What is any jump, great or small.. without a good landing? When did improving your climb up, your handstand push-up, your max squat, your quadrupedie and your dead-hang record become less satisfying than improving your running jump..?

I've seen groups of people training together and giving funny looks to the one dude in the background busting his ass with a weighted jacket trying to make his pull-up stronger. When did what he's doing become an inferior part of Parkour?

Physical challenges are nothing new in the Parkour world. For as long as there has been Parkour, physical challenges have been a part of it. In fact, as some of you will be well aware, long before the jumps took the spotlight, physical challenges were Parkour.

Not so much any more. Physical challenges (and hell, even physical training) are the endangered species of Parkour.

With a shift in emphasis over the past few years Parkour is no longer the perfect testing ground for finding out what a person is made of physically, technically, mentally.. and emotionally.

It is no longer about seeing if you can run to another town and back on an adventure before sunset, no longer about whether you can push that old car up the hill with the friends you have laughed and cried with all day.. and no longer about seeing value in being able to jump in to a wet tree in case you ever had to rescue one of those friends who was stuck in one.

It is now largely seen as a stage for the talented, an opportunity for people to show the world how they can jump further than everyone else, and how they flew half way across the world to do the same jump that some other guy did in that video he made last year, but wait, you can side-flip out of it.

I see competitions where the world's 'best Parkour athletes' and 'world champions' manage 37 seconds of running around trying to do something more impressive than the guy before him before the time runs out, or before they run out of stamina. 37 seconds of mediocre performance? I've known and trained with men and women who could last 37 minutes at that level of intensity.

Who let this bullshit creep in uncontested? When did this become such a focus? When did jumping further than someone else hold such value in Parkour? When did going to a spot and trying to replicate a movement someone else did become the goal? I hate to say it but we let this bullshit creep in. The day we began to doubt ourselves and wonder whether having a big jump might be important.

Here is Jesse Owens jumping 26ft (and 5/8ths of an inch) in 1936, Berlin, Germany...

That is a huge jump even by today's standards and advanced training methodologies.. and that jump is far, far further than any Parkour practitioner has ever jumped between two walls. So why is the Parkour community (and indeed the world) so impressed when someone jumps 18ft between two sheds and crumples as if there was a sandpit like the one Jesse landed in on the far side? Is it because they were brave enough to do it over a gap? In too many cases their fear of falling is only defeated by the thought of being immortalised on YouTube in front of thousands of people in their pyjamas. Is that your idea of bravery? If it is, please close this page now for there is nothing here for you.

But having a personal and worthwhile reason to do a jump with inherent risks to prove something to yourself and to overcome your own apprehension and doubts, to act when everything inside you wants to shut down and go home JUST to improve yourself shows courage and resolve.. and these are some of the very values Parkour was built on. The very same values disappearing before our eyes. Running and pushing as hard as you can hoping to make the other side for the Internet or because your friend did it only shows recklessness and promises a short lifespan in Parkour.

I'd like to think that the majority of people reading this will agree that Parkour is just not Parkour without some of these values. Values like courage, resolve, endurance, strength, discipline, dedication and longevity. Values like humility, and altruism. Integrity.

There are many ways that we can help to positively channel the future of the discipline but refusing to allow values like these to be lost to the practice is a good start, and an easy place to start.

We can inspire the next generation of practitioners and allow them to see that Parkour is more than big jumps by not letting our opinions lie dormant.

Comment on videos, upload your own, write articles, coach, talk, travel and train the way you believe Parkour should be trained and let people see that side of it wherever you go. Represent it. Be it.

These values don't have to manifest themselves as challenges like those I mentioned earlier, but ultimately the only way we can significantly grow is to face hardship and adapt to overcome it. This might be in the form of 'breaking' a jump, in doing something that scares you because you believe it is worth the risk to overcome your fear and test your ability.

Maybe it will be technical. Maybe it'll be repeating a running jump to a thin railing and trying to land it perfectly 3 times in a row. 10 times in a row. 50.

Or perhaps it will be a physical challenge after all. Perhaps you will take one of your favourite exercises and test yourself and see how far you can take it. See how many repetitions you can do in 10 minutes or how much more weight you can lift after 6 months of dedicated training in it.

It doesn't really matter what the challenge is, what matters is that you face challenges regularly if you really want to test yourself and see what you are made of. This confrontation and will to overcome challenge is the heart of the beast that is Parkour and it is beating more slowly with each passing year in the community. But it is this regular exposure to challenges such as these that builds and instils these values in people.

What people don't seem to realise is that the 19 year old kid who can jump 18ft between those two walls after one year of training will more than likely not be here in a few years. Very few people last more than a handful of years in this game, either due to injury, fading interest or countless other obstacles. So whilst what he's doing is impressive, yes.. what you are training to do, 'to be and to last', for the next 10 years, 20 years... and more, still strong, still progressing, still training and enjoying Parkour.. is much more impressive to me. These are the values and the goals that impressed me about those elite few I mentioned before and these are the things I will not see lost as the years pass.

Don't apologise for the values you believe in and most importantly don't allow Parkour to lose them if you do believe in them. Parkour will evolve and become what it will in the public eye, but hold on tight to that which you consider important because you are not alone.

Don't let it die or the next generation might never see or experience what you saw and did when you found Parkour. Let challenge and longevity shape your training, your goals and your motivations. Set your own personal challenges, even some that might be impossible, for even in those you will learn a lot. Remember a challenge is not a challenge if you know you can make it. Push the envelope, invite doubt and disbelief in like old enemies and make them your friends. Face seemingly insurmountable odds, often.. and you will grow to be a stronger person.

If you want to repeat that little jump at an angle to a moss covered wall all day until you can do it with your eyes closed.. well my friend, you are not alone. I want to repeat that jump with you. But let's do 50, just to be sure. And one more for the others who can't join us. That'll do us both more good than that big roof gap whilst you hold the camera.

We are the minority now, but together we are still an influential percentage of those who say they practice Parkour. We can still let our message be heard for all of those coming to Parkour now, and in the next few years.

This is a call to arms for those I still consider to be the vanguard of Parkour. The time is now. Make a difference by showing and sharing and being the other sides of Parkour that you know and love. The sides that some would see forgotten as the discipline grows.

Blane

1 Mile of Rail Balance

It was a year ago at the Christmas party and the day after the 1,000 muscle ups challenge.

I was so tired and sore that the never ending stream of amazing food arriving in front of us just tasted like bland toast. And besides, I had almost no appetite.

We were joking around about the next big challenge and how we could better this one. Unsurprisingly, everyone liked Stephane's idea of making it more of a technical or mental challenge, rather than a physical one... and his idea was 1 mile of rail balance without touching the ground. And if you did happen to touch the ground, then you had to start again.

It was one of those mysteries where you're not sure whether it's going to be next to impossible, or not too bad.

Either way, we quickly realised one of the biggest problems was going to be finding a long enough rail!

It was new year's eve 2011 and a few of us met up for some training to end the year. Still a bit tight from the 300 muscle ups just two days earlier, I decided to have a light day and just work on some short routes, basic techniques and balance work.

We were at Earlsfield and moved on to a nearby training spot towards Tooting Bec when someone remembered there's a low rail there that might do the job. It was indeed a good length, and more importantly, unbroken, to form a large sweeping circular shape with a few L-shaped corners thrown in to fit the shape of the grass.

We talked a bit about the challenge and agreed it would be a suitable place. The rail was slightly thicker than the average hand rail but that advantage was balanced out by the fact that it was very low to the ground, so if you should wobble then you had no hope of dropping to a hang to stay off the ground.

Andy measured it out and it was about 120 metres in total. Andy, Kush and I then walked a complete circuit to see how it felt and it wasn't that bad. Sure, it took a bit of concentration but there was no pressure and we all made it around.

Let's try it again.

It wasn't until 4 or 5 circuits later that I decided it was a pretty good rail for the challenge and maybe I should just keep walking and see how far I get... It'll be good practice for the mile.

How many times would we need to complete the circuit to hit a mile anyway? We were spaced out along the rail and Fizz, Leon and Joe had all joined in on our little experiment so there were quite a few of us now, and Dan was playing around with the idea of doing a circuit on all fours.

We worked out as we walked that it would take somewhere between 13 and 14 circuits to make a mile, and on we went.

After about 6 lengths, Kush wobbled a bit and tried to correct himself by speeding up, which took him off the rail. He stepped off, and knowing he wouldn't have time before work to start again and complete the 13, he decided to leave it until another day.

Joe fell off at some point and decided to carry on from that point and finish 13 lengths in total.

Leon fell off a little later.

Andy, Fizz and I were still going but Fizz had arrived a bit later so she was 5-6 circuits behind us.

I was at 10 when I remember thinking that I didn't want to fall off now and wanted to tick off the mile today - challenge number 3 of the week.

Being a bit of a weirdo, I decided I'd try for 15 since it was a nice round number and would guarantee that I was over the mile mark.

I was half way around the long sweeping half of the course, on my 13th circuit when I wobbled. It was an almighty wobble and I seized up so tight that I got a cramp in my hamstring trying to fight for stability... Somehow I corrected it and after a few cautious steps I was back in the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other, albeit with a bit more apprehension than before.

There are two things that you quickly notice after any long period of time spent balancing on a rail. The first is that it's quite a good workout for the shoulders, as you constantly use the arms to balance.

The second is that looking down and focusing on a bar as you walk forwards makes the background lose focus and move at a different speed, so your vision goes a bit strange and when you stop and look around you, the world is made up of moving waves. It's cool, but also a bit inconvenient when you need all of your senses at high alert for such a long period of time.

14 lengths. One to go.

At 3 different sections around the circuit there was an L-shaped corner where you could distribute your weight evenly between two directions on the rail and 'rest'. People would tend to get to one of these, take a few seconds to stretch the shoulders out, shake the legs and take a few deep breaths, before moving on to the next identical checkpoint.

I was at the second L-shaped corner piece on the 15th length and it was getting dark now. I knew I'd probably be fine since I was almost finished but Fizz was going to be finishing her last few laps in darkness.

When I reached the end of the 15th, I balanced a little further and cat leaped to a nearby wall, climbed up and relaxed a bit to wait for Andy who was a little behind me. He finished it without much trouble.

The mile was done in around an hour and twenty minutes or so, and although it wasn't easy, it was easier than we expected it to be and a lot easier than the previous two challenges of the week.

Fizz was doing great but wobbled, and fell off on her 12th or 13th circuit... We were all gutted for her since she had worked so hard for it and deserved to finish. She vowed to come back and conquer it soon.

A few of us headed for food and a few others stayed. We met up later to learn that Joe had finished his 13 laps and Leon had started again and done the whole mile off the ground without falling, after getting half way there in a previous attempt - awesome.

It was a great end to the year, but as I mentioned in the previous post, I'm going to take a break from these long haul challenges and focus on some other goals....

It's time to get stronger, faster and more powerful.

Blane

Again. Faster.

My legs were destroyed.

The 500 jumps had broken my quads down to a place they haven't been in a long time, and stairs were once again my worst enemy.

Everyone remembers trying to walk up or down the stairs following their first few training sessions, and it ain't pretty. That stiff 'Thunderbird-casual' walk you try to pull off as you approach the stairs and the straight face that tries to project "I'm cool bro, I got this." It lasts until you hit the first step and then it's like someone's wedged a slice of lemon in your cheek as the horror springs across your face. It ain't cool bro, and you should've called the elevator.

But, it didn't last long and by Thursday I felt almost 100% again. Three days of Thunderbird-casual isn't a bad price to pay for getting that forfeit out of the way.

Now, on to the next challenge. It was also back in 2009 that I first attempted the now infamous '300 challenge', that is 300 muscle ups in under 2 hours and 30 minutes. It was tough, but I finished it in 2 hours and 11 minutes on my first attempt and during the 1,000 muscle up challenge just over a year ago, I shaved 2 minutes off to make my personal best 2 hours and 9 minutes. I was happy with that but I saw something that day that I knew I would one day be facing.

My good friend Joe Boyle not only finished the 300 challenge in under 2 hours (1 hour, 56 minutes), but he also went on to finish the 1,000 muscle ups in around 8 hours... An incredible achievement. Now, I was happy just to finish the 1,000 muscle ups in one piece, but one thing I did want to tick off was a sub 2 hour 300...

I'd need to do it 9 minutes faster. It doesn't sound like much but when I sat down to do the maths it turned out to be quite intimidating. I'd need to do at least 2.5 per minute, every minute, for 2 hours straight to make 300 in 2 hours.

I'd enjoyed Christmas like everyone else back home with my family, and I'd eaten a lot of food, both good and bad. I'd soaked most of it up healing from the 500 jumps but I felt a bit bloated and not quite on top form as I went to bed on the eve of war.

Thursday. Even on the train to Leicester from Hinckley, I was doubtful. I didn't feel much better than last night and it was wet. Not raining, but everything was dripping, dark, cold and grey.

Just do your best.

The scaffolding was good. Tim, my old friend from Leicester had found us a fine set and he planned to attempt as many as he could in a 2 hour time limit too.

2.5 per minute, every minute... For 2 hours.

Right.

I started with sets of 3. I'd learned a valuable lesson for endurance challenges like this during the 1,000 and that was to listen to my body, rather than being too strict on timing.

I'd do 3, walk around, and when I felt good I'd do another 3. Shirley, my master tactician for the afternoon was helping me to keep track of the numbers and was working out how many I'd need to do to catch up if I had to, or how much I could relax when I got tired.

I had to hit 150 in an hour, but ideally I'd be at least a little ahead to give me some breathing space towards the end. My goal was to hit 180 muscle ups in an hour, which is 3 per minute for an hour, and this would allow me to drop down to doubles for the last hour.

The problem with that plan was that it relied on completing 3 within the minute, not on the minute, so rest times would be limited.

I'd stuck to 3 per set but I wasn't going fast enough. I hit half way after 56 minutes, 20 seconds, which only gave me 3 minutes, 40 seconds in the bank to slow down later.

162 muscle ups in one hour.

I couldn't drop to doubles, I was about 20 muscle ups behind schedule and felt pretty beaten up.

I was working hard and not resting as much as I wanted to, and yet I knew I had to somehow increase my workload if I was to finish this in under 2 hours.

It was around this point that I had an internal conversation with myself that revolved around me not wanting to do this again. I'm tired, this hurts and I'm just not enjoying these challenges any more. Dealing with pain is a necessity when you train hard, but dealing with pain for 2 hours, 5 hours, 10 hours, 15 hours, is just not nice. I've done so many of these long haul killer sessions that it's time to do something else, time to test myself in other ways...

I don't want to fail and have to come back and try again another day, I don't want to go to sleep tonight wondering if I could've given more.

So let's frickin' do this. Let's step it up, increase my effort, reduce my rest times and tear this whole goddamn scaffolding down if I need to. Whatever it takes to finish this in the time limit.

I stuck with sets of 3. The first two felt ok each time but the third was taking a toll. I had to claw back 20 muscle ups using 3 at a time to allow me to drop to doubles. I had to fight for the privilege to drop to doubles.

Walking to the bar, I'd repeat "It's just three muscle ups, anybody can do three muscle ups", under my breath, I'd manage two... fight for a third, drop, update my counter and walk around for 30 seconds or so then head back to the bar. It was hell. Again.

Muscle Ups 196-198:

I was down to being 9 muscle ups behind schedule. I had to claw back 9 more before I could drop to doubles.

4.

1.

Suddenly I was two ahead of schedule. I'd done 252 after 1 hour, 35 minutes, by reducing my rest times and pushing harder when I was on the bar.

I had 25 minutes left to do 48 muscle ups, but I was a broken man.

At 1 hour, 40 minutes, and after 264 muscle ups, I dropped to doubles. Time was quickly running out but I had five muscle ups in the bank and could afford to drop down to doing two per set, as long as I did at least one set per minute.

Muscle ups 285-286, shortly after dropping to doubles:

I remember looking at my watch and having 15 minutes left, and I had 25 muscle ups to do... This was going to be tight.

With 10 minutes to go I had 14 left. I can do this.

I had 3 muscle ups left and 5 minutes on the clock, I've got this. But then, I failed a double and managed just one muscle up for that set. OH... SH*T!

My failed double and obvious panic:

It was my first failed rep and suddenly a lightning bolt of fear shot up my spine. What if that was it? What if that was as much as my body had in the tank and I couldn't do any more?

I walked around, came back screaming "JUST ONE REP!" in my head and ripped up as hard as I could. My body was grateful and perhaps surprised that it was just a single rep, and I made it.

2 left. I finished them one at a time.

299:

I hit 300 muscle ups at 1 hour 58 minutes and 18 seconds.

1 minute and 42 seconds inside my desired time limit.

It was over...

With a little time left and with Tim still battling away, I did three more singles before the 2 hour time limit. 1 for Shirley for managing my time, 1 for Tim for his Herculean effort alongside me, and 1 for luck.

We went to a Chinese restaurant a couple of hours later and spent an hour and a half hammering the buffet service and refueling. As we ate, relaxed, chatted and caught up on news, there was a moment where I knew this was the last endurance challenge I was going to do for a while. Perhaps for a long while. I've spent the best part of eight years doing this kind of thing, and it's time to work on some other goals now. Of course, they're still Parkour/training related... but this kind of challenge with ridiculous amounts of repetitions, with time limits, without time limits, without missing, with forfeits, without, and with various other stipulations involved, they no longer interest me as much and I think I've gone as far as I want to with them, for now at least.

It was Thursday 29th December, almost the beginning of a whole new year, and I'd ticked off two items on my to-do list. I felt good.

That feeling lasted a few moments.

...Then I remembered I had agreed to a challenge that Stephane suggested just over a year ago. There was two days left of 2011.

(write up of challenge #3 coming soon.)

The Forfeit

Soon after I moved to London in February of 2009, I found myself at a housing estate in Earlsfield training with Dan. This being his local training spot, he showed me around some of the various jumps and challenges in the area and we worked on some running and standing jump drills on a set of stairs. It was a good session, short and dynamic.

Afterwards, Dan pointed out a standing jump that he had been drilling recently and he wanted me to take a look at it since it was a big push for him, and he thought it might be a good challenge for me too. It was big, and with tired legs from the drills and having not focused on max standing jumps for quite a while, it was well out of my range for that day. Confident that if I was fresh and got back in to the groove of standing jumps I could probably make it, I vowed to do the jump within a week, and in typical PKG tradition, I added an incentive of having to do 500 repetitions of a smaller jump in the area should I not make the deadline.

It was a busy week and I didn't get a chance to go back to Earlsfield when I wanted to. I managed to squeeze in a short power session for the legs elsewhere and hoped I'd be ok when I returned to Earlsfield a week after my first encounter with the jump.

Before I knew it, it was D-Day. Deadline day, and I had to make the jump. After warming up, the jump still looked big but I felt that if I pushed with everything I had then I could probably make it. I bounced off after getting two feet on the wall. And again. And again. I rested a little longer and tried again. And I bounced off again. It was one of those days where the body isn't quite fresh or firing on all cylinders... great timing!

I made the big standing jump to the wall a couple of days later but it wasn't within the agreed time, so at some point I had fo face the forfeit.

Here's a clip of the jump, filmed almost two years ago on the day I managed it for the first time:

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Fast forward almost two years and those jumps were still hanging over my head. I'm not normally one to avoid a good physical challenge but I'd been working on other skills, focusing more on strength and power, over endurance (except for the 1,000 muscle up day!), and I'd been forgetting about the forfeit for a month here and there. There never seemed like a good time to do such a large number of jumps.

But it had to be done. I'd given my word that I would do it and even though almost everyone else had forgotten about it, it was eating away at me and invading my thoughts when I was going to sleep at night and  it was popping in to my head on the tube.

Alright, screw it... time to do those jumps! Christmas Eve, 2011. Why not? Let's get it out of the way before the new year and tick it off the to-do list.

I warmed up, looked at the jump and realised it was slightly bigger than I remembered. It's nothing compared to its big brother next door that caused me all this trouble in the first place, but it's a respectable jump, about 9ft across and half a foot down. With 500 to do, I thought I might as well make a start. I'd decided to only count the jumps where I landed and stayed on the wall, and for every jump I missed I would add another repetition on to the final count. How long could this take... three hours? Four?

I'd soon settled in to a routine of lining up the jump, leaning forwards and pushing, landing as quietly as I could and walking back around to the take-off wall. I'd been working in sets of 10, taking a 30 second break and then going for 10 more, and had rattled out the first 100 in 30 minutes. So far, I hadn't missed and it crossed my mind that it might be possible to complete the challenge without missing one jump. Why must we always make things harder than they already are?

Jumps 52-55 of 500:

200 in just over 1 hour, no misses. My quads feel a little interesting and are clearly asking me when I plan to stop this madness. The little voice in my head again asks if it's possible to finish this with no misses. I'm approaching half way and I'm not having much fun, and now I'm seriously thinking about not missing.

250. Half way and 1 hour, 19 minutes have passed. My glutes have joined the queue of body parts waiting to complain and my calves feel slow... But what's really starting to take a toll is the building pressure of having not missed. My mind flashes back to the 300 kong to precisions I did back in 2008 and the feeling is exactly the same, that dread that builds with each successful repetition that needs to be forced down and controlled to leave a focused and clear mind for the next attempt.

300 in 1 hour 37 minutes. I have spaghetti quads. I'm so tense on the landings trying not to make a mistake that I'm adding unnecessary difficulty to each jump. I could just deliberately overshoot and end this madness, take a break and finish the last 200 without the added stress...

Of course I can't, what are you? A bleeder? This will all be over in an hour and you can go home and eat, rest and sleep. Focus on the jumps... relax... BUT DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT MISSING!

400. 2 hours 15 minutes. I'm incapable of judging distances now and I think I'm going to miss every time. Luckily my body is running on auto pilot and taking care of the push for me and somehow managing to factor in my failing quads and depleted calves. I glance to my right and see the big jump that I couldn't do that led me to this day.

495. The first thing that happens when you try not to think about how close you are to finishing is you immediately think about how close you are to finishing. Alright, shut up and finish this... You won't miss now. Oh really? Yep. REALLY? YEP. And in a moment of stupidity, I did it again... I made a decision that was as ridiculous, as it was plain stupid.

"If I miss the last jump, I'm going to start again."

This would be a much better story and I would have learned a much better lesson if I'd missed that last jump, but fortunately I didn't. I finished 503 jumps in 2 hours, 53 minutes (500 + 1 for Dan, 1 for Shirley who had been supporting me with her own jump challenge nearby, and 1 for luck).

Done. I sat down on the wall for a minute and realised I hadn't touched the floor in nearly 3 hours. It was almost ceremonial to step down from the walls and as soon as I did my legs went from spaghetti, to jelly, as they breathed a huge sigh of relief.

I made a new pact with myself at that moment. Never again will I accept a forfeit, or challenge, or endurance marathon of doom, without giving it much deeper consideration first.

Training hard is good but training hard AND smart, is better.

All that being said, there was one more challenge in my mind that I was considering trying before the new year. Something I'd been thinking about for a while and thought I might just be able to do. One last all-out war with my body that needed to be played out.. and like all good wars, it involved muscle ups.

Write up coming very soon...

Blane

5/3/1 for Parkour

Integrating an effective strength training program in to a Parkour schedule.

"The primary goal of your strength and conditioning program
is to make your athletes better football players."

- 5/3/1 For Football.

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Part 1 - Introduction

After taking a couple of 1 rep max tests this week I'm about to begin Jim Wendler's much acclaimed 5/3/1 program for building strength.

I've been weight training on a weekly basis for around seven or eight months now and although I'm still very much a beginner in the field, I'm noticing progress in both technique and strength and feel like I'm definitely moving forward and making worthwhile gains that carry across to my technical training.

Whether or not a Parkour practitioner should lift weights to supplement their other training has been an issue of some debate for as long as I can remember and although I was a long time advocate of doing bodyweight training and building strength in other ways, I admit that I was just worried and misinformed about the facts of lifting weights. Now I wholeheartedly believe that if done properly, weight lifting is not going to add useless bulk to one's frame and will in fact be of great benefit to both one's power and speed potential.

One of the more noticeable benefits that come from regular training of some of the big compound lifts such as the squat or deadlift is that I notice my body feels much more like one solid unit rather than a combination of different parts. My landings feel lighter and my legs more resistant to the impacts and drops when I move and it has definitely made my power training more productive, with gains coming quicker than they have for a long time.

Part 2 - Why 5/3/1 and how does it work?

Although I've come to thoroughly enjoy the process of lifting, my methodology has so far been quite basic with a traditional 5x5 approach being employed, that is 5 sets with a weight that I can lift for 5 repetitions, for 25 reps in total. The sessions are quite long and I find that I'm never sure how much weight to add or the best way to progress. So after reading a lot about different programs, I've decided that the 5/3/1 program is my best option for increasing strength whilst giving me plenty of time to train other things.

Here is a brief description of the program, note that each training cycle lasts four weeks:

-The first week you will do 3 sets of 5 reps.

-The second week you will do 3 sets of 3 reps.

-The third week you will do 1 set of 5 reps, 1 set of 3 reps and 1 set of 1 rep.

-The fourth week is an easy deload week and you will do 3 sets of 5 reps.

After the fourth week you go back to week 1 and continue from there.

The best part about this program is that since all of the percentages are worked out beforehand based on my 1 rep max, there is no more guess work involved and I know exactly how much I should lift before I begin the training. The sessions will also be quite short, leaving me more time to do other things.

Now this program will apparently work for any strength based exercise but I'm only going to be using it for the lifts that I currently do which are the squat, the overhead press and the deadlift. So, the first thing I had to do was workout my 1 rep max for each of these exercises, that is the maximum amount I could lift one time. There are a few ways to do this but since I'd never tried to lift as much as I could before, I decided that actually trying it would be the most fun way to do it.

There is another more sensible way to do it which relies on estimating your 1 rep max first then taking 85% of this and performing as many repetitions as possible. You then use the following formula to calculate your 1RM:

Weight x Reps x .0333 + Weight = Estimated 1RM.

So if your estimated 1RM for the squat was 100kg, you would take 85% of this, which is 85kg, and perform as many repetitions as possible. Supposing you managed eight, your formula would be:

85 x 8 x .0333 + 85 = 107.6

And this would mean your estimated 1RM for the squat would actually be 107.6kg.

Now obviously it's not ideal to just lift the most you can all of the time to progress as this would put an incredible amount of strain on your body and quickly lead to overtraining symptoms so this is where the 5/3/1 program comes in to take care of the percentages.

Jim Wendler, the author of the 5/3/1 program recommends taking 90% of your actual training max to start the program with so if we take our theoretical 107.6kg and multiply it by 0.9, you get 96.84kg, which would be your starting weight for the program.

Taking this 96.84kg, here are the percentages of that you would lift each week:

Week 1 (3x5)

Set 1 - 65% of 96.84kg x 5 reps (62.95kg x 5)

Set 2 - 75% of 96.84kg x 5 reps (72.63kg x 5)

Set 3 - 85% of 96.84kg x 5+ reps (82.31kg x 5+)

Week 2 (3x3)

Set 1 - 70% of 96.84kg x 3 reps (67.79kg x 3)

Set 2 - 80% of 96.84kg x 3 reps (77.47kg x 3)

Set 3 - 90% of 96.84kg x 3+ reps (87.16kg x 3+)

Week 3 (1x5, 1x3, 1x1)

Set 1 - 75% of 96.84kg x 5 reps (72.63kg x 5)

Set 2 - 85% of 96.84kg x 3 reps (82.31kg x 3)

Set 3 - 95% of 96.84kg x 1+ reps (91.99kg x 1+)

Week 4 (3x5)

Set 1 - 40% of 96.84kg x 5 reps (38.74kg x 5)

Set 2 - 50% of 96.84kg x 5 reps (48.42kg x 5)

Set 3 - 60% of 96.84kg x 5 reps (58.1kg x 5)

You will notice that the last sets of weeks 1, 2 and 3 are bold and have a + sign next to the rep requirement and this is important since this is where you will dig deep and give it everything you have. On this set, since it is your last of the day and last of the week for this exercise, you do as many repetitions as possible with good form at the prescribed weight. Note also that the last week, the deload week, does not have a set going to failure and this is important. This is your rest and recovery week so just do the prescribed reps and call it a day for that particular exercise.

And that is the first cycle complete.

On the subsequent cycle, so on the second month, this is where you begin to add a little weight and the 5/3/1 program recommends adding 2.5kgs for your upper body exercises and 5kgs for your lower body exercises. Why so little? Because it's a gradual increase and you have to be patient for this to work. By making small incremental increases you will continue to progress for a longer period of time and end up eventually lifting more weight, and therefore become stronger.

Note that it is a 2.5kg or 5kg increase to your theoretical max, from which you work out the new weights based on the above percentages.

So using our initial 96.84kg starting max for the squat (which was 90% of our actual 1RM in the example if you remember), we add just 5kg (or just 2.5 to an upper body exercise) to this and start our next cycle with 101.84kg, which is still less than our actual max and will allow plenty of time for adaptation and gradual progression.

Using this monthly plan you will add just 5kg to your squat per month which might seem laborious but can you imagine adding 60kg to your squat in a year? Sounds good to me.

Now there's no guarantee that it will lead to such gains and you will of course hit plateaus along the way, but at this point there is a very simple solution in the program that relies on simply taking 90% of your current 1RM and starting over again when you hit a wall.

Simple enough, right?

Part 3 - Assistance exercises and integrating 5/3/1 in to your training

Now here is the important part. How do we integrate such a program in to our current training and what assistance exercises should we use to be of most benefit to us as Parkour practitioners?

Jim Wendler also co-wrote 5/3/1 For Football with Bob Fitzgerald and that has helped me to write this article too since it is based around how to fit this strength training program in and around a sport. But unlike many sports, including football, life does not have an on-season and an off-season, and neither should Parkour. We should be able to move in all conditions, at any time of the year and be as capable as we can at all times. That's the whole point. So with that in mind I'm not going to have an off-season where I reduce my technical training and hibernate in the gym. Instead I need a more practical solution and a strength training program that integrates seamlessly in to my other training.

I also plan on splitting the three exercises up and doing them on separate days, which has a few advantages. The first is that it allows me to be fresh for the main lift of the day and get the most out of the session. The second is that the workout will be much shorter than if I were to do them on the same day and thirdly it is also going to keep me fresh and I shouldn't experience too much stiffness or soreness the day after these sessions.

Below is a general overview of how a typical week might be scheduled for me.

Monday - Power training for legs, technical training and mobility exercises.

Tuesday - Overhead Press 5/3/1 and assistance exercises.

Wednesday - Technical training and/or climbing.

Thursday - Deadlift 5/3/1 and assistance exercises.

Friday - Light technical training and mobility exercises.

Saturday - Squat 5/3/1 and assistance exercises

Sunday - Active Recovery.

The 5/3/1 days will be Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and those will be fixed, but the other training will be flexible and based around what I feel my weaknesses are at the time and what I feel like doing that day. I wanted to fill in the other days just to demonstrate how you might adapt your training to accommodate a strength program such as this.

Assistance Exercises

Now if you haven't guessed already, I really like to train. So lifting for 20 minutes, 3 times per week just isn't enough for me and I have a whole bunch of other stuff I want to do and get better at. I love my kettlebell, I love cleans and presses, I love dips, I love (AND HATE) glute-ham raises and I love muscle ups and heavy pullups. I love throwing rocks. I love carrying awkward shit. So where do these fit in? The answer is after the compound lifts.

I'm going to add these assistance exercises in a logical place and split them in to sections.

Since I'm doing three lifts (the squat, overhead press, and the deadlift) and each of these are quite different, I'm going to make a list of exercises that will assist those lifts and do three or four of them each time I lift.

Assistance exercises for the Squat

Here is a list of exercises that will benefit my squat and build more strength and endurance in my legs. On my squat day, which will be a Saturday, I will pick three or four of these to add on to the end of my lifting session and do what I please with them. Maybe I'll add weight to them, maybe I won't. It depends on how the main lift went and how I feel.

-Lunges

-Glute-ham raises

-Isometric holds (chair positions)

-Overhead Squats

-Front Squats

-Goblet Squats

-Bulgarian Split-Squats

-Pistols

-Kettlebell Swings

-Calf raises

Assistance exercises for the Overhead Press

Below is a list of assistance exercises that will benefit my Overhead Press training on a Tuesday. Even if they're not pushing exercises, it makes sense to do them on the same day as my main upper body training. Once again some of these I will add weight to, some of them I won't, some of them will be for endurance and some will be for max strength. It will depend on how I feel at the time or my other goals outside of 5/3/1.

-Handstand pressups

-Push presses

-Rows

-Dips

-Chinups

-Pullups

-Pressups

-Quadrupedie

-Bench Press

-Cleans and Presses

-Snatches

-Muscle Ups

-Turkish Get Ups

-Windmills

Assistance exercises for the Deadlift

These will be quite similar to the assistance exercises for the squat and will once again be chosen three or four at a time to be done after my deadlift sessions on a Thursday as I please. Some will be weighted, some won't.

-Romanian deadlifts

-Hack squats

-Farmer's walk

-Fat Gripz pulling exercises

-Squat

-Glute-ham raises

-Bridges

-Kettlebell swings

Now those lists are not complete and were just typed off the top of my head and there are of course countless exercises that I've missed that would be useful. But it will give you an idea of the kind of work I will be doing and where you could fit in certain exercises of your own around this program.

Part 4 - Conclusion

Strength training is a vital part of your development in Parkour and it will do more than improve your performance by strengthening your posterior chain. It will help to keep you safe and build a resistance to the drops and impacts found in our practice and help to ensure a long and injury free future. Most importantly it will help to maintain symmetry throughout your skeletal muscles to prevent imbalances.

The problem with a lot of strength programs is that they can demand a lot of your time and require significant periods of recovery between sessions, meaning less time to train technically to the best of our ability.

5/3/1 is the most effective system I have found for building strength using compound lifts such as the squat, the deadlift, the bench press and the overhead press. It requires little of your time, ensures a steady and gradual progression, eliminates the need for guess work when it comes to adding weight, and even includes a chance for you to go all out and dig deep with extra reps on the last set of each exercise.

You can read more about Jim Wendler's 5/3/1 program here and you can buy the book here. I also highly recommend Mark Rippetoe's excellent book, Starting Strength, which you can buy here.

I will be posting my ongoing results with this program in the near future but in the meantime feel free to add your own thoughts on lifting weights for Parkour and the 5/3/1 program in the comments box and I wish you all a very happy new year.

-Blane

1,000 Muscle Ups

"Alright, would you rather do 10,000 pressups… or 1,000 muscle ups?"

It wasn’t a surprising question to be asked since we ask each other these kinds of things all the time, like “Could you take that drop and walk away?”, or “If this balcony was going to collapse in 10 seconds, what would you do?” and in fact both questions I had answered in the last week.

But even though these questions are always being circulated amongst us and might raise a smile, they’re always deadly serious, and your answer is expected to be also. If the next day that balcony did begin to collapse and you found yourself standing on it, what WOULD you do? That’s the point, to get you thinking and to make you find an answer so that if it happens, well you have the answer already, there’s no more thought needed.

Anyway, after a few minutes I said I’d rather do 1,000 muscle ups and we went back to eating our food in the Brazilian Chinese restaurant… that is, a restaurant in Brazil that serves Chinese food. Then I really began to think about it and we talked it over a little more, estimating the time it might take, how it would compare to the three hundred muscle ups we had done the year before, whether it would be possible or not within 24 hours etc.

Then I said something that I knew might as well be carved in stone, “I’m gonna do it”. I knew I’d have to keep my word, with these guys it’s always the same and if you say you’ll do it then you have to do it. Within fifteen minutes, Dan was in too, and within the hour, Stephane had committed himself, then Bruno. We laughed over dinner at the idea of it but in the backs of our minds we knew we’d just signed up for something we would probably regret.

Although we were bound by PKG law to try and complete the thousand anyway, we wanted a good cause to do it for as we thought we might be able to raise some money for this craziness. It quickly became obvious that we should try to raise more funding for Naoki and his family to cover their hospital fees from the Summer and so our planning was complete.

Six months later and I’m standing in a chilly converted warehouse gym known as OLF, or the Optimal Life Fitness Centre, in East London. I’m excited and glad that we’re about to begin the challenge and as I look around I see nervous smiles, focused eyes, chalked hands, people taping their fingers and everyone making last minute preparations in the area they had chosen to face this beast. Everyone’s plan is slightly different and everyone’s training was slightly different but what is the same for all of us is that we’re staring down the barrel at 1,000 muscle ups each. I think it’s fair to say that 95% of the human population couldn’t execute a single muscle up and here we were, planning on doing 1,000. Each. Our team of four had grown to a team of eight over the months and it was time for us all to get this underway.

The highly anticipated start was a relief in some ways and made me smile not just because I was with my friends facing another crazy challenge but because the big build up only lasted about 10 seconds as we all jumped up and grabbed the bar and did no more than three or four muscle ups each, before dropping down and resting. This was a strategic and tactical move that we’d all seemed to agree on for pacing yourself was going to be the key to completion.

We were on the way and what follows from here is a very one sided account as I have little idea of what went on around me for the next sixteen hours…

255 muscle ups and 1 hour, 49 minutes.

I’m feeling good, hands are taped, chalked and still in one piece. I briefly think about the 300 challenge which I did quite a while ago and remember it took me 2 hours and 11 minutes last time. Even though this is a very different kind of challenge, I think I’d like to beat that by just a minute or so to improve my time but I don’t want to push myself too much.

300 muscle ups and 2 hours, 9 minutes.

Two minutes faster than last time and I’m still feeling not too bad. I had begun today by doing three muscle ups in a row then dropping and resting a whole minute before doing the same again and repeating the process. It was working well but I was beginning to feel that it wasn’t going to be long before I failed to complete a set of three.

363 muscle ups and I switch to doubles.

I’m over a third of the way and change my pattern to two every minute. A few of the guys had also completed the 300 challenge within the two hour thirty minute time limit and I was happy to take a two minute break to shake their hands and congratulate them.

401 muscle ups and 3 hours, 3 minutes.

It had been building up for a while but so slowly and steadily that I hadn’t really heard my body telling me that I felt a bit sick. Whether it was low blood sugar, plain hunger or just the sustained effort, I needed a break and food. It was worrying to stop because I feared I might seize up, get cold and find it hard to restart but I had to deal with this feeling now or I might not be able to continue at all.

500 muscle ups and 4 hours, 54 minutes.

I’m halfway there and the break had been perfectly timed. I had sat down for 20 minutes, eaten a beef burger that had been grilled at 6am that morning and munched on some biscuits, had some tea, some water, an apple and half a banana. At first I felt cold but the food really helped me to feel better and ward off the sick feeling. Five minutes on the rowing machine had warmed me back up but not tired me out and the time between 400 and 500 went quite quickly. Time, in general, was moving quickly. I couldn’t believe we’d been going for almost five hours already and my original goal of completing the challenge in around ten hours was still on track.

600 muscle ups and 6 hours, 39 minutes.

And there it was. The good times were over, the fun had stopped and everything was not ok. It was far from ok. I had some pain in my elbows as the tendons were becoming inflamed and every repetition was beginning to hurt. Shirley and Andy had taped, and re-taped my hands countless times and I was resting more and more between sets. It was time to be honest with myself. 600 sounds like a lot and on any other day it would be, but when you’re left with 400 muscle ups, you are far from done. This is where the line was drawn and it was becoming obvious which techniques worked best, whose training methods had been most effective for this challenge and just how much we wanted to finish this.

I decided that if the pain got much worse, then I would think about stopping but right now I was going to keep going, one muscle up at a time, and one minute at a time.

700 muscle ups.

I have no record on my paper as to when I reached 700. It wasn’t a relief or significant enough to remember to make a note and I just remember the pain in my elbows had become worse. Andy had managed to tape my hands up in a way that the tape seemed to fuse together and hold tight for the rest of the night, which I was very grateful for, and Joe had just finished his last muscle up of the 1,000 which was a fantastic moment and gave us all hope that the end was near. Joe’s plan had been to abandon any kind of timing and just feel it all out. When he felt good, he did a bit more, when he felt bad, he did a bit less and by listening to his body throughout the whole process and sticking with a technique that worked for him, he blasted through the whole thing in around eight and a half hours – an incredible achievement.

There were many peaks and valleys throughout the day and if I could have started again I decided I would have increased my pace during the peaks and just relaxed a bit in the valleys to reserve my strength. I had been too regimented in my approach and by doing three each time then resting a whole minute, I was pushing too much when I was tiring but not really doing very much at all whilst I was fresh.

Andy had also finished his 300 reps around this time and this was a fantastic achievement. His original plan had been to try and hit 100, and when he got there he just kept going and then he aimed for 200. When he informed me that he had to leave soon to attend his work’s Christmas dinner, but felt like he could have perhaps reached 300, I couldn’t help but ask him which he would remember more in ten years time… doing 300 muscle ups or going to his work dinner, and sure enough after some thought, he stayed and polished off all 300 with good form. We were all really happy for him and proud to see him reach his goal. You can read his version of events and check out more photos of the day here.

800 muscle ups and 10 hours, 20 minutes.

I’d lost any sense of time and progress had all but stopped. I would walk up to the bar, jump and grab, pull up, lean forward and push only to experience pain in my elbows above and beyond any I’ve felt before and on the way down it hurt just as much, if not more. I would drop, walk around for a minute or two, come back and repeat the process. It was murder. Constant pain, fatigue, tightness and the feeling of never getting any closer to finishing enveloped me. The problem with this kind of thing is that the more time you take, the more the magnitude of everything is multiplied. As the hours pass and the body is denied rest and forced to work on and on, the mind is also driven to places it hasn’t been before. I knew this moment would come but wasn’t sure when and it was fast becoming just as much of a mental battle as a physical one.

900 muscle ups and 13 hours.

It had taken me almost three hours to do the last 100 muscle ups and I was aware that there was a good chance it could take longer than that for the last 100. The pain hadn’t increased but it was ever present and substantial. The difference was that now it hurt all of the time, not just during the muscle up. I couldn’t fully bend my arms due to the tight muscles, my neck and traps felt like knotted lead and oddly enough my abs were destroyed. I walked around and began laughing to myself at how ridiculous the whole situation was. Why do we do this? Why am I continuing to endure this? I could just stop now, go home and sleep. Nobody would think any less of me, it’s not a matter of ego… it was something else. Despite feeling the way I did and being in the amount of pain I was in, it was a rush to feel so alive and be aware of it.

Yao was a massive help in massaging my elbows, neck and shoulders a few times during the night, which would relieve the worst of the pain for about twenty minutes or so before everything returned to the way it was. The simple cups of tea from Naomi, Tracey and Shirley were the sweetest and greatest things I was sure I’d ever tasted and with nothing else to be happy about, I really began to appreciate and enjoy the little things… like a short text message from a friend wishing me luck or a few words from one of the other guys.

Chris had just finished his last rep of his hard fought campaign across the scaffolding from me and it was another landmark moment for the guys still fighting on as we were getting closer to reaching the end too. Another brief pause to congratulate him was followed by another trip to the bar to grind a repetition out.

It was also around now that I came out of my bubble a little bit and looked around. For the past couple of hours I’d heard a rhythmic pounding in the background somewhere every minute or so and hadn’t thought much of it even though I knew what had been happening. Brian was in the background with a sledgehammer and was smashing a tractor tyre to pieces with it every minute or so. I found out he was aiming for 1,000 tyre slams with the hammer and could see it was taking a toll on him. I’d been so consumed in my own little world that I hadn’t realised just what all the noise had been about. We talked for a few minutes then went back to work but there seemed to have been an unspoken agreement made during our brief moment together… we’d both finish this. He would hammer, I would do a muscle up. I would do a muscle up, he would hammer. When one went for it, the other one did and it helped a great deal to work with someone even if it was just for a little while. I was alone on the scaffolding at this point as the others had either finished, stopped or were taking a break and as the minutes and hours passed I could taste the end. We both could.

1,001 muscle ups and 15 hours, 45 minutes.

The last 30 had been slow, but knowing I didn’t have to hold anything back now, I was speeding up a little toward the end. Words of encouragement and the steady music in the background which had gone from death metal to hip-hop to movie soundtracks and back, three times, helped to see me through and I remember the moment where I had three reps left. No matter what happened, I would finish. It would all be over soon. With one left, I wandered around and knew that as always, this was never going to finish on 1,000 and that there is always enough left in you for one more repetition to dedicate to the others around me to thank them for their support and to the other guys who had been battling alongside me. We start together, we finish together, as always.

It was also for everyone who had donated over the last couple of weeks, whether it had been in blood or otherwise. The thousandth rep and the one after were done back to back and as I dropped down there wasn’t much to feel. Nothing really changed but as I was congratulated by the people around me I knew a lot had changed inside. I needed food, water and rest more than anything else but I just wanted to sit down for a minute and breathe. I spent the next half hour slowly eating a Chinese takeaway that Annty and Shirley had gone to pick up a while ago. Nothing else had been open at that time of night but nothing could have tasted better, I was sure of it.

After Annty carefully cut me out of my taped up hands, I lay on the gym floor wearing all of my clothes and drifted in and out of a light sleep. I woke up to congratulate Jun for finishing his last rep and went back to lying down again as standing up was too much effort. Everything from the waist upwards ached more than it has ever before and my muscles were so tight I felt like I was wearing a straight jacket. Not everyone had finished so we opted to stay overnight on the gym floor and try to get some sleep but a never ending hunger kept me awake and munching on food on the floor. At some point I passed out and came around as the last few reps of the day were being polished off at 9am, twenty-three hours after the first few were completed.

It was all over. Was it worth it?

My muscle up technique probably hasn’t improved and I doubt my max reps have increased much, if it all. I won’t be stronger after this challenge. My tendons and ligaments are only just feeling normal now, eleven days later and I still get tired quickly from exercise.

It wasn’t functional or efficient but yes, it was worth it. In the same way running a marathon is worth it. Just like winning a heavyweight title is worth it. Training is for something and you train to meet a goal or to get closer to where you want to be. If all we ever did was train when we were fresh and have short, effective sessions then yes, we would progress quickly but to what end? Where is the challenge? Where is the doubt? Where is the growth?

Knowing that I can complete 1,000 muscle ups back to back in one session and more importantly that I can push through levels of sustained pain that I hadn’t experienced before, made it worth it. Without chaos, nothing evolves.

My biggest thanks go to everyone who came to support us at OLF, from BJ and Tommy for letting us use the gym and to Julie for giving us a lift in the car bright and early in the morning. To Naomi, Tracey, Shirley and Annty for keeping the kettle full and the never ending support and to Brian for keeping the rhythm with his hammer. Thanks to Andy for helping me tape my hands and to CJ for dropping by to offer his support. Thanks to Yao and Bruno for their massages and encouragement. Thanks to Peter and Alli for dropping by later to continue the support. Thanks to Joe for the bite of chocolate cheese cake and for showing us the way and to Chris for generally battling through but mostly for his ‘power hour’ with Disturbed that lifted the mood. Thanks to everyone who donated in muscle ups or otherwise but my greatest thanks to all the guys who were next to me on the scaffolding, it would’ve been a far tougher challenge without you.

Until the next crazy challenge, be sure to check out Andy's version of events and photographs here

Blane