Training Zoe Salmon

Following on nicely from my post on getting ladies to lift, I spent the afternoon yesterday with TV's Zoe Salmon.
Sadly I didn't have her in the gym lifting large loads, we were being filmed by Mars and I was teaching her the basics of Parkour as part of their newest initiative to get Britain active.

As expected, the former Blue Peter presenter was quite up for trying new things and was very competent for a complete beginner. Zoe got to grips with vaulting and swinging on bars very quickly, as well as adding a few inches to her standing jump by improving her technique over the afternoon. She even managed to put together a short run incorporating a selection of techniques.

Most interestingly was seeing an adult complete beginner face a technique at height, the 'height' involved here was around 3ft off the ground and was a precision jump between 2 walls with a distance of no more than 4ft between them.
Despite having made the distance on the floor and being absolutely fine standing or walking on the walls at that height, Zoe simply could not bring herself to make the jump.
Nothing else we tackled phased her at all, she literally threw herself into the more complicated techniques and movements (at greater heights I might add).
Given more time I would have liked to get her to make the jump by gradually building up to it, sadly we were pressed for time and had to leave that particular jump.

All in all Zoe was a joy to train, was up for (almost) everything and she didn't even mind being outside jumping around all afternoon!

I'll definitely be making sure that my regular Parkour students are pushing themselves to overcome fears and better themselves.

Zoe Salmon with Brad Wendes

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I was once again pleasantly surprised by my increased leg strength and power. 

The area we filmed in is one I am very familiar with and have trained Parkour there many many times over the past few years.

I have not trained there since starting my French Contrast training.

Jumps that were previously challenging were now easy, jumps that took some concentration were now much more achievable. It's a great feeling to see direct results of training and feel the benefits in context in my sport.

Just in case you missed it, here's the article on increasing jump power: http://bradwendes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/how-to-increase-your-vertical-jump.html