Breaking fitness part1

Bboying Fitness


I’ll take you through a bit of my journey. How I got started with working out what fitness was required, the interim period and where I’m at now.
When I first started out I was clueless. So I read up on fitness a bit.

I realised I needed to warm up properly, stretch and complement breaking with other activities(not necessarily true). I walked about 3 or 4 miles a day, did Kung fu, trained (Bboying) 3 to 4 times a week, did handstand pressups, sit ups, used a punch bag daily and did weights. It went fine.

Then things changed a bit. I left uni. Met other bboys that didn’t warm up and stretch well, got into bad habits and things went backward. A word of advice, if I am able to give it, is forget what others are doing. If you feel the need to warm up in your own way, do it your own way. If you want to stretch longer, do it. You’ll soon learn to know your body, in fact warming up, stretching and complimentary exercise will help you increase that physical self awareness key to breaking and Bboying fitness.

I also further slipped up. I got an office job (NOOO!), got injured (dislocated shoulder, tightened tendons in wrists, dislocated fingers, damaged knuckles, stretched ligaments in shoulder. The list goes on and on). Some of the injuries on the list, particularly the stretched ligaments and finger, were to do with breaking outside, in the cold, without warming up. I was with some international bboys and wanted to get stuck in(didn’t warm up- was freezing!). Bad move. Once again, do it your way. Always warm up.

So. Things to do- warm up, stretch, train hard, warm down/stretch and compliment breaking with something else; core stability training, weights, another sport. It all helps. Oh, and train hard and often. The more you train the fitter you’ll become and you’ll also reduce the risk of further injury. (lots of injuries happen when a Bboy/Bgirl tries a new move that has not been done before- tries it hard and fucks up hard- then they get injured).

For further info check out the sections on fitness, core training and stretching. Also check out the links below:

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/abdominalcorestrength1/a/NewCore.htm