Industrial Strength London – September 2nd 2007

Thanks to everyone who got themselves over to Wandsworth Common for what was a great practice session of movement, strength and conditioning. There were new faces and old, tired, haggard ones.

Cj Swaby led the warm up and joint mobility part of our session before we headed over to the monkey bars. Some were more monkey like than others but the point is we worked at our pulling and swinging abilities (if you know what I mean) both for strength and with power. Double and single arm jumps both to switch grips and swing to different bars. The greatest monkey of all was absent at this point but when James Bower managed to get his butt south of the Thames he made up for the late start.

We all contributed to perform animal moves up and down the grass. Bears, elephants, three legged dogs, komodo dragons, crabs and ducks (Phill Ireland’s ducks go slower than everyone elses but he claims they’re more hardcore – and he’s right) all made an appearance, though we all looked like donkeys!

James Bower took us to the other side of the common’s equipment area to share with us some jumping drills. We did repeated log and hurdle jumps with controlled (some) landing being demanded as well. This led nicely into some parkour derived balance work followed by some low level and introductory vaulting. Having spoken with Ez of www.urbanfreeflow.com I know that this is the only way to get into parkour (free running) i.e. slowly, learning the basics first before leaping off buildings.

We then settled down on the grass for 10s of push up variations, everyone doing there bit and putting forward a suggestion – from total body involved hindu push ups (of Kushti wrestling fame I think) to what felt like pure isolatory tricep destroying versions. Jen “new kid on the block” Swallow insisted we did far more reps than intended before we did a few sets of get up drills – BJJ getups from supine, slide get ups from prone, deck squats and burpees.

Before we got too focussed on our Sunday lunches I wanted to maintain momentum and set up a circuit to justify bringing out the kettlebells, sandbag and thick 20 metre tow rope, kindly donated by British Airways via Anjum.

1 min sets (with a bit more here and there), continuous movement from station to station, performed twice for 12min total ‘ish.

Weight, workload and intensity left to the individual. If you loafed like me it was a piece of cake.

1. Overhand tow in of partner - resisting as much as possible without halting movement.
2. kettlebell throw from 1 hand swing
3. kettlebell swing, jerk, clean and jerk, or snatch
4. sandbag suitcase walk, farmers walk, shouldered sandbag carry, or carry with sandbag in zercher hold.
5. wheel barrow
6. burpees – Phill Ireland wouldnt have been happy unless he had extremely hard so did donkey burpees, Cj followed suit, Jen Swallow kept on eye on me - the man with the stop watch and waited for time to be called!

Cj has just got his website up and running so take a look – www.cjsfitness.co.uk

Apologies for there being no pics, I will become organised one of these days.