Matt "Mox" Parkour Blog

Supa XXL - Uppsala, Sweden trip

2013-08-21T01:22:00.001-07:00

We recently had a brilliant trip to Uppsala with a lot of the Supa XXL group, such fun times!

Here's a nice video from Steve (who was the reason for us all going, to celebrate his getting married soon!) capturing some of the fun moments!

Broken Men trip to Dover

2013-08-21T01:17:00.002-07:00

From our day trip to Dover earlier in the year, Mamo has put together a nice edit!

Sunday Trainings Supa XXL

2013-08-19T13:59:00.001-07:00

Just a quick addition today, adding a landing page for http://www.supaxxl.com to easily direct new people to the facebook group!

Barbara aerial

2013-04-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

Barbara during a recent Supa XXL session:

Broken Men update

2013-04-01T13:35:00.000-07:00

Some great recent redesigns from Mamo on the Broken Men YouTube channel! http://www.youtube.com/user/BrokenMenTeam/

Broken Men stuff will generally get posted to the facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/bbrokenmen

Also! Broken Men is now also on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/brokenmenteam

Some random clips

2013-04-01T13:27:00.001-07:00

I've thrown some random clips together for another minute of not-much.

Gaz flowing.

2013-04-01T13:25:00.000-07:00

Gaz (Stord Parkour) with some nice movement in Norway (from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCWY5RJ12sk)

Temporary icon post!

2013-03-15T11:14:00.001-07:00

Because sometimes, using Microsoft Paint at work happens.

Another successful session!

2013-01-08T15:27:00.001-08:00

This evening I managed to get a running precision in my local training spot that until today I'd only imagined, for a long while, as being something I'll hopefully do "one day". I hope this recent trend of breaking jumps continues!

Dashing Flynn

2013-01-02T01:15:00.002-08:00

Lish is a beast.

2012-12-31T13:28:00.000-08:00

Maximum jump.

2012-12-30T11:16:00.000-08:00

This was the large precision today:

Thanks to Deepak for the photo!

Happy new year!

2012-12-30T11:03:00.001-08:00

I broke a jump today at the final Parkour Generations Off the Wall / Sunday Trainings Supa XXL session of the year: my largest standing precision by far! I didn't capture it on video though (perhaps another day).

I did however decide at the end of the session to record a quick jump as I was passing through another spot:

Backwards.

2012-12-20T16:08:00.002-08:00

Just a quick clip, managed to break a backwards precision recently:

A local precision

2012-10-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

After a good evening training that ended a few hours ago, seeing a photo at 11pm of a wall near my house no longer covered by overgrown plantlife changed this evening from good to great!

Coming soon...

2012-10-08T05:40:00.003-07:00

From my Broken Men teammates:

New video - re-legged

2012-09-15T14:51:00.001-07:00

Here's a new video from me, nothing special but wanted a collection of clips in a video that was actually from this year!

Parkour Generations interview

2012-09-12T05:33:00.001-07:00

Steve from Parkour Generations recently interviewed me as part of the "Debrief" series for the PKgen website, this was the result: http://www.parkourgenerations.com/news/debrief-pkgen-questionsmatt-malin

A couple of animated gifs

2012-08-12T16:14:00.001-07:00

Just testing out a nifty website to convert videos to animated gif, and thought it worthwhile converting a couple of parkour clips:

Glasgow training

2012-08-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

After a full day at Roots of Movement, we went to check out an amazing Glasgow spot known locally as "bins". After a few attempts at breaking a plyometric box jump to precision I started filming, managing to break the jump but then working my legs to failure attempting the standing precision. I missed a few attempts due to somehow managing to miss pressing the button a few times, but this was the result:

My target for my next trip to Glasgow is to get the standing precision properly, so even more conditioning in my future...

BKN Parkour / Broken Men

2012-08-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already (why not!), "Like" our team's facebook page to see photos from training sessions, videos, etc: https://www.facebook.com/pages/BKN-Parkour/253754101310057

Also, here's a nice old photo with most of us together:

BKN Parkour - Steve, Mamo, Lauri, Sox, Matt

Norwegian D2 magazine article

2012-08-02T16:50:00.001-07:00

Last summer during the Parkour Generations event Rendezvous there was a journalist and photographer from a Norwegian magazine interviewing several traceurs and taking some shots, including of myself.

Here is the article:

http://www.dn.no/d2/article2223799.ece

Here was the only shot of me that made it into the article:

Basingstoke trip - breaking jumps!

2012-08-02T15:55:00.001-07:00

I took a trip to Basingstoke on Saturday to explore, guided by a friend (Richard). I managed to have a very productive day breaking jumps and was very happy with range of spots I was at!

This is his video from the day:

Stord Parkour

2012-07-09T16:27:00.000-07:00

A precision in Norway that I was very happy with:

A better video of the whole trip (by Steve): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXm5IpyMwvo

Upper body progression

2011-10-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

I've been focused purely on progressing my upper body lately. Having an injured wrist for most of my time training until recently, I have a very weak base to start from, but hopefully that means I'll have the early stage gains quickly giving me the feeling of progress, and whilst my knee recovers it gives me more of an upper body focus to work with.

I've been working on my muscle ups, aiming to have a couple of sessions a week where I'm practicing them on a pull-up bar in a local park. I'm finally able to perform muscle ups with both arms together instead of always having to lock out one arm first and then struggle to get the other up above the bar.

The main way this has happened has been through technique, attempting to get up to the top of the bar "gymnast style" which is almost purely done through swinging, pushing out the chest and kicking high, so the swing takes you to the top of the bar and much less strength is required. Right now I'm completely unable to do this! The motion of kicking up with both of my legs seems unnatural to me so I always perform the motion of attempting a standard muscle up, but it has taught me to utilise the pushing out my chest as part of the initial swing and allows me to finally perform clean muscle ups, so I'm pleased with that. I've also in the last few weeks been able to do multiple reps in a single set which is much more a test of strength and technique so my training going forward will be performing multiple reps each time.

The other area that I'd like to progress in is gaining the ability to hold a handstand. Before last month I could count the number of sessions that I'd attempted handstands on one hand, and having my injured wrist means I'd never had the motivation to try and potentially hurt myself (it's fine for handstand now, even turning on that wrist to get out of the handstand when I go too far over).

The main way I've been practicing is by trying to go straight into a free handstand from squat and jumping up into position, hoping to hold position. I've definitely made progress but it's still very rare that I reach the balance point and hold it for even a second, though occasionally I'm there for a good few seconds. I've decided to definitely change strategy and will start working on my frog stands, developing the instinct to counterbalance and regain control primarily using my hands, pushing from my fingertips or my palm, and generally get used to the motion and position of balancing on my hands, and hope the understanding I gain will transfer well into my handstand practice. This is also something I can practice at home in the tiny space that I have which would not permit handstands at all, so that's also reserved for the local park.

Other news is that on my first attempt to go up into handstand position whilst holding onto my pushups bars (having taken them outside) ended with me tipping, landing on one of the bars and breaking it; not the best first attempt!