Parkour Circuits (of death!)

Yesterday's Urbanathlon training session at Wits felt very gruelling! The plan was to do interval training, but we ended mixing it up by doing a number of small intense parkour-style training circuits.

Plank x8 repetitions
It started off with a simple jog up an embankment, arm jump to a wall, shimmy along the wall, drop and roll, turn around and wall run up that same wall, climb over it's railing on the top, jump down and tag your buddy who's been waiting in the plank position all this time.

Sprint x8 repetitions
Hard sprints up the embankment, then recovery jog back down.

Crawl x16 repetitions
Cat crawl on a ledge around a pond for half way, plank crawl a quarter of the way on the ground then recovery jog the last quarter before beginning again on the ledge in cat crawl.

This was modified as we went along. The plank crawl on the ground was eating up our forearms, so we increased the recover jog for half the circuit, and included side steps, crossover steps, backward runs, etc.

The first quarter of the cat crawl up was uphill, and the second quarter was downhill, so we changed the uphill to be similar to straight back legged bear crawls.

Quadrupedal until failure
This involved crawling on all fours down 15 stairs, then crawling backwards back up the same stairs. 5 pull ups on a tree, then repeat.

One modification was to do this with a buddy. You both crawl down at the same speed, just with opposite hands to each other on the same step. the free hand (meaning the one not holding your body up off the step), now "High Fives" (more like a "Side Five"), your buddy next to you for every step. Down AND up. (This was a killer!!)

Stairs until failure (which didn't take long after the previous quadrupedal crawl)
We found some stairs which we could climb up the back of, by pulling ourselves up onto each one just with hands. Up and down 6 stairs, then tag your buddy who's been waiting in a triceps dip position.

Needless to say, my muscles are feeling it his morning. :-)