California

My experience in San Jose, California was like no other.? I was there for a week in the summer of 2008 for the Loopkicks 2008 camp.? The camp was for a new sport called tricking which is adding acrobatic motions to martial arts moves which makes singular “tricks”.? I have been in the martial arts for 8 years and this is still my best experience in my martial arts life because of the knowledge, experience, and friendships I flew home with.?

The first day of camp was in a gymnastics gym that the Loopkicks team had intended to train every participant in.? I thought nothing of the crowd in the gym until I noticed all of the languages that were being spoken and I realized that this was a world-wide sport and it has impacted enough people to bring them all together in the beautiful city of San Jose.? People from 13 different countries had arrived including Guatemala, Mexico, Russia, Netherlands, Germany, France, Britain, and many other countries alike.?

The Loopkicks team members started to slowly arrive in groups after me and my friends had received our supplies and checked in and after a few hours we were officially welcomed to the camp with a loud roar of excitement from everybody’s mouths.? I drank it in and it pushed the jet lag right out of me and I knew that it was going to be a good week.?

The first day of the camp was interesting with small lines of trickers taking turns showing off their special tricks with loud cheers with each bigger and better trick.? I stood by and watched in amazement at things I had never seen before even through the plethora of internet videos.? I took turns myself but was nothing in comparison to the people around me which wore me out and I fell asleep on the tumble track while people jumped over me and nearly crushed me but I was in too deep of sleep to notice.? I awoke at 1 a.m. from one of my friends tapping me on the shoulder to brush my teeth and to my amazement; people from the camp had still been in a big line doing what they love, tricking.?

I woke up the next day feeling grimy without a shower from the day before with everyone slowly getting out of their sleeping bags.? We had been given a plate/bowl the previous day for meals and proved itself to be almost worthless with cereal that morning.? We were gathered together and started our warm ups and stretches so we didn’t get hurt and we broke off into groups of people for each instructor who taught a different trick or drilled a different technique.? After all of the scheduled workouts we were taken by bus back to our hotel for either relaxation or food.? A grocery store down the road was a common stop for me and my friends and supplied us with all of our needs.?

Our final night was an all out blast with hundreds of people crowding a small spring floor with abnormal humans defying physics and flying past our faces.? It was more than insanity and it inspired me to try new things and want to travel more.