Ludwig Hefele

Let me introduce one of my Students, Isy. Isy is trying to improve her handstand for quite some time now, she already had a decent foundation in all kinds of different sports (parkour, mountainbiking, strength etc.) and she already had a okayish handstand foundation (she could hold the handstand with support, „freestanding“ for 5-10 sec), before we started working together. Her biggest problem seemed to be the kick up since she often dropped her shoulders and therefore fell out of balance... - That often is the problem when starting the handstand journey (it’s always the shoulders doesnt matter what level you are... PUSH HARDER 😉). As Consequence we focused on exercises which require more shoulder engagement than the kick up/ regular handstand and so far it works out super nicely. Besides that we also working our way through different shapes and sequences - it’s more motivating and challenging than doing the same drills over and over again... I’m super proud of her and I’m already so excited to see her progressing a lot more in future (still a long way to go), keep it on Lady! ❤️

If you have any questions regarding handstands or if you interested in working with me, feel free to send me a message.









Best,
Ludwig

My trainings approach is highly goal (skill) oriented and therefore accessory and conditioning exercises are a big part of my programming - this approach does not suit everybody therefore you don’t relate to this but if you do then keep on reading - learning a skill especially complex skills will take time, a lot of time, probably more time than you want to spend in the beginning (once you realize that you spent a looot of time and the outcome might not be the one you expected it to be, its always very frustrating and demotivating but keep on going you will eventually get there! If not ask for help), it does make sense to me though to not only spent time on your favored skill but on isolated movements (isolation, integration, improvisation) moreover isolated exercises (strength, coordination, flexibility) to speed up the learning process. Often times those conditioning exercises are the necessary basics that need to be improved before you put them together and create your desired skill! Sure there will always be people who are able to learn skills by try and error and i know you want to believe that you are one of them but most likely you are not... which leads to a lot more time spent on conditioning and isolated movements than on skills - this can be super demotivating but the moment everything is put together and you realize that the work you put into paid off is worth the hard work! Besides that you will also learn patience, dedication, handling frustration or anger, consistency and most importantly it will lead you to a better understanding on how your body work and how your learnings processes will be influenced in the future for example a decent amount of strength and flexibility will give you better prerequisites for other skills! - never look at just one aspect but on the whole process and vice versa never look at the whole but on the small processes. Let me know what you are working on and if i can help you in some ways.
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Ludwig

Do not forget that most flexibility patterns work synergistically - frontsplits correlate with bridges to a certain degree and vice versa / more obvious: sidesplits have a carry over to your pancake. To me it doesn’t make sense training one but neglect the other. You could claim that a bridge is an important accessory exercises for you frontsplit as well as the pancake for your sidesplit.

A feeling that is undescribable – being fearful but confident, hesitant but obsessed, conscious risk but trust in ones abilities… This side of Parkour that makes it such a rough discipline – not physically but psychologically, words cant express what you experience, the moment you overcome your mental barrier – it doesnt need to be a big jump or a life risking consequence though. What Parkour teaches you is by far more than just movement… Learning how to express yourself in the „real“ world, Experiencing confidence in your day to day life, learning that you have to fall in ordert to progress, developing creativity and ones own style. Through the years my perception changed a lot – from higher, bigger to a more creative and playful approach. Nevertheless doing things that scare me will always be part of it… in one way or the other! Parkour is more than just a discipline its a choice, at least for me.
Thanks to , for doing it with me and to .pk for sticking it just perfectly

Gym season has arrived - Main focus will be building awareness as well as confidence when implementing rotations, flips, spins and off axis motions. I’ll also work on my concept of line building (since most of the time I feel very uncreative and often fall back into old movement patterns).
Good session with and

Gym season has arrived - goal is to build some better awareness and more confidence when implementing rotations, spins and off axis movements. Had a good session with and
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Some thoughts on landing a jump
Soft landings / hard landings / forced landings
Jumping is one of the first pattern you will be confronted with when practicing parkour. Though the concept of jumping seems quite easy, especially the second part – the landing phase is not. There is more than just „land silently“ or „Try to not land on your heels“… In order to get deeper into the topic, we have to clarify the goals/intentions of a jump: most importantly (in my opinion) you want to absorb the kinetic energy / force - that occurs during the landing – as efficiently as possible. That means that your body has to create just the right amount of tension at the right time. At this point one problem occurs – most of the time practisioners anticipate the landing whether to early (hard landing) or to late (forced landing) – that means ones timing of muscle activation will not be perfectly timed with the first contact between feet and edge / ground. As a result not only your muscles will absorb the impact but also your passiv tissues like joints, tendons and ligaments (this is not necessariliy bad but it could lead to longterm injuries as well as to acute injuries for example „ankle things“). Lets think about hard landings for a moment – imagine someone`s playing kendama usually when you want to catch the ball you have to take the momentum out by softening the impact (the moment you try to anticipate the curve of the ball and imitatiing it with the wooden end of the kendama. As a result the ball will softly land on it instead of bouncing back up). You will intuitively try to take as much impact out as possible. Vice versa a hard landing that usually occurs when trying to stick a jump will never take out the impact as softly as a roll would do (soft landing). Its possible though to softening the process during a hard landing by not overtensioning your muscles while landing. That means you have to give off tension in order to absorb the shock more efficiently. Therefore you have to almost perfectly anticipate the moment of impact and react to it by producing just the right amount of force to minimize the impact.

Some thoughts on landing a jump
Soft landings / hard landings / forced landings
Jumping is one of the first pattern you will be confronted with when practicing parkour. Though the concept of jumping seems quite easy, especially the second part – the landing phase is not. There is more than just „land silently“ or „Try to not land on your heels“… In order to get deeper into the topic, we have to clarify the goals/intentions of a jump: most importantly (in my opinion) you want to absorb the kinetic energy / force - that occurs during the landing – as efficiently as possible. That means that your body has to create just the right amount of tension at the right time. At this point one problem occurs – most of the time practisioners anticipate the landing whether to early (hard landing) or to late (forced landing) – that means ones timing of muscle activation will not be perfectly timed with the first contact between feet and edge / ground. As a result not only your muscles will absorb the impact but also your passiv tissues like joints, tendons and ligaments (this is not necessariliy bad but it could lead to longterm injuries as well as to acute injuries for example „ankle things“). Lets think about hard landings for a moment – imagine someone`s playing kendama usually when you want to catch the ball you have to take the momentum out by softening the impact (the moment you try to anticipate the curve of the ball and imitatiing it with the wooden end of the kendama. As a result the ball will softly land on it instead of bouncing back up). You will intuitively try to take as much impact out as possible. Vice versa a hard landing that usually occurs when trying to stick a jump will never take out the impact as softly as a roll would do (soft landing). Its possible though to softening the process during a hard landing by not overtensioning your muscles while landing. That means you have to give off tension in order to absorb the shock more efficiently. Therefore you have to almost perfectly anticipate the moment of impact and react to it by producing just the right amount of force to minimize the impact as much as possible.
Hope you get the idea here

Freedom of the hips, Positioning and building tension:

“Getting into an ass-to-grass squat without buttwinking is a genetic thing”... true but not necessarily true! (Genetics makes it easier for some whereas others have to put a loooooooot of work in it)

For the first time i was able to get into an ass-to-grass squat without rounding my back during the last third of the squatting motion (amazing feeling let me tell you) the deep squat therefore became a resting position which I could have hold for ever... even though 100kg were placed on my traps/shoulders.

My body learned that it didn’t need to over tense itself (what I mean here is i created tension just where and when it was needed: my body worked more efficiently... before I was used to overuse some areas for example my core/bracing and quadriceps).

What made the difference is that my hips could keep up an APT (anterior pelvic tilt) because they are far stronger and flexible, which is interesting since I didn’t train the deep squat itself in a long time. What I did though, was a lot of strength based flexibility work for example isometric splits and/or split squat variations.

As a result my hips allowed me to position myself in a far more sustainable, more efficient and stronger way. Everything worked better together - positioning, bracing, use of tension and muscle activation

The key, as always, was not to get better in the squat itself (I have been doing weightlifting for almost 10years now and got some decent results in my back/frontsquat without going fully ATG) but getting better in areas I haven’t been that good (splits and pancake)

And yeah I know that 100kg to big of a deal for most... but 100kg without breaking Form in the bottom position, keeping the APT certainly is.

Learning a climb up is a super interesting process, since it requires a good amount of strength and technique it makes it a more difficult move than for example a bar muscle up (you obviously need technique here as well!). The tricky part is that you need to create and moreover keep sufficient tension in your legs (pushing against the wall) as well as in your arms/shoulders (doing a diagonal scapula pull). Creating balance between those motion and synchronizing both will take time and effort, especially if you want to learn a faster climb up - it’s definitely worth investing time digging into the bar and ring muscle up (they are used as accessory or accumulation exercises not as skills here). I often find adults lacking in strength since their relation between bodyweight and maximum strength (relative strength / absolut strength) shows a large gap... therefore spending time on increasing maximum strength and/or explosive pulling movements can be worth a shot. There’s still so much to say about climb ups but for now I’m done. Anyway I’d be interested in your opinion so feel free to give me some insights on your training and perspective.
Some people I’d recommend you if you’re interested in parkour-strength related topics:

Some movements that have a pretty high correlation to each other - being able to create force in a minimum period of time is one of the most underrated concepts in the modern fitness industry... people are far to focused on Hypertrophie and maximum strength and neglecting methods that focus on submaximum weights but maximum rates of force development. Even though it will lead to more Hypertrophie (since you will have to use your fast twitch fibers), maximum strength (this one is controverse since maximum strength is the base to create power but vice versa will more power lead to more progress in your maximum strength training and lastly more power output will increas your ability’s in other disciplines for example jumping/sprinting. Some different variables will influence the power output as well (flexibility/stiffness Paradoxon, fascia and more). If you have a look at tumbling, tricking, parkour, soccer - you will find athletes having strong lower limbs without doing strength training, they gaining strength only by focusing on maximum power output (sure there are different factors as well like taking drops in parkour or doing sprints in soccer/gymnastics). In my opinion a high power output will also lead to a lower level of injury since your body can react with a higher amount of strength and since you learned to create a high amount of power willingly you will create even more power unwillingly in situations that would otherwise lead to injuries, therefore you withstand a higher amount of force. Overall it’s a super interesting topic and we need to learn a lot more about it (especially science wise) in order to understand all connections. Let me know what you think about the whole topic!
And lastly some people I would recommend you in order to get deeper into it:
(founder of wenninger airlines)





(Introduced the first jumps you see in the video)
(guiding me to strength)

Ended up with those today - did a million different combinations and tried to implement the motions which made sense in my head - a lot of them didn’t work due to fear / missing skill level or just because they didn’t feel the same as i had them in my head. Not very bad but also not to happy with the outcome.


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