Spent this past week in Canberra training with Eliot. It was a solid five days - more solid than NatSoc last year even though the days were shorter- probably because it was just us and sometimes a few locals, so there was more training and less sitting around socialising.
It was a good holiday though - learnt some things and thought I'd share. Though most of them are personal so I'm not sure how much good it will do you :P.
My problems are still largely mental blocks. Mental blocks of the illogical kind since the pain isn't really a major concern of mine and serious damage is rare. Talking with Eliot about it all he said two things - one of which I had realised already but not enough to articulate and another one I don't think I'd considered.
- Drilling. A lot of the fundamentals I can do and do well (or at least passably), but not instinctively. This creates some breaks in flow when trying to string a bunch of movements quickly together and causes me to glitch when approaching new/different obstacles. I had figured this would disappear with general training, but E pointed out drilling which makes a lot more sense in terms of getting comfortable specific movements - especially things like cats which can be pretty varied depending on obstacle size/type/approach/exit (to precision or arm).
- Learning to fail. A lot of the mental blocks I think may stem from the 'what ifs'... If I clip here, what will happen? If I don't make the jump, what will I do? Eliot mentioned that a lot of the better Sydney traceurs (Rhys/Antek/Sammy etc) practiced their bails and breakfalls, how to slide down walls they fail to precision/arm and land well from poor angles. Pays off double - not only because when accidents happen you can turn them around, but also being confident that you can means you attempt things you otherwise might not - and often succeed them, as tends to happen.
One other thing I noticed lacking was my precision strength, and to a lesser degree balance. This makes some sense considering my history, in the gym I (and most people I think) are more inclined to work upper body, and considering most of my leg work is long distance running, my legs are relatively weak in the power and strength areas. This limits jumping distance (especially considering my above average bodyweight) and I think to some extent coordination... as I don't imagine endurance work assists development of fine motor control as much as strength and power.
On a completely unrelated note - I learnt a couple of ways to euthanise animals. I asked my folks how to do it properly- both of whom have done a lot of it in their time - after I recently killed a roo by bludgeoning it on the back of the head after it was hit by a car. Summary:
- Crushing the skull is probably the best for the animal - if its on the road and still alive carefully running over its head is probably the most humane.
- Next most humane is breaking its neck - though this is exceedingly difficult to do on anything much larger than a rabbit simply due to the amount of force required.
NB: This one I found interesting. A lot of media treats the neck as a rather fragile structure (which it is compared to the stresses that you hear about breaking it - falls and the like. Consider an 80kg man falling from a height of ONE meter generates 784N of force. I did a brief lit search for the amount of newtons generated by skeletal muscle (a broad question if there ever was one) which turned up nothing; but logically I would assume since the same amount of force needs to be generated by the body to raise the centre of gravity 1m - an amount of force generated by the entire body working in unison. Trying to generate the same amount of force by a small muscle group in your upper back special-forces-movie style seems surely difficult. Caveat: Most people can probably jump higher than 1m. I would imagine that most (direct, rather than subsequent infection) deaths from falling also occur from distances higher than 1m. Regardless of the physics, Dad said he struggled with anything larger than a ferret.
- Cutting its throat. Most humane in a laboratory setting (i.e. killing lab animals...though I believe they are killed by injection these days. Not likely you'll have your hands on those substances, anyway.), though my father always used to carry a carving knife with him for roadkill until he was pulled over by the police one day. Method: Grip the base of the mandible tightly and fully extend the neck. Feel for the lateral masses of the atlas (deep and inferior to the mastoid processes), and cut from above tracheal cartilage back to the lateral masses. By fully extending the neck you allow the blade to pass above the body of C1 and sever the cord, which stops the pain of bleeding out. Violence of action is very important, as quicker movements will cause less pain.
- Stun/Bolt gun. Method is to place the gun on the skull and fire the piston in - ideally penetrating enough of the frontal cortex to kill the animal instantly. However, if the gun isn't fully in contact or the animal moves its head the pistol can recoil, only wounding the animal.
Lastly - some inspiration: +Barnz 08-09 and Trace Elements Melbourne 2008 videos. Watch, and be amazed.
