Training Buddies Texting

Like on most weekdays, Wucro was in the middle of his usual training session that filled the time slot between breakfast and getting lunch. This time, he had switched it up slightly and had taken his training outside into the park – Normally not very convenient since it meant he didn’t have access to any equipment except things like juggling props that he could easily take with him, and for someone on Wucro’s level, equipment and weights were often necessary to make the exercises hard enough to have any effect on him, but Wucro wanted to catch some of the good weather while it lasted, and when it came down to it, he always enjoyed challenging himself to invent new ways to train that would be difficult enough for him, even when he didn’t have any weights or other tools available. He had spent almost the entire past hour on a large oak tree he had climbed, using its thick branches for his training routine by hanging from them to do pull-ups (one-handed, of course), or balancing on them upside-down to do handstand push-ups (also one-handed, or maybe using only a couple of fingers). The tree also had a sturdy branch that was growing upward almost vertically, which was a pretty decent opportunity for Wucro to do human flag exercises as well. Or should it be “simian flag”, rather?

Hanging from the tree in a variety of different ways had reminded Wucro of his training buddy and colleague, Sunny, who loved to dangle from all sorts of things using his unique, hand-like simian feet to hold on easily. Wucro wasn’t jealous, of course, on the contrary! He liked the additional challenge, and getting an unfair anatomical advantage would have made things too easy, after all. Like in the case of “Sunny’s Special Sit-Ups”, which Sunny liked to do upside down from his slackline – Now if Wucro wanted to give them a try, he had to lock his legs around the tree branch at the back of the knee and do them like that. Which obviously wasn’t a problem, in fact Wucro really liked doing them, but he had to admit the second part where you had to pull yourself up into a backfold just by your back muscles was brutal.

Trying out his colleague’s exercises wasn’t the only reason Sunny was on Wucro’s mind today. He kept thinking back to their meeting the day before, where Sunny had stunned Wucro with his incredible progress on a combined backfold/splits exercise Wucro had shown him. Now as Wucro kept thinking about what other exercises he could suggest to his eager student, he slowly got ready for his own stretching session, wrapping up the strength training part of his routine to get ready for a nice, cozy cooldown of stretching. Being out in the sun on such a warm day, combined with the physical exertion from his training, had ensured that every fiber of his body was perfectly warmed up for honing his flexibility. With his body so well prepared and ready to go, Wucro found that he didn’t even really need to do any basic, introductory stretches: When he raised one of his legs to rest his foot against the tree way above his head, he was surprised how easily his torso immediately sunk down into a split leaning against the tree, and further into a deep oversplit so that after only a couple of seconds of rocking back and forth, Wucro’s hips were already resting on the ground with his big, furry legs in a crazy oversplit of almost 270 degrees. Wucro couldn’t help but laugh – This was going to be a great stretching session! He did the same thing with the other leg, switching back and forth a couple of times until eventually, his hips had gotten used to the extreme stretch and he started to feel comfortable staying seated on the ground, simply rotating his torso to slide from a front split into a straddle, and further into the opposing front split, all with his hips constantly touching the base of the tree and his one leg going along the grassy ground to one side, while the other stayed almost vertically up against the tree.

“Amazing!” Wucro thought to himself, “That leg flexibility bootcamp I pushed through last week really did wonders!”

He definitely had to recommend that to Sunny. It was a six-day plan of all sorts of leg stretches Wucro had found online that could really take your splits to the next level. Still sitting comfortably in his amazing oversplit, Wucro pulled out his phone to text Sunny.

“Hey Sunny!” he wrote, “I’ve been thinking about our meetup yesterday, and with you making such great progress with your backbends I’ve been racking my brain to come up with cool other stretches to suggest to you!”

The little dot next to Sunny’s profile said he was offline right now, but Wucro knew it probably wouldn’t take long for him to get a response. He got up, but his legs being so surprisingly supple had gotten him into the mood to do a bit more of those splits before moving on. He put his phone on the ground and placed his hands on both sides of it, going into a handstand while still looking at the screen to see if Sunny was responding. The little dot had already switched from grey to green, and Sunny was typing a reply. While Wucro was waiting, he lowered his right leg down behind his back, going into a slight backbend until his foot was close to the floor in front of him. Then he lowered his other leg down as well, but to the other side, pushing his legs into another deep front split of easily 250 degrees or so, until both his feet were at equal height roughly on the level of his head. Now from this handstand-oversplit position, Wucro could start rocking back and forth to touch his feet to the floor one after the other, first in front, then in the back, each time pushing a bit further into the split so that his legs slowly spread even wider as he went back and forth like a fast-moving pendulum on a clock. His goal eventually was to have both feet on the floor at the same time, but for that to happen you needed to be in an incredibly deep oversplit, almost the full 360 degrees, so it was something Wucro only got down on his especially good days. Maybe someone like Benx of the agency would have an easier time with this incredibly advanced stretch…

“Hey dude!” appeared on the screen of Wucro’s phone, “That’s awesome! I have a busy week ahead of me, lots of extra shows with the circus! But YOU CAN BET I’m still on that special training routine every day! I’m gonna get it down by the end of this month I SWEAR!!!!1”

Seeing Sunny’s energetic personality shine through even via text messaging put a smile on Wucro’s face. His training buddy’s enthusiastic mentality was infectious! It always made Wucro want to push himself a little harder, too.

His phone made another ‘Ding!’ sound: Sunny had sent a selfie, grinning wide into the camera while forming a peace sign with his hand, but the whole thing was upside-down. It took Wucro a moment to realize that the photo hadn’t been saved in the wrong orientation – Sunny was simply hanging from something, as usual! A laugh escaped Wucro’s mouth as he understood what was going on.

“What kind of exercises do you have in mind?” asked Sunny meanwhile, “If you send them to me I can start doing them right away and I’ll already be a MASTER next time we meet!!”

Now, being in a handstand in the middle of an exercise, Wucro didn’t have any way to type a response, but that was an easy problem to fix: He brought his legs together so that they pointed to the sky, then spread them into a straddle split this time. He didn’t even have to strain his muscles much at all – his legs naturally dropped into a sharp upside-down V-shape due to gravity alone, reaching down to just below shoulder level. Wucro started to casually let his legs bounce up and down to push them deeper while leaning to the left side and going into a one-handed handstand. Now he had his right hand free to type a response to Sunny, who at this point had already sent three more messages asking Wucro to just make a list of all the exercises he did in his own training.

“...Because sooner or later, I want to learn them all, anyway!” Sunny texted.

“Well, hold your horses!” replied Wucro, “It’s not that simple! Your flexibility is already pretty amazing but it’s important to always do stretches that fit your level. If you do something too hard, it won’t help you and you might even injure yourself.”

“I guess…” replied Sunny, “But still! I want to get good as fast as possible! That ruppel backbend can’t come soon enough! And I need to get better at splits too, like, ALL the splits!!”

“In that case, why don’t you try that stretch I showed you, but in a handstand?” responded Wucro, trying to somehow modify the move he had just been doing himself to a level appropriate for Sunny.

“THAT’S AN AWESOME IDEA!!” immediately appeared on the screen. “THANKS DUDE!!”

“Heh!” Wucro adjusted his hand on the ground while sending back a thumbs-up emote. He tensed up his thigh muscles for a second, pulling his legs even further into his oversplit, which gave them a really good stretch that sent a wave of tingling satisfaction through Wucro’s entire body. By now, his feet had dropped down to the level of his elbow, only a couple of inches away from the ground on each side. Wucro was loving the feeling of this stretch. He wanted to stay in it for a bit longer, so he switched to his other arm, even though that meant he had to start typing with his left hand now.

“I tried it just now,” Sunny had texted in the meantime, “I fell over…”

“It’s not easy!” responded Wucro with a smile, “But stick to it and it will stop being hard in no time!”

For the first time, Sunny didn’t immediately reply, which Wucro took as a sign that his friend was away from his phone, eagerly trying to get down this new move Wucro had just suggested. Wucro took this opportunity to get out of his own handstand and stand back up, thinking about what to do next. Backbends were at the top of his list, which lined up nicely as chatting on your phone was pretty simple from most backbend positions. The soft, lush grass that covered the ground everywhere was an ideal surface to do them on, too. First, Wucro laid down on his belly, reaching backwards with his upper body until his shoulders came to rest on the back of his own thighs and his buttcheeks snugly hugged his lower back in a tight backfold. Not even a tiny gap was left between his upper and lower torso – A very advanced pose, but for Wucro it was almost second nature. That spine of his had trained for many years to go much further than this, so a complete backfold was pretty much child’s play for Wucro at this point. He stayed in that position for a moment to get accustomed to the slight stretch, then rolled his entire body forward to end up in a chest stand with his abdomen resting on the ground while his legs reached overhead and his feet were positioned squarely on the grass in front of him. Normally Wucro would spice up this pose in one way or another, but for now he had to check what Sunny had texted.

“Yeah you’re right of course, I already feel good about doing the legs scissors thing on the ground so it won’t take me long to do it in a handstand too, don’t worry! I’ll show you next time we meet! Promise!!”

“That’s the spirit,” responded Wucro with another thumbs-up.

“What about backbending though, dude??” asked Sunny, “I’m doing all the normal stuff every day but some of it is getting boring, can’t you tell me the secret poses you do in your training??”

“It’s funny that you’d ask,” typed Wucro, wiggling his toes and shifting back and forth in his deep chest stand to get more comfortable, “I’m doing backbends right now, actually!”

He opened the camera app and tried to take a quick selfie zoomed out far enough that his legs on both sides of his head were visible.

“AMAZING!” replied Sunny right away, “It looks SO GOOD! How long can you stay in that??”

“Oh, a chest stand? However long I want, I guess! It’s a really easy pose compared to some of the others.”

Sunny reacted to that message with a sequence of four shocked emotes, then he wrote: “So cool… I NEED TO LEARN THAT! I can stay in a chest stand for like, a minute or so right now, that’s NOT ENOUGH! But it gets so hard after a while…”

“Yes, it’s all about the breathing” explained Wucro, “Make sure not to overdo it! You need to let your body get used to a pose gradually. At some point when you’ve already worked your way up to much more advanced poses, something like a chest stand will feel super easy and you’ll be able to pretty much chill in it for however long you want. Trust me, I know it from my own experience!”

“You’re so right dude, I need to push my back to the next level!” Sunny replied excitedly. “You need to tell me all the secret stretches!”

“Hang on, Sunny! Don’t forget to take things a bit slower at times! Did you start taking every third day off like I mentioned?”

“Uhm…” came Sunny’s response, “I’m working on it!!! I took one day off last week just like you said! So yeah I’m doing it, for sure!”

Wucro let out a defeated sigh. This guy was something else! He couldn’t help feeling worried that Sunny might risk a serious injury at some point just from pushing himself too hard all the time, but at the end of the day it was his body and he knew its limits better than anyone else, so Wucro did trust him to know to stop once his body actually reached its limit. If such a limit even existed for Sunny.

“Well, as long as you’re not pushing yourself too hard…” he responded. “But be careful! Hang on, I gotta switch into a different position real quick…”

Wucro put down the phone and grabbed his ankles with both hands. He pulled his feet back, causing his knees to drop down to the ground as his shins came to rest against the ground in parallel to his upper torso, which was now boxed in completely by his lower legs to both sides and covered on top by his own hips and thighs – a perfect triplefold.

“You know,” he continued texting once he had settled into his new pose, “You should try to work your way towards a triplefold. You’re already pretty close in terms of just back flexibility, but you’ll need to train your legs for it, too.”

“Huh!? My legs?? Why? Aren’t they just flat on the ground, nothing special?”

Wucro smiled, taking a moment to feel the stretch along the upper side of his legs all the way to his knees.

“Kind of,” he replied, “But since your torso is already bent backwards so far, it’s actually very hard for the legs to bend fully at the knee because the muscles on the front side of the leg are already stretched to their maximum from the torso reaching back. You know?”

“Ohhhh…” Sunny accompanied that message with a row of nerd emotes.

“I know just the thing for you to prepare for that, though.”

Wucro closed the messenger app for a second and opened his web browser to look up pictures of a couple of yoga poses that were particularly suited to stretch out the knee and upper leg area in preparation for the triplefold. He knew exactly what he was looking for – After all, he still remembered running into this same problem himself many years ago, when he had first managed to do something approaching a triplefold and had realized how intense the strain on the area above the knee was in that position. He sent all the pictures to Sunny, but uploading the files took a moment as the connection here in the park wasn’t exactly high-speed. A welcome delay for Wucro, whose spine had just gotten comfortable with being bent completely in half in his triplefold, so now it was time to push it to the next level again. Wucro brought his arms to the front and reached up, pulling his shoulders and upper body further through between his own legs, until he could rest his hands on his thighs on both sides and use them to push down. Gradually, his legs rotated back even more, his spine curled in on itself even tighter, and his head was pushed up a little higher, until Wucro felt the familiar feeling of his feet overlapping behind him and his own toes almost tickling him on the sole of his foot. His upper body had risen up through his legs high enough that now he could comfortably rest his arms on his thighs to form the famed ruppel bend. But Wucro wanted to push a bit further still. He rotated his entire body forward slightly, so that his chest once again rested on the ground. In turn, his lower body rotated even deeper into a curled-up triplefold position and by now, he had to spread his legs quite far because there was no other way to allow the knees to travel further back along the ground. They were already positioned spread out to both sides of him at this point, but Wucro used his hands to push them even further back until his thighs were almost in a straddle split position, resting on top of his upper body in that deep ruppel-triplefold and allowing his legs to almost extend away from him behind his torso. At this point, his feet weren’t simply touching anymore – With a bit of maneuvering, Wucro managed to lock one foot behind the heel of the other so that they couldn’t move, which tied up his entire body into one neat, round knot: A ruppel bend pushed so far that Wucro’s legs were interlocked behind him, or in Wucro’s terms: A perfect position to relax in after a training session. He picked the phone back up to see that Sunny had put starry-eyed reaction emotes on all the pictures he had sent.

“These look so easy!!” Sunny texted, “Something tells me they won’t be once I try them, though! Man, I can’t wait to give them a shot!!”

“Glad to hear it,” replied Wucro, “It’s definitely a good idea to do these in preparation for your triplefold. And who knows, if you keep making progress at this rate, soon enough you’ll be casually texting while your whole body is tied up in a crazy ruppel knot!”

“Hahahahaha, I wish!!” Sunny wrote, followed by a short pause. “Wait… Let me guess! That’s exactly what you’re doing right now, am I right??”

Wucro couldn’t help but grin.

“Bingo!” he responded, “You guessed it!”

“You!!” The rest of Sunny’s response was an incomprehensible keysmash. “I’M SO JEALOUS RIGHT NOW!!”

Wucro reached out with his arm to take another selfie, showing off his tightly coiled-up body.

“Amazing, that’s all I can say!” Sunny was obviously starstruck. “I’m saving that pic for motivation! Man, Wucro my dude, I’m feeling so PUMPED right now!! I just finished my training routine and I’m ready to get lunch but now I feel like I want to just GO AGAIN!!”

“Oh, LOL! But don’t forget, alright?”

“Yeah yeah, don’t overdo it, I know! I won’t go too far! But I NEED to stretch even more, I just NEED it right now!”

“Well”, typed Wucro with a thumbs-up, “In that case, have fun! I’m rooting for you, buddy! Absolutely can’t wait to see how far you’ll have taken it by the time we do our next meetup.”

“Cheers, man, I can’t either!! Backbending is AWESOME, I can’t believe I didn’t do it much before! Talk to you soon!”

As far as Wucro was concerned, Sunny definitely had a point there. It was awesome, all the way. With a grin, Wucro settled down into his cozy ball of fur and limbs for a couple more minutes. He should probably do some twisting stretches as well before heading out for lunch, but those could wait a bit longer. For now, Sunny’s enthusiasm had rubbed off on him, and he wanted to see just how much further yet he could push his backbend…