James C

I'm ill again so that must mean I have time to blog!

2008-04-14T12:12:00.000-07:00

Yeah, this pretty much sucks.

Thursday's training, an un-named person decided he wanted to have a quick game of taps (light touches, no harm meant to come about it), of course he's one of these people who has to prove a point. "Hey look! I knocked Cralosk over in taps, how pathetic is he?". What I almost failed to mention is that he kicked me the hardest I've been kicked in the side, I wasn't expecting this at all, not prepared or anything so i didn't have a chance to block quick enough. Bastard. I sat on the side for the rest of the session clutching my side, repeatedly telling my coach I'll be fine. I went to bed early that night and woke up in incredible pain about 3am. My side was killing me! I guzzled, probably, half a pack off paracetamol and went back to bed. Philip wakes me up at 6am so we can go for a run and notices a red/purple patch stretching from the centre of my chest almost, to the middle of my back nearly, going from bottom of ribcage to 4th rib up. Erm...right. "Well, I tell you what Philip, I won't go for a run to be on the safe side" <<
School came around and I didn't really feel too great during first lesson (Sport Science). My teacher was a bit concerned and when he saw the bruise, he immediately phoned my Dad to come get me. From about 11am to 9pm, I was hospital with my Dad "getting payed for waiting in hospital - I don't want to make a habit of this" *Sudden guilt trip* Why should I be guilty?
So Dad's at home with his cold lasagne and I'm just feeling to sick to eat anything - even nice food! He took a sudden pity and felt kinda lonely and acme to take me home about 9pm. He probably realises how much I don't like hospital now since last February.

Saturday I stay in bed till 11am - all time record!
Sunday I can't really remember much of...

Today, well I wasn't well enough to go to school, nor eat anything, nor stay conscious. I have a lung full of blood. So emergency procedure to drain it out and some recovery time in a warm room all to myself. Lunch arrives which is shortly followed by it's departure.

9pm and I'm sat infront of the TV with my laptop recovering from a bit of a frightful few days.

See ya around.

Long time no blog!

2008-01-26T13:58:00.000-08:00

Wow, erm... There's been a lot going on since Portugal! Got beaten by the German, but he really was twice my size, he just sat on me - must so more press ups with added weight, e.g my dad sat on my shoulders. same with bench presses. I can bench press Kate quite easily, shall try Philip next! :-P (He ran away after reading that)

Exams are over aswell, so I'm back into my morning runs. My Dad had made me spend that time to revise. At least he didn't say running was a waste of time, he just wants the best from me, and I fully understand. Big relief that they're over, weight off your mind and all.

Me and Kate have just realised, that after going out for nearly 2 years and 8 months, that we haven't had a valentines day together. Kinda soppy...not when it involves being in a coma last year. I determined to make it there, I don't want to let her down and make her sad again, even though she thinks 14th February is a waste of money - she still loves it when I get her something meaningful!

Peace for now.

Portugal

2007-11-22T12:55:00.000-08:00

yep, here I am for the European champs. Can't be saying much at them moment except for sorry for not updating much in the past few weeks.

Generalisation:
School - going good, crappiest test mark so far has been 87%

Training - awesome, spesh as I got pick for euro champs.

Family - still striving and putting more cracks in the wall!

Kate - still alive!! Even after falling off a chair whilst hanging upside down under a table today...crazy girl! :-D

Mates - All giving me and Philip their support and thanks for lending us your folders when we've missed work, kinda saved my butt on Tuesday!

See you after I've won! haha!

Laters. x

Half term

2007-10-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

Well half term has been the biggest rest for me since the summer holidays. I started out on Monday (after my 6am run) to just try and relax, watch some TV. Fat chance of that happening for me! I got bored of watching TV after 15 minutes and me and Philip went to Braim wood to do some PK training. Something we hadn't done for almost 2 months! Man, we were shite! Well to start with, we soon got back into the swing of it :D Happy days. Had to be careful though, no trying any big jumps or anything dangerous...knowing my luck I'd end up in hospital for the rest of half term. I know it sounds kinda sissy but I really can't afford to injure myself. Knackering my knee a few weeks back gave me a bit of a scare cos I had to miss out on one of my Saturday training sessions. Me and Philip then decided to set aside half terms and school holidays for PK training. Unless there are Karate competitions or whatever. They're kinda more important...
Found out later in the week Liam had been training at Braim wood. Damn, missed our chance to train with the master of Parkour Progression. You should check his progression vid:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr69yY4Bjpg

Hmm...well all I did in that week was PK training at Braim wood, Roundhay Park, Oakwood (sorry the guy who we nearly gave a heart attack to after wallflipping on the side of his car as it started to move from the traffic lights...). That's about it really...oh yeah, me and Philip came 4th in the tag team finals we did on Wednesday out of 60 teams. Not bad for first time in with the England masters! I suppose it's good training for being a master one day :D

A "normal" week for James...

2007-10-20T13:50:00.000-07:00

This is for the people who have been asking me:
1) Why I'm so fit
2) How do I fit all of my training, school work and have a life at the same time?

Monday morning dawns and I'm up at 6am to go out for my morning run around the big lake at Roundhay park. I live about 600yrds from there so It's not too much of a task. And at 6:15ish in the morning it's not exactly a task crossing the road (it's a different story in the winter though with the ice), which has seen a fair few accidents in the past few years. Nothing to do with me though! (Phew!) I'm back from my run about 7am - give or take a few laps around the block until my song on my iPod has finished, quick shower and then it's off to school.
Nowadays I'm getting home from school about 5pm which is a bit ghey at the moment but I'm getting used to it. Love having free periods though, I do all my work in those so I have time at home to myself, which doesn't usually happen to be honest. (Yes, geek I know but you'll understand why in a minute or so).
So I'm at home and Alex (my 7 year old hyperactive brother) has already been at home for nearly 2 hours so he's getting a bit wound-up and so is my Mum. Quick hello to them and off upstairs to finish off any work to do. So far work load isn't too much so I'm usually getting it done by about 6pm, then it's tea which is usually a pile of pasta infront of the TV whilst doing some leg conditioning involving weights and squats, quite hard whilst holding a plate of pasta and trying to shoo dogs away from me. Then it's off to karate. Me and Philip usually get there for about 6:45 so we can do our warm up before the session starts at 7. 2 hours of some pretty basic stuff later (for us anyway), and then we're cooling down and back home at about 9:30pm.
Then it's finishing off any work I've forgotten or just didn't get done beforehand, shower, keep Alex amused for half an hour or so then off to bed about 10pm. 10pm is kinda early for most people, but considering I'm getting up about 6am, it's not really...

Tuesday: Same again, 6am start and off for a run, shower, off to school, back home from school and It's my day to look after Alex so whilst doing some tricky chemistry homework I'm also trying keep him amused and stop him from breaking things, mainly me, and keep him fed and watered! Karate 7 till 9pm again, back home 9:30, shower and some late night conditioning. Bed.

Wednesday: Same stuff, home at 5pm, conditioning seems I have no training tonight so I have 2 hours to spare so I might go round to see Kate for an hour or so which brightens both of our days =]. Back home for tea with my mum brandashing her electric meat cutter at us for misbehaving at the table, which is usually my Dad's fault. 2 hours of homework later and it's maybe TV time, and then bed.

Thursday: Home at about 8pm because I've had training straight after school. I'll have a shower and then fall asleep in my tea. Luckily I only have 2 out of 5 lessons in the morning on Thursdays so I do my homework in my 3 free periods. I'm then woken up about 9pm by my dad, if not Alex who's been running around the house causing a riot as usual, to go to bed, "Cos you're too big to carry up the stairs and put into bed now". Ironic how roles have reversed.Me and Philip carried my Dad to bed a few nights ago after a pretty nasty day at work. Sofa wasn't an option as Alex was asleep there and we knew if woken... everyone else in the street would wake up too.

Friday: Last day at school until the weekend, fat chance of a rest though. All homework is done by the time I have to go to karate. Only a 1 hour session tonight which is mainly coaching the younger kids. Back home and It's some good old family quality time together which consists of walking the dogs and Alex, running away from mum who's still brandashing her electric meat cutter, chatting on msn and on the phone to older brother Chris who's at Uni in America, and listening to piles of stories from Dad's day at work.

Saturday: If you read one of my earlier blogs, titled 'Saturday's training' I think, you'll see the full details of that.

Sunday: Recovery day. I do f**k all. I might go round to see Kate...but she's usually off sailing with her Dad. Kinda of a bummer really, cos she's free on Saturday and I'm training, and I'm free Sunday and she's training...

And THEN it's Monday all over again and we start again...Tiresome huh? Hope that answers some of your questions you nosey people.

Conditioning

2007-10-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

As I had no training session on Saturday due to my knee injury, I did some conditioning to strengthen it. Which, I have to say, involved some odd exercises.

1. Strengthening under pressure:
This involved me lying on my back, with my Dad (who weighs about 16 stone) lying on my feet in the air and I had to effectively do some pretty tough leg bench presses. Made harder as he couldn't keep his balance some of the time which made my knees click every now and then. I only last for 7 of those. Too many red faces!
2. Strengthening during motion:
I often train with leg weights for when I go out running, so this time, I only put a weight on my left leg (the injured one). It's very hard to keep a constant rhythm going I must say, but there's been improvement so I won't complain too much.
3. Rest
Imbetween all those exercises I did, I rested with my leg raised for about 10 minutes, then carried on with my conditioning.

Anyway, through all the pain I've suffered this week due to my obsessive compulsive need to condition, I made it through a 2 hour karate session without and playing up from my knee. S'all good!

Oh yeah, instead of training on Saturday, I spent the best part of 9 hours with my girlfriend during the day, and I gotta say it, I hadn't been that happy for a long time. So here's a tip: Don't block yourself in a cage and train train train. Enjoy yourself once in a while, whether it be pissing about with your mates, time with your girl/guy or just doing jack shit... It can improve your training no doubt.

Injurys

2007-10-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

Yep, 'fraid so guys!

What with all this twisting and turning and hard landings I endure every Saturday, something was bound to go wrong! And unfortunately I've damaged a muscle in my left knee... So no training for me this Saturday, which gives me chance to catch up with Kate; who also hasn't had an injury free week unsurprisingly!
Hockey match + Kate in goal = awesome saves! She's got a bruise the size of an ostrich egg on her leg just above her knee, where the goalie shin pads stop...typical. (saved the goal too, even better!) Little did she know that the ball had bust a minor minor artery and caused bleeding under her skin...nasty business. A syringe later from my mum and she was hobbling around and squabbling with my dad about how important/unimportant scrabble is... Yes the board game scrabble.

So no training Saturday, bummer.
Spending a whole day in Leeds with my girlfriend (Which I haven't done since August), Awesome stuff.

Night time training

2007-09-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

With winter well on its way and the nights drawing in sooner, not much light is available for training. So out comes the AC/DC fingerless gloves and onto the freezing slug infested grass I step to practice handstands and the like.
Well that's what I set out to do 2 hours ago...my brother, Alex, thinks better of being outside at night and just as I was about to stretch my legs above my head, he'd come out and give me a good sidekick in the ribs. (I tell you this now, if you ever come across a blonde haired crazy seven year old, don't challenge him to a fight! He's got a lot of strength and power!)
Anyway, the whole point of telling you this is, no matter how many times he came out and kicked me, I got up, and started again.

Perseverance.

You've got to keep your mind on your goal. No matter the circumstances. Eventually consequences pay out and my brother gets sent to bed early and I (aswell as having sore ribs) get my handstands perfect.

Words of Wisdom

2007-09-27T14:12:00.000-07:00

My Karate coach said to us at the beginning of our first England session:

"If you can't stand up tonight, you've worked well. If you can't get out the car when you get home, you've worked very well."

"If you can high five your mate without it hurting when I dismiss you, why do you even bother coming here?"

Gym Session

2007-09-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Went to a 2 hour gym session Wednesday night, mainly to practise my double back dismounts. They've improved quite a lot since my first 10 or so attempts. (If they hadn't I'd be a bit confused!)
Some other groovy stuff went down there too. I took my ADHD 7 year old brother, Alex, with me to get rid of some energy. He's already in the top 10 or so for gymnastics under 10's so he has a good understanding of all the moves. He just needs to learn to control them more.
That's what I respect about him so much, he has no fear whatsoever so if you ask him to try a back tuck dismount off the high bar, show him once and he'll have it perfect after 5 attempts!
Come to think of it, my double back was the only major thing I did. I spent too much time teaching Alex new moves and getting his control on the bars correct.
After a tiring 5 minutes running after him in the corridors, we got down to some good old chip narrow pit fights! Not actually fighting in the narrow pit, but either side, holding each other's shoulders and we had to try and pull each other in. For 7, he's pretty good! My excuse is I wasn't in a real training mood and was being nice to my little brother...!

Speaking of brother, I'd better go return him to bed for the umpteenth time!
Laters.

A weekend full of antics

2007-09-26T10:21:00.001-07:00

Quite a lot of interesting and mad things have been going on since my last entry, involving me, and Philip, my Dad, Kate and her Dad their friends, Matt and Karen.

James and Philip antics:
Well me and Catch were at Karate on Saturday as usual, doing some brutal training, took some batterings but didn't half give them back. We did tag teams mostly which was awesome! The C twins (me and Philip) didn't win as we were up against the top 7 guys in England, but we did come 4th out of 10 pairs so we have to be a bit proud of that!

Dad antics:
After buying himself a superbike during his mid-life crisis which he totally denies having, Dad finally managed to persuade our mum to let let him go out in the Yorkshire Dales to have a play, some of the best roads for speed freaks like him. Whizzed past Kate on the way to the sailing club apparently. He nearly got clocked by his mate in the nick but he reminded him that he let him go when he went speeding past his patrol car at 90 on his bike..

Kate, her Dad and their friend's antics:
Everyone always asks Kate when she tells them she sails "Isn't it dangerous?". Well yes it is if you're sailing with the worlds most accident prone person. But not if you're sailing with her Dad and/or his mate Matt.
To give you an idea of how accident prone she is, here's a small list:
- She got a black eye from opening a door into herself.
- She found the only piece of barbed wire on a wall stretching 1 mile and cut herself on it and needed 5 stitches.
- After going over a metal fence no problem to retrieve a ball, she came back over the same part, and cut her leg to smithereens almost!

Anyway, there she is on Sunday afternoon, crewing for a mean machine of a boat called an RS500 which has been clocked at over 20 knots, that's about 20 miles an hour. I asked her if she wanted to go for a safe option of going to the park to chill out but "Nah, I wanna go sailing" like the speed freak she is (love her for it!). The first capsize wasn't too bad, just came out to boat, but still attached to the trapeze. (Trapeze - Wire coming down from the mast which is attached onto a harness which you are very securely fastened in to and you stand on the side of the boat and lean to keep the boat upright when there's some strong wind pulling it over.) Matt's on the other side of the boat, standing on the centreboard, trying to get the boat upright, as it's now lying on it's side in the water. (so effectively, Matt's standing on the bottom of the boat). So she comes back into the boat and off she goes again with Matt helming (steering/driving, whatever but helming is the proper name). There was a bit of a nasty capsize where the boat just got blown over by so much wind that she got 'pinged' off the trapeze and went flying into the mast with a very loud crash and splash as she hit the mast! See picture of her bruise for the damage of that fall.
The worst is still to come...After getting back into the boat, which was a real struggle for her as she was tired and had lost a fair bit of muscular energy, they set off again but soon came back to land to re-energize! Wind was picking up so Kate's Dad and Matt went out, as bad luck would have it the wind dropped so they came back in so Kate could go back out again, but there's that wind of fate, and up picks the wind and so does the count of capsizes!
Here comes the scary part:
Some great runs going up and down the reservoir without much catastrophe until a gust of wind hits again, pinging Kate off the trapeze further in to the air and a loud splash and crash as she hits the water and the mast again. Ironically as they were going down towards the boat, Kate had jokingly said to Matt, "If you can't hear me after capsizing, just check to see if I'm still alive! hehehe". Oh dear...
So Matt doesn't hear much splashing after the initial splash and sees her lying on the mast, still attached to the trapeze wire, unconscious. He signals for the rescue boat to come over and help. After he's seen it coming towards them he goes over to the side of the boat where Kate is, just as she's coming round. Kate perks up immediately, even with a sore head, and they get the boat up, and sail off without need of the rescue boat. Although I think Matt was in need of a blood pressure check..! On land Kate's Dad rolls his eyes, "Not again!", and Matt jokingly says, "I wasn't worried, her parents were in sight!".

So much for a blog on my training and progression. More of a blog on Kate's progression through states of consciousness!

2nd England session

2007-09-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I've done all my homework, been to karate to help with the yellow belts and (literally) babysat my brother. (don't worry! - he's 7 and a bit of a hard nut)

Anyway, 8 hour training session in Manchester on Saturday - have to say it was pretty damn awsome! Me and Philip arrived 7:45am sharp, ready for a warm up before the 2 hour gym session started at 8am. Got some great work done on the bars, not my strong point as my right shoulder isn't as flexible as it used to be. Did a double back tuck as a dismount which I was quite pleased with 'cos I didn't under or over rotate and I haven't done them for about 2 months!!! There was a bit of an incident with Keith under rotating and spilling nearly an arm full of blood from his nose all over the edge of the chip pit, so off to the trampolines it was. We weren't meant to be on them until 10am, so we got an extra half hour which was brilliant as it gave me and Philip to work on our doubles routine which scared the shit out of our P.E teacher as it involved swapping trampolines whilst doing a half twist!
11:30am and we were warming up for some karate.
12:00 and we've finished the warm up and we're going through dojo etiquette seems some people had forgotten so that was 15 minutes wasted!

1:30pm and we're back after lunch and preparing for some fighting. With Keith back from hospital with a charming external metal plate taped to his face we did some kicks and punching blocks.
2:00pm Back to the gym and we're working on handstands to improve balance. I'm getting increasingly ticked off as many people are tickling, poking, punching and generally annoying me whilst in the preparatory stage of the handstand.
2:15pm For the safety of those who were annoying me (who had to do 50 fisted press-ups for their deeds), I was put in 'the cage' A part of the hall where there's a a lot of soft blocks, sectioned off from the rest of the group. It's sort of like a naughty step...
2:20pm and 'Assassin' is released from 'the cage'
Until 4pm we're fighting, working on techniques and playing with some (blunt) swords. The home time and Dad complains of how much we 'smell' because we didn't 'have a proper shower'... It's hard to have a 'proper shower' when your Dad's impatiently beeping the horn in the car and revving the engine...

A nice tea of some random Polish dish that my mum cooked up (which for once we didn't stare and ask if it was still alive).

SUNDAY

It's recovery day, me and Philip slept from 10pm till 10am and we were still walking stiff legged and knackered at lunch time...ah well.

Rediscoveration! ...And a bit of a thankyou :-)

2007-09-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

WOW! I've rediscovered this after nearly 7 months!
Well, a LOT'S been going on with me and my training lately. Some ace news - I've made the England Karate team! SO very proud, even more proud that my twin borther, Philip, made it too. Not to be mean but not even he thoguht he'd make it to the quarter-finals, nevermind the team! Our Dad was rather pleased as you can imagine. I put my new double spin kick move to practice too and knocked 3 guys out...sorry guys! But that's the major excitment for me!

More exciting stuff:
- My girlfriend (still crazy as ever) is thinking of getting back into parkour again! (YES!!!!)
- Doing my A-Levels now
- I've made some pretty strong bonds between some mates now, ever since my accident involving a lot of fitting, a minor coma and some nasty tests including bone marrow biopseys WITHOUT anesthesia!!!

And yep, BIG thanks to everyone who stayed with me, halped me and my family through that rough febuary. Especially to Kate for looking after Philip, Ed for looking after Kate and all the staff at Leed General Infirmary, even the ones who just said 'hello' but especially the ones who gave me that o' important morphine!
Thanks guys.

New start

2007-03-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

Well guys. I'm (sort of) finally back! I'm on 2 feet...just and doing alreet. Only a few more tests and shizzel before they can think of letting me out. then it's a month of rest and then another 3 of slow training. No overdoing it this time either - I've learnt my lesson :)

So I'll leave you to read this while I go back to sleep :D

This is why I'm going backwards

2007-01-28T08:12:00.000-08:00

For those of you that may not be aware....
When I was 13 I was hit by a car outside school. I broke my scapula, clavical and humurous. I also fractured my frontal and parietal bone. I spent 3 weeks in hospital, had 5 operations and umpteen scans. My Dad was so certain I was going to make it that he wouldn't leave my side after I was brought into Leeds General Infirmiry. He stayed with me for 23 hours from the moment we arrived at the hospital, untill the time I showed some remote signs of a full-recovery.

Security and some of his collegues were called to remove him but he refused. I briefly opened my eyes for about 30 seconds. I can't remember seeing anything or hearing anything. 3 days later I woke up, lying on my side on the bed, going towards my room. I'd just come out of my 2nd operation to repair the damage in my arm and the 4th operation in total as a result of someone not paying attetntion to the road and myself listening to Metallica too loud.

Just as we'de thought I'd been fully fit for a year and everything was going well...hemoraging started occuring in my eyes. The colour in my iris' faded. So much to the delight of my little brother....I looked like I had cartoon eyes. I went to various opticians, hospitals etc until they found a cause....the car accident. "Extreme delayed hemoraging".
About 2 weeks ago I had an operation to fix the problem of the disappearing iris'. Sucsessful but I've gone bacwards in training. Only a little but it's enough to cost me. As it's Sunday though, I'd better leave this machine they call a modern wonder and continue my "recovering fase".

James.

The beginning but no way near finished

2007-01-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

So this is my first blog on my progression through many disciplines.

- Karate
- Le Parkour
- Boxing

But I'm mainly concentrating on karate as I have high hopes on what I can acheive in the near future.
I use Parkour ( or PK) to fine tune my balance, concentration, co-ordination, speed and agility. There are many more essentials which Parkour concentrates on but I find that they come into other things more.

So for now I'll leave tonight's blog as I have an early start tomorrow.

James