New Year and Updates

Well, happy new year to everyone. I hope all your goals were achieved, and that you have been able to grow yourselves into stronger athletes no matter what your sport or discipline.

Unfortunately, my blog hasn't been on the forefront of my efforts recently, but that's pretty much due to me being busy training! My schedule has been packed with 4-6 days of training a week in either Wushu or Parkour over the past months. However, I'm sad to say that my own goals were sidetracked by other efforts (such as Wushu, Sanda, strength training, and generally other movements). Nevertheless, I have come closer to achieving all of them. Recently my Wushu has been getting a lot better overall, so I'm very happy with that, and Parkour has been good to me too with a few new techniques, and personal achievements. Break dancing has apparently become the new thing too haha. So I've been attempting that.

In any case, I should really crack down on those goals. But I have nothing to complain about as other things has definitely gotten better in return. Work work work. Good luck to everyone!

Goals

Goals:
1. B-twist: Need to commit
2. Aerial: Need to commit, again
3. Clean Backflip: Some work to do, but it's doable quickly. EDIT: Got it.
4. Full splits: Front splits are near full and full, need side splits! EDIT: Both front splits are full. Going to work on negatives now. Side splits might take some more time than expected. Going to do some assisted stretching to achieve this now.

Just some goals that I'd like to achieve in the near future.

Trip Return/Graduation/Update

Update:
Haven't updated in a long time simply because not much has happened in the recent months out of the ordinary. I've begun swimming at least twice a week, and am looking to begin training kung fu at a school in the area on top of my Parkour training. As well, I've recently graduated from university, earning my Honours Bachelors degree in Business Administration. However, at this point in time I have had not much luck in finding a job... but I'm not too worried as I have my own projects possibly in mind.


Trip Return:
I recently returned home after just about a month trip back in China. Hangzhou was a lot of fun, where I was able to meet many more new people. One downside to the trip was the lack of training during that time period. I can feel the difference now, but I'll work it back. During my trip I was able to make it back out to visit my old kung fu school for a day. It was great to see my shifu and see those who are still training there, again.

Speaking to local students I was able to learn that there is also a local Parkour group there, which was established around 2-3 years ago. It was great as I was explaining Parkour to them and a few of them were very familiar with it and had a few friends who do/have tried it. Unfortunately I couldn't make it out to meet up with them, but I'm sure I will next time I'm in the area. Lots of new cultural knowledge was learned especially this time around as I had the opportunity to immerse myself with the local students more so than during my previous trips. It was a ton of fun this time, but it's also pretty relaxing to be back home for good after 4 years of being everywhere and out of town.

Return to China

I'm glad to say that I'll be returning to China soon again. As another exchange with my school, I along with a bunch of other students will be staying in Hangzhou for 3 weeks to promote ourselves to a local university there. This is really exciting as I can visit Shanghai and all the people still there again! I can maybe even make it out to Nanjing or some other cities on the weekends. Hopefully that will be possible. I'll be going from mid-May until early June. 不久见中国！

School Life Almost Over

This final semester of school has been a bit of a doozy, leaving me with not a ton of time for myself. I can't believe that my university life is over soon. That means that the next obstacle is just about to come up... finding a job. I don't know where I want to work, or what exactly. I have ideas in mind, but we'll see what happens when it happens. There are three main places that I've been looking into, though almost nobody is hiring worldwide. I'd be interested in China, Australia, or simply staying at home. But again, who knows what's going to happen until it does.

Fencing has been on and off unfortunately because of school work, but it's been a good optional source for some supplementary training when needed. Once this semester is over I'll finally have a lot more time to train.

China Parkour
A lot of people have been contacting me to get info on the Chinese Parkour scenes. Don't feel weird about doing so as I'd love to help. Just shoot me off an email, or leave a comment here and I'll gladly get back to you as soon as I can. There are many Traceurs in each of the main cities and I'd be glad to help you get in contact with them, specifically the ones in Shanghai, Nanjing, Zhengzhou, and Beijing. They are all very active groups and would love to promote Parkour, themselves.

New Year 2009

Happy New Year to everyone. I hope that all your goals and resolutions were achieved last year, and hope that all your new ones will be even greater.

It was definitely a new and great year for me. I look forward to the upcoming one.

Nanjing Parkour

Ahhh, so much fun!

I had a week and a bit for vacation around mid-November and decided to go traveling. I went out to a number of locations including Zhangjiajie, Wuhan, and Yunan province. But near the end of the trip I went and visited Nanjing.

After a few back and forth emails with one of the local Nanjing guys, I had set up to meet them after I arrived... however, it turned out that my train was getting in later than expected. As they were having a meet at almost the exact same time I was arriving, I went straight from the train station to the gymnastics facility to meet them. After a short session (20 minutes) at the gym, they had to close up early and we were kicked out. My plan was to then get to my hostel and get some food and relax for a bit (after traveling for a good 20ish hours on the train) and then meet up with the guys, but what ended up happening was one of the guys invited me to stay at his place for the weekend. His name was Ayong and he was an incredible person to hang out with. He hung out with me each of the days and we went and trained every day I was in the city.


Ayong and I at his pad

These guys were a lot of fun to train with and were very organized, relative to the other Chinese communities I've met. There are many many many awesome hotspots and training areas too. You'd expect that Shanghai would have as good places to train, but it just wasn't true (although the Shanghai spots were all good)! Specifically, Nanjing University campus and an obstacle course area were my favorite spots. On top of that, they also had free access to a gymnastics facility... which was impossible in Shanghai, especially a free one.


Hangin out after a training session at the University

Short summary: Training happened each day, gymnastics facility twice, and a bunch of touring happened around the city with Ayong. All-in-all the trip was awesome, and it ended on such a good note visiting Nanjing. I hope to visit once again and see how they and the community have all grown since my visit.


Chillin at the gymnasium

Training with the Nanjing Parkour group was an awesome experience, and I got a cool shirt out of it too! haha.

-KShap

China Parkour Scenes

I luckily have been one of very few westerners to have experienced Chinese Parkour groups first hand. It has been an incredible experience, and I've made friends for life here from it. I had the opportunity to train in 3 different cities (Shanghai, Nanjing, and Wuhan), and hopefully next time I can meet the Beijing group. It's kinda like a look into the past, seeing these groups... but with a more "big picture" train of thought than we had back in the beginnings of our groups.

Training with groups from other regions, may they be nation-wide or international, is an experience that everyone should have. Even if it's just going out to a new city, you will always learn at least something from those new people and make great friends in the process.

I have had an amazing time this trip, and I'll be going home next month. Gotta get some more training out before then.