HiggiE's 365 PK Challenge: Core Workouts for Indoors: Week 10
Core Workouts for Indoors: Week 10
By Eric Higgins
Hey everyone. Hope the training is going well. Ive been able to get outside a bit this last week to train. This Post is a little late in the week. Its Spring Break for me and it feels like all my time is being used up with everything I want to get accomplished.
Last week I spoke and showed the arm workouts I have been doing. As part of today's post, I am showing off core workouts.There are lots of varieties of ab workouts, much more than I will be showing today. The ones I have been using as part of my workouts are just some of the ones which I have done and thought were good for parkour.
A little details about abs. The core muscles are some of the strongest muscles in our bodies. When it comes to the endurance of our abs they can last much longer because they are some of the most used muscles our bodies. You can work them out much longer than your mental will let them. The best way to get a good ab work out is to work them out, then work them out that much more. When trying to get a good workout it is good to go in increments of intensity, but also increments of relaxed exercise as well. When I workout I consider the intense ab workouts I want to do like sit ups and leg raises, but as a more restful exercise I do planks of different varieties. When doing plank type core work I will usually hold the position for around 30 seconds, one minute, or a minute and a half. These allow you to get a little rest but still keep the tension on the muscles so that you get a really good workout.
The Core muscles are actually some of the most used in the sport of parkour. It has been stated that the parkour use of the core muscles can be comparative to many fighting sports, which use the core muscles more than any other sport. Parkour uses the core muscles a lot because of the amount of total body control the abs give, which is needed for many of the moves in parkour. A great example of this comes from my own life. I Spent 2 Years in Mississippi and Louisiana doing service for my Church, during that time I gained a few pounds eating all the good food.When I finally came home in February of 2012 I immediately began doing more intense pk training. I would go to the gym 2 times a week, while also training outdoors on occasion. I was doing a lot of front flips, side flips, and webters, and as I progressed I began to invert them off more inclined objects till I could get them off a vertical wall. It takes a lot of ab power to do these kinds of flips, and as a result I quickly lost a lot of my waist-line. I did not even realize it at first till I saw myself one time in the mirror and noticed the differences and weighed myself at 135. I was 15 pounds less than I was when I got home from the south only 4 months before. In my story i was doing lots of flips, which isn't needed do get similar results. There are lots of other parkour moves that require the core as well.
Simple kings and palm spins are great for core work. If you plan on doing a set of palm spins or kings I suggest concentrating on the control of the move. It is helpful to slow the movement way down almost so you are stalling the motion.
When working out the core muscles you can use some of the same techniques as I explained last week with the arm workouts.As you come down off the resistance of the exercise move slowly taking about 3 to 5 seconds to get to the resting state, then continue back to the next Sit up. You can also be explosive against the resistance of the exercise to add more of a workout.
Here is the video:
So far the content of my 365 series has consisted mostly of the basics of parkour and basic workout and conditioning techniques. Here in a few weeks I am going to transition my focus to the more technical side of parkour. I originally started this challenge to get into a regular habit of training, which I am now in, but I also wanted to get into the ticking aspect of parkour. I imagined being able to break down different techniques on a regular basis to improve my own skill. So look forward to more of this kind of content in the future. Also I am still getting my film equipment all set up; soon I will be able to get to editing some of my footage and coming out with better video blog's and monthly videos. Next week I plan on demonstrating what kinds of Parkour leg workouts I have been doing as part of this series.
