At training on Tuesday I was trying to practice a new throwdown idea. I got warmed up thoroughly and had a little stretch, but I was still aching and my muscles were quite tight from training on Thursday, Saturday and Monday as well as Bradford Gym on Sunday. Perhaps the aching and tight muscles are the cause of what happened next…

I threw a standing front somersault but landed with my left leg wide, which resulted in my knee bending inwards as my legs absorbed the impact. Consequently I heard and felt (definitely felt!) a crunch in my ankle… Oooooo, that wasn’t good! I’ll just walk over to… ohhhh Jebus, that’s starting to hurt… Ahhhh – Ed, can you go get me an ice pack please? I’ll just hop over here and sit dOWwwwn.

To the hospital Batman!

My brother kindly drove me to A&E as I wanted to make sure I hadn’t broken or fractured anything. Luckily the dude at Casualty, who saw me after a painful 1 and a half hour wait, rubbed my feet and ankles a bit and told me my bones were fine. Jolly good But my ATFL (anterior talofibular ligament on the outside of the ankle) is damaged. So I’ve sprained my ankle, awesome. Off I hobbled to get the bus home, on second thoughts – let’s just stop here at the end of the street and book a taxi.

Here I am 3 days later… still in bed with my leg elevated on a pile of pillows and my handy Morrisons Value Frozen Garden Peas on and off my ankle. (Get yourself some – 89p for an ice pack is well worth it in an emergency!) I’m getting back ache from being in bed for so long. On the plus side I’ve been productive and done a lot of work on my laptop, even though I can’t actually get to my room in the attic where my PC is haha! Damn it!

Today I’m feeling a bit more comfortable putting weight on it, I can hobble to the toilet and downstairs for food without very much swearing involved. Tuesday night was a different story however, I’ve never experienced intense shivering from pain before! Gotta try everything once I suppose

Man up, Twist

Anyway, I’ll survive and if I don’t – avenge my death! I’ve just got to keep going with the ankle strengthening exercises and make sure I don’t dance on it for at least a few days, although a few weeks is probably wiser and more realistic.

Standing front tucks are evil I tell you! They look cool, but I’ve hurt myself similarly, less seriously, at least 3 times in the process of learning them. From this I have 2 lessons to choose from: stop doing somersaults… or after I’ve recovered and strengthened both my ankles and legs properly train for them a LOT more to make sure I get some mega height every time so I can land safely.

That’s enough of my wining – I’ll have to be fine by tomorrow, I’ve got a magic job to perform at.

Now how about some comedy from the gym on Sunday

Training with Bruce, B-Boy Just Me, is awesome fun – the dude knows his flips and is a really good teacher! He had my brother landing front somersaults in 20 minutes! I’d already learnt the basic technique for fronts on my own, but he helped add a bit of height to my jump and spotted me doing a few back tucks. The Allstar Aviators tumbling class in Kirkstall helped me learn the technique for back tucks, but I’d never attempted one on my own. Within a couple of minutes of Bruce spotting me, I went for it and did it all by myself, aren’t I a big boy. The first couple were pretty funny, almost burying my face in the floor, or falling over backwards. But in a few minutes I was landing, I use the term ‘landing’ loosely here, them on the gym floor. Yey!

By the end of the session I was going less backwards, much more vertical and nailing the landing better than in the following video, but this is the funniest one from Sunday:

As you can see, I clearly bailed that first back tuck before I’d even taken off the floor hahaha. Obviously I didn’t do that again! You’ve just got to go for it! Although I won’t be going for much for the next month or two

Hope you’ve learnt something from my experience – practice your flips safely now kiddies!

Time to take my frozen peas off my ankle.

Instead of a quote to end with today, I feel like adding something even more fun. I am pretty bored after all!

1. I’m lazy.
2. I started training some top secret moves which I didn’t want to share with you until I had perfected them.
3. In the process of practising these new top secret super bad ass moves I pulled a muscle.

So I have only been b-boying a tiny amount when I have been itching to move my feet on nights out, no hardcore 2 or 3 hour training sessions at the gym recently I’m still resting and hopefully recovering so I haven’t had any cool new video updates for you.

However, you will be pleased to know while I’ve been injured I’ve been training my fingers instead and working on some fun close up magic! So if you’re lucky my next update in the very near future will have a bit of that thrown in for your entertainment.

I have also been watching the Move Like Michael Jackson dance contest on BBC Three, which has just finished! A dance contest judged by Jermaine Jackson in search for the best MJ inspired dance act to perform at his Michael Jackson tribute concert to be held next year. Initially I thought the competition was going to suck and be full of idiots grabbing their crotch attempting to moonwalk. What I really liked was all the Jacko imitators were shot down as soon as they auditioned because of the fact they specifically were not Michael Jackson carbon copies. Instead they were searching to find dancers who clearly admired Michael as a performer, took his moves, made them their own and elevated it to a whole different level.

I started watching the progamme just because I knew B-Boy Didge (Daniel Ovel) was in it, but then realised there were other soloists and dance crews who were actually really good with all sorts of different styles and flavours competing too! Unfortunately Didge only made it to the Semi-Finals… but then again… HE MADE IT ALL THE WAY TO THE SEMI-FINALS! Very well done to him … not sure about that sparkly school uniform costume though…

If you missed the Move Like Michael Jackson programmes you can catch up on the BBC iPlayer here.

The editing did my head in when trying to watch the performances though. It looks as though they filmed everything from all angles, and then chose to show all the worst possible shots so you had no idea what was going on. Only on watching it again do you realise you missed a sliding headstand which was one of the most impressive moves of the routine or something. Well done to the BBC editors on that one.

Be quick if you want want to watch the show, the videos might be gone in less than a week from iPlayer!

As a breaker I found it incredibly inspirational to watch the entire series going from the Auditions to the Finals. Soaking up all the different dance ideas, approaches and thought processes behind each act was amazing. There were a few awesome routine ideas to take away and build on that I hadn’t seen done anywhere before. As a b-boy sometimes you become oblivious to the entire world of dance that is also evolving outside your bubble. Sitting watching new battle footage of Hong 10, Morris, Junior etc. on YouTube you tend to distort your perception a little and only appreciate things like backflip to airchair or 10 planche press ups perhaps forgetting how impressive simple yet well executed moves can be.

‘Free your mind and your ass will follow!’

So after you’ve caught up with the Move Like Michael Jackson contest, here’s an amazing video to inspire and spark some creativity within you:

I think Zee posted the video on facebook a while ago. It whoops ass all over the Endangered Species crew’s backflip routine. So smooth and fluid – I had to share it with you! And that transitions nicely on to the quote I shall leave you with today…

“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.”

Bruce Lee

Greetings Earthlings!

Hope you’re all feeling fine and dandy today… if not both, at least one. Dandy is always a bonus!

I’m in a strange mood at the moment – quite happy yet a little bit sad, absolutely knackered, aching and bruised but still energetic enough to whip up a massive feast before bed… I’m smiling so I suppose my positivity is living on as always!

I’ve been a bit retarded recently and haven’t been going to bed until stupid o’clock, so training at midday the last two sessions has been exhausting as I’ve only just managed to get in a couple of hours of sleep  beforehand. Which is absolutely ridiculous – SORT YOURSELF OUT TWIST! Okay, but posting this blog in the early hours of the morning isn’t helping…

Today, which has now become yesterday or Monday, we had a funny training session at the gym. I don’t think anyone was feeling on top form to be honest. My achilles tendon seemed to be aching a lot after Saturday night’s dancing and I couldn’t even top rock comfortably. On top of that, after I did one power combo set my shoulder expanded to reveal its lovely windmill bruise again. I really do need to stop rolling about on it! Butttt I managed to get out the longest power combo in the history of my b-boying today, which doesn’t look incredibly impressive if you watch the video. However in terms of personal goals I feel like I have achieved something reasonably good.

The exhausted crew aka The Masterz training video…

Featuring B-Boy Puddles, B-Boy SchoolPumps and B-Boy Moonshine!

I had better go get some fuel in the form of food and sleep for tomorrows indoor climbing adventures. I’m definitely feeling like tearing it up at Tiger Tiger as well! Find your chastity belts ladies, this b-boy is gonna be going off!

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

Henry Ford

If you take approximately 14 seconds of your life to scroll to the top of the page, enter your current email address in the box on the right, then click subscribe you can be notified by FeedBurner each time I add a new fun post or video  for you to enjoy whenever it is convenient. Isn’t that just dandy? No? How about fine? … Interesting, neither fine nor dandy – who would have thought that day would come?!

Good night ladies and gentlemen! Safe journey home… oh, you’re already there…

I returned from  Scotland on Sunday evening – home and reasonably dry

Wow, what an incredibly grrreat experience that was! It deserves a post all of its own, which I’ll get round to at some point in the future, but not right now. Have patience dear reader, for this entry is all about my first training session back at the gym in about a month and how intense it was. Ahh, ooo, eeee, ugogheh I’m definitely aching all over today!

You’ll see why in the amusing video below…

1990′s to swipes to windmill power combo

A couple of months before running away to the land of bread-crumbed eggs I’d started to push myself to work on power moves. I impressed myself at how quickly I managed to link a couple of moves together, even if it was as sloppy as a burger named Joe.

I’m still attempting to smooth out my only power combo and get my hips a lot higher when I’m doing my swipes. Yes, I’m well aware there are lot of other things I need to improve too, but most importantly I’d like to be able to do it consistently without crashing. Please leave a comment if you’ve got any advice to speed up my learning process!

Yesterday I spent most of the time in the dance studio faffing about twisting my dreads, I don’t want to end up with shitlocks now do I? After tidying my hair up I eventually got on it:

Well, that was fun…and now I’ve got a bruised lump sticking out of my shoulder. Nice!

Safety first – bashing your shoulder into the floor is about as enjoyable as it sounds. Don’t do it kids. Or, do it repeatedly until you’re body is conditioned ready to be a powerhead bboy.

I think I’ve got a permanent lump there from all the windmill practise. What foolish earthlings us bboys are… months of: “Ouch! My shoulder/hip/wrist/ankle/knee etc. Oh well… try again…….. Ouchhhh!” and so on. Maybe we think, as if by magic, being injured will allow us to suddenly execute the move perfectly with 27 rotations ending in a triple somersault. Unfortunately I’ve yet to experience that, usually I keep on training and just end up injuring myself even more!

Note to self: injury + training = further injury.

I’ll try find some time to upload a few old training videos for your viewing pleasure and sort out a fun post to give you an insight as to how awesome Scotland was next. Make sure you subscribe to stay updated! …Which that brings me to my next point – Go away

“Always remember to have serious FUN!”

Me

Ta ta for now