Now that Christmas is over I have come back from London and was so ready to get back to training. Days away from training are painful for me. I was at the gym from 4:58am and trained for two and a half hours and made great progress on Right Hand Kickovers and got down to the one panel mat and made all five of them which was great. It will not be long before I will be able to do kickovers off my bed leg off the floor. Once that happens I can alternate them in slinkies and that will assist in balancing up the symmetry of my body.

After that I started work on Upslinkies. An upslinky is tough because it is going against gravity. A normal slinky your hands and feet are at the same level. An upslinky you have to overcome extra resistence by kicking up hill. I can now do slinkies up onto one panel mat easily and today for the first time did 5/5 slinkies up onto the two panel mat with my strong leg. I went to do a slinky up a three panel mat bt was nowhere near it. This is my next challenge to be able to do it up three mats. Why is it important? When I can kick up two and three panel mats my kick strength will have greatly increased so by the time I get to kick on the floor for other techniques it is effortless and conditioning my back even further.

I beleive my back is going to be able to open up even more. I am already hitting a lot of the spine limitations as bone is up against bone but on the upper back there is still space to go. I need to especially with the plan to do Back Walkovers and then Back Handsprings on the beam.

I was talking with coach and he was talking about doing front handspring – front tuck on the beam as part of level 9. It is going to happen. It will be a while but I cannot wait until I can do tumbling on the beam. It seems so scary but like anything with the right drills it is a skill acquired over time.

We had a great session on vault with the table now at its highest on setting 7. I started vaulting on setting 1. What a difference. My form is so much better and I know I will be able to do well off the 5 setting of the springboard rather than the mini tramp which we have been using. We are currently working on the Level 6 Vault and coach is excited about it. I think this will be the first of the Level 6 that I attain. The closest is beam and I need to get higher splits, better jumps, better handstands and the back walkover.

Gotta get sleep as I need five hours before I train tomorrow at 4:00 at LA Fitness. So much to do. Go Heroes!!