An Apology, a Promise, and a Video.

So, I've been neglecting this blog a little bit. I feel bad, but I've been quite busy. I left June 6th for my cross country trip, and since then I've been in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Bloomfield, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, New York, New York, Columbus, Ohio, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Chicago, Illinois. Tomorrow I leave for Madison, Wisconsin.

Everyone I've stayed with so far has been awesome, and the people I've met have been awesomer. I haven't, however, had a lot of time. I have a to-do list that's about 37 entries long, and sadly updating my blog is not at the top... For each of the major jams I've been to, I've written a summary and edited together a 3-5 minute video. I've been working on several other really great projects too, and I'll be announcing or releasing those fairly shortly.

I have to go to bed now, I'm totally worn out from Chicago. But long story short: I apologize for not updating more, and I promise I'll be updating more often. Over the next few days I'll be posting links to the videos of the major jams here, so check back often!

If you want to follow my trip more closely, you can check out Where's Zac? on www.AmericanParkour.com. I'm posting my write ups and videos there for the whole Parkour community to see.

For now, the Philly video:

Summer Trip Details *Updated with bloglink*

So it's been a little while since the last update. Whoops. I just wanted to fill everyone in a little on some more details about this summer:

I have a couple of goals for my trip.
First, obviously I want to meet traceurs and traceuses from all over the country. I want to share training techniques and stories with people who are more, and less, experienced than I. I've trained with a lot of different people, and I think that I can share quite a bit of knowledge with the people I visit. That being said, I hope to learn just as much from all of the traceurs and traceuses that I meet on my trip.

Second, one of my larger goals. I am going to record this entire trip on video. I am going to edit it all together into a documentary, sort of a "This is how America Trains" kind of thing. I'll be taking a lot of footage, and I'll be releasing smaller "jam coverage" media peices throughout my trip through American Parkour, but look for a longer documentary at the end of August or beginning of September.

The current itinerary of major jams follows. Note, I may be arriving the night before, the morning of, or sometime during the day of these dates, depending on bus schedules:

*Saturday, June 7th - Philly Jam II
*Friday, June 13th through Sunday June 15th - PKFR International Pittsburgh Jam
*Friday, June 20th through Sunday June 22nd - PKNY (New Jersey and NYC)
Monday, June 23rd through Tuesday, June 24th - Columbus, Ohio
Wednesday, June 25th through Friday, June 27th - Ann Arbor, Michigan
*Saturday, June 28th through Sunday, June 29th - Chicago Jam
Monday, June 30th through Wednesday, July 2nd - Madison, Wisconsin
Thursday, July 3rd through Friday, July 4th - Minneapolis, Minnesota
Saturday, July 5th through Wednesday, July 9th - Seattle, Washington
Thursday, July 10th through Tuesday, July 15th - San Fransisco, California
Wednesday, July 16th through Thursday, July 17th - Phoenix, Arizona
Friday, July 18th through Tuesday, July 22nd - Denver, Colorado
*Wednesday, July 23rd through Tuesday, July 29th - San Antonio, Texas
Tuesday, July 29th through Wednesday, July 30th - Tampa, Florida
Thursday, July 31st through Friday, August 1st - Miami, Florida
Saturday, August 2nd - Athens, Georgia
Sunday, August 3rd through Tuesday, August 5th - Charlotte, North Carolina
Wednesday, August 6th through Friday, August 8th - Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Saturday, August 9th - back home to Severna Park, Maryland!

*'s denote "National Jams"

I hope to meet as many people along this trip as possible. I plan on putting together an email list to keep people informed of how and what I'm doing (if you want to be on it, comment on this post!), and I'll be making regular posts on American Parkour detailing more of the Parkour oriented aspects of my trip. You can find a lot of the pictures, videos, and bloggings here, or you can go to American Parkour, go to the top-menu item "Where's Zac" and see the listing there.

If you'd like to contact me about my trip, or you're interested in meeting me somewhere along the way, send me an email at zaccohn@gmail.com and let me know! I'm sure we can work something out.

New York Parkour Goes Primal

On Wednesday, January 2nd, I hosted a group of traceurs from New York and New Jersey who bussed and drove down to visit Primal Fitness and the DC scene. Chris "Phreaknite" Salvato (spelling) is moving to Colorado soon, and wanted to visit Primal before he left. So over the course of a few weeks, we planned out and organized the trip. In the end, nine traceurs came down and joined Travis Noble, who was down visiting Primal from Michigan, and RandomPKGuy (RPG) and I for a really great jam.

It started at 10:30 when I picked up Jesse “Hardcoretraceur” from the bus station in Baltimore. We came back to my house, cleaned up a bit, and then I (almost) taught him to juggle while waiting for everyone else to arrive. We heard Vert and Arfel yelling as they got out of the car, and so we met them at the door, along with Pheaknite, Pyro, and Ish. My roommates from school, Artem and Charlie "ChadManX", arrived shortly later. We hung out in the basement until it was time to go to Xtreme Acro and Cheer, a nearby gymnastics gym. We called M1L3S, who was still en-route, and had him meet us there. We piled into cars and drove an hour to Acro to meet up with Travis and RPG.

Much fun was had at Acro! Wallflips, backtucks, layouts, frontflips, diverolls, trampolines, butterfly kicks, and more. We ended up staying about 30 minutes past when we were supposed to, and then packed in the car and came back to my house. The twelve of us promptly ordered 7 pizzas, and finished them off in about as many minutes. The rest of the night was pretty low key, the highlight being Jesse giving himself quite the shiner after running into a pole in my woods while playing Predator versus Prey (Aliens!).

The next morning Charlie and I got up at 6:45 and started making pancakes. Artem soon joined us in our endeavor, and Happydud's Emporium of Pancakes was moving along at full steam ahead! 64 pancakes, 1 box of pancake mix, 7 eggs, 5 cups of milk, a dash of olive oil, and one failed batch of pancakes later, everyone was up and eating pancakes, cereal, fruit, yogurt, and anything else we could find in the house. We managed, amazingly, to get out the door by 9:00AM (I did NOT think this was possible) and we headed to Primal Fitness, the main attraction.

After some creative convoying, we got to Primal as Jesse “Gearsighted” Woody, Steve Low, Leonn, and Britney were setting up a projector. We projected a big PRIMAL FITNESS onto the far wall, traced it, and then painted it in red. Other things got painted throughout the day as well, like the spiderweb, and a recreation of a Banksy. As far as the Parkour went, it was pretty awesome, as always. Leonn and Travis ran a really good warmup, which actually gave me a lot of ideas of what I want to incorporate into my standard warmup. Skipper stopped by, and the training continued throughout the entire day. The room was rearranged every few minutes to create new obstacle combinations and to drill different techniques. Later in the afternoon, Mark decided to run us through a workout.

The warmup: 3 rounds: 25x20lbs sumo-deadlift high-pulls, 1 lap of QM, 1 lap “uncomfortably high stepping” (stepping through a line of 3 to 4 foot boxes), 10 decline pushups.

I'm still convinced that Crossfit style “warmups” are equivilent to the workouts that some people usually get.

After the warmup, we got to the workout. Mark yells “Okay, who's ready for 3 minutes of conditioning?” I respond sarcastically “Only 3 minutes? This should be easy!” We went back to the line of eight 3 to 4 foot plyometric boxes and lined up.

The workout: 3 minutes, as many rounds through as you can. Two footed jump from the ground to the top of the first box. Jump from box to the ground. Jump from the ground to the next box. Rinse, wipe hands on pants, repeat. It was pretty hellish. By the end of the third minute, my legs felt like lead.

Afterwards, we ran through some jumping and landing drills designed to facilitate the ease of continued running after a landing, without stumbling, slowing down, putting your hands down, etc. We were supposed to start at one speed and accelerate throughout the course. We started by running and jumping off of different sized plyo-boxes, and then we eventually built up to running, jumping onto one box, jumping to a higher box, and then leaping to the ground and resume running without ever slowing down. We then modified to it getting over the second box the fastest way for you. For some people, this was a kong, for others, it was stepping on it and jumping, still others speed vaulted it or just leaped straight over it. It was a fascinating thing to watch: to see four different people could pass over the box in four completely different ways, and each path was the most efficient for them. It was a great example of how there is never one correct way to do something, and how what works for one person may not work for another.

In the end, everyone eventually went their separate ways and headed back home. Everyone had a fantastic time, and the jam just reaffirmed something I see traceurs from different places training together. Despite being from DC, Brooklyn, Michigan, or anywhere in between, despite some people having never met before, or others only having met once or twice, traceurs can come together and instantly become best of friends. We may come from different communities geographically, but we're all one big community when it comes to Parkour.

Philly (And NYC and RIT) Sampler

I'm going to come out with a longer Sampler in a few weeks, once I get some more footage. Probably end of November. But for now, these are clips mostly from Philly, but one from NYC and one from Rochester. I just put some recent clips together to show people more easily than giving them 15 download links.



Youtube link

Well I've had my Phil...ly

Artem, Charlie and I travelled down to Philadelphia this past weekend for a jam at Drexel University. It was quite awesome. Pretty good turnout, had people from NYC/NJ, Rochester, Buffalo, Philly, and even Baltimore, MD.

We got to Philly at about 2AM on Saturday morning, and promptly went to sleep. We woke up at 8:30 to meet the rest of the tracuers coming in and we started jamming! We began at 30th Street Station doing some precisions on Jersey Barriers until the K9 unit showed up... After that we met up with M1l3s from NYPK - he was running 10 miles for the Step Up to Fight Diabetes charity event. Then it was a full day of walking, from Drexel's campus, to Temple, UPenn, Central City/City Hall, Philadelphia Museum of Art (where the stair scene from Rocky was filmed), and more. Saturday night, people headed back to Drexel to go to sleep, except for Jessie, Pyro, Blaarg and I. We decided to try and train all night long. We may not have ended up training all night, but we were out in Philly all night, and it was really awesome. We did SO much walking and we were exhausted, but spending the entire night in a foreign city is definitely a cool experience.

Sunday was spent doing a little bit more training at the Museum, where we had three or four groups of people come up to us and ask us what we were doing. We demonstrated, and taught, some pretty basic precisions, and then we got our pictures taken. After that, we were all very tired, and we started the 6 hour drive back home.

Thanks to everyone for making this an awesome Jam!


In other news, I'm in the middle of reorganizing all of my pictures and videos. Here's a new link to a (probably) temporary Picasa page with two albums (one for pictures, one for videos). Most are fairly new (a lot are from Philly infact, so if you want to see some of the pictures and videos from there, check it out!). Hopefully more will be added soon!