Control

It was a good day today.

Still sore from yesterday, I got a sets of 4, 3, 3 muscle ups, landed the laches on the fingertips so very quietly and absolutely pounded out the last few exercises so I could get to dinner. Pretty much exceeded expectations all round, which is good.

But the thing that made it unique was I met another guy there who was actually working, trading sweat for functionality, and not just aesthetics. He was a surfer, an old surfer, and he knew what he was doing. As soon as he said to me, "We need more nutcases in the gyms," I knew I'd met a kindred spirit. He worked a lot on swiss balls and medicine balls; doing squats, spins, pushups, side-plank switches... endless combinations that required an amazing sense of balance and control. It's funny, but at the time I wrote clarity, I chose that name because I liked the word, not because I had any actual clarity about what I was doing, and it seems I've found something to focus on now - improving balance and control will make a fundamental difference to parkour, both in balance and in terms of power generation, it will work my core hard during the gym, which will assist with handstands, handstand presses and the end goal of the muscle-up to handstand-press. I won't go so far to say that I was being prophetic when I called the workout "Clarity", but it's a nice thought. (Also, if anyone is wondering; I'm using one-word titles in a mostly ineffectual attempt to expand my vocabulary, although it seems to me that most of the words I'm using are irrelevant to the topic at hand. Ah well.)

So, when I have time, I shall go through Clarity and revamp it with some new things I've picked up in the last few weeks, some more exercises from parkour conditioning classes (for Wednesdays I think...), and from my new nutcase friend. I've also been thinking at having a go at an iron cross as my next major six month goal, or maybe a one arm chinup... a lot of this excess strength is redundant in terms of efficacy, but hell, I enjoy it.

Sore, sleepy, exhausted and with plenty to think about. It was a fucking good day today.