Parkour Training: Learning from the Roots
Some weeks ago, I mentioned I was attending a Parkour seminar. Here’s my review.
(Note: All pictures are property of ADD Quebec or SLA Coop.)
The formula was fairly simple: Friday evening and both days of the weekend, totalling around 16 hours of training. Each day included a physical training session with parkour-specific movements, followed by a longer stretch of technical learning and training.
More importantly, the seminar was held by by Chaû Belle, one of the founding members of the widely known group Yamakasi.
(Chaû is the guy giving a wink at the kid)
Dragonboat: Of Lessons and Evolution
Last week, I wrote a post on Dragonboat, talking about my latest season and what I love about the sport.
This post follows it up. Over the span of time (3 years) I’ve been paddling, I learned many things. Also, some things I would see change or evolve.
Before that, Candy Eye! I highly recommend that you watch this through the end. (Those of you who know the sport may have already seen it… but you’ll watch it through anyway. I know I have!)
Awesome eh? OK, Now let’s get to business.
Lessons and Discoveries
Dragonboat: Win as a team, Lose as a team
Let’s kick this off with some candy eye. My team, Phoenix, is Boat #3. This is the 200m Final, Division B (A being the highest-ranked), for Quebec Cup, the Provincial Championship and last competition of the season.
Most of you know I’ve been partaking in the sport with my University’s team for a while. If you don’t, you might want to read this article I wrote a while ago, as a Guest Post on Adam’s site. At that time, I was still a young fool and speaking proudly of feeling trashed. The challenges mentioned remain, though, I just have a different approach to them now. More on that later.
This season has been great. Despite many challenges, despite the fact that we lost a third of our recruits and experienced crew members during the winter season (one of the difficulties of being a University team), and despite a couple of set-backs, we have performed very well. As a team, we have learned a lot, too.
This year, I’ve also had the chance to lead the team as Captain. It was an honor, and also a great deal of learning.
In any case, I’ve been in this sport for 3 years now. I shall share some thoughts with you.
What I Love
Above all: the Team. Of all the team sports I have tried in my life (I have tried quite a good number of them), I have never seen any other for which teamwork, and the team’s spirit, are as important as they are in Dragonboat.
If you don’t work together, you lose.
Spartan Race: How to run like a bad-ass
While many things are said to qualify for badassery, anything involving competition, mud and muscle in the same event can only reside at the top tier in the Scale of Badass ™.
On May 29th, a group of my dragonboat teammates and I participated in what’s called the Spartan Race. It was held at Mont Tremblant, QC, Canada, near Montreal. The name is suggestive enough: it sounds like dirt, blood, and stuff not made for wussies. Well, this summary is quite on par with what it was. Go here for a nice video report. You can even see my girlfriend carrying a block (and laughing like hell) near the end, at 6:09!
There are 4 classes of Spartan Race and this was the shortest one, also called the Spartan Sprint. It consists of a 5km (~3 miles) run up and down a hill in the woods and mud, with a number of obstacles to overcome trough.
It was a rainy day, coming on and off. At 10:30am here I was on the start line, with the second wave, still having no idea what I was getting myself into. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even know yet what distance we had to cover.
5 Reasons to Start Traveling (or to do it again)
Tonight, my brother Raphaël is leaving for Spain. His first and main destination: the journey to Santiago de Compostela.
Raph’s blog (French): http://muybiencompostelle.blogspot.com/
The Pilgrimage of Compostela has been famous for centuries, and for many reasons. In our era, it’s been made even more so through Paulo Coelho‘s The Pilgrimage, a novel which I highly recommend you to treat yourself with.
I will leave it to Raph to describe his trip in more detail, hence the link to his blog. If you don’t speak French, here’s a great chance to learn it! As for myself, I will grab this opportunity to describe what, in my view, makes it the most worthwhile to partake in traveling.
Reason #1: To glance at how amazing the world is,
and to learn how all things amazing come at a price.
Challenge #4 : The 130km Bike Ride
An Overview
Click here to view in Google Maps
Good day to all! A new challenge has been completed!
Submitted by my friend and training partner Vincent, the goal was to complete a tour of the whole Montreal Island by bike; a good 130km (~81 miles) ride. Along with that, I needed to provide pictures of 4 strategic places in Montreal (Lachine Canal, St-Anne-de-Bellevue, Pierrefonds, Pointe-aux-Trembles) to prove I’ve been through.
Vincent (a.k.a. The Challenger) had mentioned he would make the ride with me; he’d already done it before. Sophie (a.k.a. Ms. Awesome) also proposed to join. Both are proudly posing below:
Book Review: His Majesty’s Dragon
Ladies and gentlemen, greetings.
It is with an utmost pleasure that I present to you my very first review of a book: His Majesty’s Dragon.
Gentlemen-speaking aside, this book contains a lot of it, and I found myself enjoying the politeness-and-intricacies abuse more than I cared to admit at first. Considering that despite my very limited free time, I went through this book in but a week, I daresay it’s possible that I might have enjoyed it.
To quickly describe the setting, imagine a 1800-style England, where “Kingdom” still means something, and Napoleon Bonaparte is reigning in France and invading everything around. Therefore he’s of course trying to invade the british, and he holds a most impressive Air Force with which he seeks to do just that.
Wait… Air Force? In the 1800s?
Yup. That’s where DRAGONS come into play.
Of Strikes and Belts
– Note: This clever title pattern is directly copied from the classic “Of Mice and Men”, for absolutely no reason –
Last week, I passed a belt test to get my brand new green sash in Fang Shen Do Kung-Fu. I am proud to say that it went very well and I can see the progress I made from the last time.
Progress is an amazing feeling, and testing your abilities and skills is one of the best ways I know of to measure personal progress. In this regard, Martial Arts have been of tremendous help and have ever been my guide.
