It looks like there is a South Bay Parkour group, but not that active: "we've been holding jams every saturday at saratoga high school but generally very few people make it. Besides us, I think SFPK holds jams in san jose once or twice a month."

I'm posting it in the hope that some of y'all will join it and it will become more active so that I can come sometimes :).

I just discovered Capoeira of San Jose, which seems to be located in Sunnyvale! I didn't know there were any acrobatics classes in the South Bay, this is the first I've found. They have classes most weekday evenings, and you can drop in anytime for $14 (no initiation fees, no contracts, learn at your own pace). So convenient for a busy schedule like mine!

I'm psyched! Only downside is it seems to be more martial arts focused than acrobatics focused, but I can deal with that. Anyone want to go with me sometime on a Mon-Th?

Yelp Reviews

p.s. Ok, I should totally make a "South Bay Acrobatics" website, using an embedded Google Calendar.

Now this is a level of athleticism that is really cool and pretty, and I think that with a lot of work, I could attain:



I worry that I'm just not as good at balance as he seems to be, but maybe it is practice? I wish he wasn't wearing a shirt, would be awesome to see his musculature.

His blog includes practices and even beginner/intermediate/advanced training versions of some of the flows. Sweet! (I can do the advanced on the linked one, thanks to all my practice at one-legged squats, although nowhere near as many reps as his workout calls for).

I love how these are workouts, and inspirations to get me wanting to move, all in one. I should make a list of such links to use whenever I want to feel like working out, but don't.

Here's an intro to the art he practices, and his blog:

The daily posts I intend to present here will be a useful tool for fitness enthusiasts, dancers, movement artists, martial artists, Crossfitters, bodyweight trainees and of course Capoeiristas and will be completely free.

The name of the art presented in the videos above is called Floreio. For a lack of better term, I will use this word to represent what I intend to teach you. The Floreio Art. Floreio means flower in Portuguese. and it is a sub-art of Capoeira which includes a very sophisticated form of floor flow work.
...
Using this blog I will share knowledge, daily workouts, movement instruction and sequencing that will enable, for the first time, for people to learn, practice and reach amazing levels of development in this beautiful (but not only beautiful) art form.
I will try to provide material for beginners, intermidiates and advanced Floreio practitioners, I will provide insight into the training, guide you through it, help with plateus, make sure you are prehabbing problematic musclature and provide a daily template for this process.

To the best of my knowledge, this is a first and unique try to teach this amazing art of flow in its pure form. I am also not aware of anyone who has taken the instruction and teaching of this art into the levels I plan to present here, even within the Capoeira scene.

via crasch, this is the best parkour video I've seen. It makes my knees hurt, but the rest of me gets pretty excited. I have no desire to learn the big trampoline moves, but he has a ton of cute little spins and flips that look hella fun. Plus he's obviously very creative - reminds me of Jackie Chan.

We saw Le Grande Cirque tonight. I quite enjoyed it, but it wasn't good by our inflated Cirque Du Soleil standards. Living an hour's flight from Cirque City, Nevada has its advantages!

Almost everything - the tricks, the props, the costumes, the music - was decent but noticeably weaker than CDS. Where CDS takes a standard trick and adds new dimensions of original music, costume, prop craziness and acrobatic expertise, LGC took a standard trick, and performed it in workmanlike fashion. Fortunately, I enjoy seeing performed any acrobatics I can't do, which is almost all of it, so I still liked it.

It helped that we were in the front row. Also the clown was the one world-class portion of the performance - his jokes were fairly basic, but his energy and enthusiasm were turned up to at least 11, and when it came to assigning his Charisma, I think god rolled 4 dice. He even did a balloon routine! How trendy.

Anyway, I think the music captures the essence of the whole show well. Basically every track was a techno remix of classical, starting with Hall of the Mountain King, and progressing through other songs, several of which I have in my mp3 collection in a similar electronic remix form (I think there was a Vanessa Mae piece in there, for example). When, for the final number, the strains of electronicized O Fortuna boiled out of the speakers, it was not a surprise but an inevitability.

But here's the thing. I love techno remixes of classical music! I love Vanessa Mae! I love "O Fortuna Never Dies" (the title of the first techno O Fortuna by Apoptygma Berzerk). Yeah, not original and creative and performed live like CDS, but I didn't mind. It was my kind of show, and it didn't have to be spectacular to be enjoyable.

I spent some of the show trying to figure out how to fit a gymnastics/acrobatics practice studio into a condo cruise ship... :)

Great article by "Coach Sommer" on bodyweight conditioning:

In this article, I will cover the basic progressions needed to learn two primary gymnastics exercises: the planche and the front lever. This will be by no means a complete bodyweight training program, but rather an introduction. These two movements were chosen for their novelty, the simplicity of the movements and for the excellent strength gains that are possible for those who are willing to commit the necessary sweat and dedication. The planche will be our pressing movement and the front lever will be our pulling movement.
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A common misconception is that bodyweight exercises do not build substantial strength but are rather more suited for building endurance. For most people this conjures images of endless pushups, sit-ups or for the strong, perhaps pull-ups and dips. Great maybe for general fitness or endurance, but of little value in building real strength.
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The name of the game is resistance. A muscle contracts against resistance and, with perseverance, over time, becomes stronger. For strength to increase, the amount of resistance or load worked against must also increase over time. Hence the problem with bodyweight conditioning - as the resistance (weight of the body) is fixed, how to continue to increase strength? Surprisingly the answer is simple - by decreasing the amount of leverage it is possible to exert on an exercise, the resistance of an exercise becomes increasingly greater. For example, a hanging straight leg lift is much harder than a tucked leg lift. In both exercises the weight of your legs remains constant, however by reducing your leverage (i.e. in this case straightening your legs) we are able to greatly increase the resistance. By straightening the legs we have effectively doubled the difficulty of the exercise even though the weight of the body has remained constant.

With experience and creativity it is possible to learn or design exercises that, done correctly and with the proper progressions, are so lacking in leverage that even at bodyweight levels of resistance it is possible to build staggering amounts of strength. In addition to strength, the athlete will also develop excellent balance, coordination, agility and exceptional core strength.

Naked Clown Calendar 2009: "Ladies and Gentleman! Boys and Girls! And Everything in Between!" (rowr!)

TIC: Trenchcoat In Common: Just from the title, I knew I wanted to see it. Kinda like when I saw an ad for "Butt Pirates of the Caribbean", in college, playing (of course) in West Hollywood. But if you need more, the play "takes place on a particularly boring early-summer night when a teenage girl, too smart and inquisitive for her own good, starts to publish a blog about her new T.I.C. (Tenancy-in-Common) apartment building.

Living in the cottage with her dad in the back, she enjoyes a clear view of the building's read windows. From her room, she captures her neighbors' private moments on her cell phone and publishes them online, with commentary. At first, she thinks she's just writing for herself -- but when strange, menacing events begin to take place at her home, it becomes evident that her journal isn't going unnoticed. Someone is reading, someone is watching, and everyone is in danger."

____ & _____. Oh, the hotness. Can you say, gymnastic aerial blonde twin girls from Peru? (at a guess, in the 15-23 age range). Who blew kisses at each other, and did a few other vaguely homoerotic things that reminded me of Mystere, during their creative acrobatic act on the aerial ring, as part of the series of demos? (And this for an audience half of which was under age 10! I was shocked! Shocked, and turned on. Well, mostly just turned on. In a shocked way.) (Names redacted b/c not much appears on Google for their names, and even I have the manners to worry about this being a top search result for them).

The Circus Center was much more like a gritty gym than I was expecting, and less like a magic place of dustless acrobatic wonder where buff and buxom gymnasts sweatlessly encourage each other to amazing feats of strength and balance. Also, with many more tykes. But I embrace reality even when it does not live up to my imaginings (although, the twins certainly did!), so I think I will take classes there anyway. Although the bumper-crumpling rear-ending (literal, not figurative...err...depending what you see as the root of "rear-ending"...hmm...) I received on the way there was a reminder of the yechness of commuting to / driving in the city.

Someone better informed than me, please tell me what the procedure is for such cases. The rear-ender admitted they were at fault, and give me their insurance info without noting mine. Do I need to tell my insurance? They asked for an estimate on the repair before I submitted a claim to their insurance, so they could ponder the option of paying it themselves. Do I just take the car someplace, and get an estimate, and then not get it fixed while I wait to go through the paperwork? Can I get it fixed and then do everything (submit a claim and all) retroactively? It may be relevant here that the damage was quite minor, just a little bumper buckling.

So, yeah. Twins. Hot. That's the moral of this story. That there is room in the male brain for complicated schemes to take over the world, for political and moral and economic theories, for plays, for calendars, for insurance procedures, for all sorts of abstract things. Or for blonde twin gymnasts who blow kisses at each other. But not for the latter, and, well, anything else.

Happy holidays!

The open house turns out to be 12/20, not 12/13:



More info

I will probably do either Monday 10am-noon or Wednesday 10am-noon. (For Basic Chinese Acrobatics, which is the prereq to the fancier stuff like pole & aerial silks). Classes start Jan 5th and run 12 weeks. Be missing at least one week (for Anguilla trip), and possibly a couple more (depending if/when we do an India surrogacy trip).

I also looked at AcroSports, which has fun classes (parkour, breakdancing) but not well timed for me (Mon/Wed evenings, which are family time).

I just looked at the schedule, and The SF Circus Center classes are 2 hours, once a week. I was worried about the commute, but once a week seems very doable. Sadly I need 3 semesters of Beginning Chinese Acrobatics before I can do any of the advanced stuff I want (Pole tricks and partners acrobatics). But a semester is just 10 weeks of once a week, so it's not really that onerous. And if I do well in my first beginning class I may be able to get an exemption.

It's too late for summer session and my shoulder is still recovering (although it's feeling pretty strong!), but I have made a note on my calendar to sign up for a class in the fall. Yay! I'm really looking forward to putting my new CrossFit body to use and learning some fun new skills :).

Just one example of something I really want to do that I'll have the time for thanks to quitting Google! :).

This is one of the closest things I've seen to what I want to be able to do one day, specifically the breakdancing + contact jugging scenes.

Wow, I hadn't even seen half of these:



If you're a juggler of my type (that is, into acrobatics and clever use of props, basically generalized contact juggling), and you haven't seen Jackie Chan, you really should. Sure, he doesn't juggle balls or clubs, but by my definitions, the guy is an amazing juggler, who just happens to specialize in pretending to fight people. What I most love is his use of props and objects - the ladder scene in the above is one of my favorite examples, as is the bicycle scene, which was new to me.

It seems like famous people tend to be either total hacks thrust by fortunes fickle hand into the limelight for no reason, or totally amazing people destined practically from birth to do great things. I mean, Jackie was sent off to a Drama Academy that was part of the Peking Opera at the age of *SIX*, where he specialized in acrobatics and martial arts for the next TEN YEARS, which only gets him to age 16. Trained practically from birth to kick ass and entertain. And whaddaya know, almost 5 decades later and he's kicking ass and entertaining!

What I don't like is wading through all the cheesy dialogue to get to the awesome fight scenes. I'd love to watch a sequence that was only his fight/manipulation scenes.\

p.s. Before the above video, I hadn't know that the end sequence in Drunken Master 2, which I love (of course) took *four fucking months* to film. Wow!

p.p.s. - also check out Top 10 Jackie Chan Stunts.

p.p.p.s - My explanation to Tovar "They're pretending to fight. But really they're dancing.", while watching Scenes From Drunken Master. Makes me miss playing Shun Di in Virtua Fighter 2 (one of the few video games I've gotten into). YouTube is pretty close to "fight scenes only" - sweet!

like i posted recently, i wanna get into acrobatics again as part of getting in shape.

triath posted some excellent documentation of some of the acrobatics I've learned in the past.

(sorry bout capitalization, i slept poorly and am too tired to hit shift key. yay for weekend.)

A nice acrobatics video with poles, rings, a chair and other props. Someday I want a nice gym setup with fun props for doing this sort of thing...and enough time to practice. Someday...

grepmaster gave me a link to a website with more urban acrobatics, where I learned the keyword for this sport, Parkour [Wikipedia]. Too bad I'm fat and have crappy knees - it looks awful fun. Oh well, the fat may be temporary, and hopefully they'll be able to make artificial cartilage sometime...

foolmonkey - this looks like your kinda thing.

Woah, Luc Besson made a Parkour feature film - Yamakasi, the modern samurai! Damn, netflix doesn't have it. Or any of the other movies.

Fortunately there are lots of videos online, like A Parkour Christmas Part 3, which is cute, although not as acrobatic as that Russian video. And this one, which has a lot of crazy building jumps.

This "acrobatics on dilapidated communist buildings" video is pretty good, tho it could use some more fps. (via crasch)

With S pregnant and me very hungover, we spent today sharing the world of nausea and dizziness. We got in-room massages, and then went to see Cirque Du Soleil's latest two shows, Ka and Zumanity.

Ka was a bit disappointing. The central feature was the stage, which was mounted on hydraulics and could lift, turn, spin, practically dance in front of you. It was amazing. But the acts seemed generally short and uninspired. They'd bring out some cool new setup or gadget, and then play on it a little bit, and be done long before they'd really explored it. As an example, at one point a main character is inside a rolling cylindrical cage, and they just rocked it around a little and did things related to the story - no acrobatics. This seemed to happen quite a bit.

Towards the end, it got a lot better, I liked the last few acts, starting with baton contact juggling. So I kinda changed my mind and thought maybe it wasn't so bad. Then we went straight to Zumanity, and I re-revised my opinion of Ka, because Zumanity was awesome. Not only was it unadulterated, unashamed, polysexual smut from start to finish, but the acrobatics and choreography were much more of what I think of as classic Cirque Du Soleil.

They'd set up a scene, and people would start doing crazy things on a standard dramatic arc, starting out kinda easy, getting hard, then (sometimes) getting ridiculous. ie a barely-dressed girl does wonderful things with a hula hoop. Woah. Then she does them while hanging in the air. Double Woah. Then she does 4 hula hoops while hanging in the air. Then she does like 20 of them. There were some scenes that weren't very acrobatic, more so than a standard show, but not too many.

For stupid human trick fans, there was one great male-female duo Pilobolus-type scene. The choreography was amazing, they just flowed from position to position. Wonder if there is a video?

My show preference is now: great - Mystere, Allegria, Varekai, Zumanity, not so great: Dralion, Ka, O (but it might just have been the bad seats).