Training
After Carrot was tidied up, Alyssia patted her on the head to calm her down. "Let's get back to practicing everyone.
She took out some thin but long sticks that had a very small width and depth and began lining them out on the deck horizontally. "This practice will help with precision jumping. Start small at first to jump from one piece of wood on the ground to the next and land so that you do not lose your balance or move the wood and land on the balls of your foot as you land. As you gain more control and precision with your jumping you can begin to increase the range, height and angle of the jumps. For example a highly difficult jump would be to jump across from one side of the ship to the next from railing to railing. This will help with your leg and jumping control but also let you get used to landing on smaller objects or more rounded things like a round metal railing or maybe even something much smaller without falling after your landing. Since we are doing it on board the ship the difficulty should also increase since you have to adapt to unpredictable changes. This will be good especially for you two. Carrot you rely too much on your jumping ability and how long you stay in the air but if confronted by a large beast like that Sea King again you will have some difficulty avoiding their attacks in mid air. Nica this will help you quickly jump to a new position to shoot more efficiently without wasting any movements or time if you can perfect it."
Although Nica was a monkey type mink with high climbing capabilities, she still lacked the basic training that could help evolve her skillset in a new direction.
She was good at swinging in trees, jumping and climbing but the difficulty increases when she has her guns with her or other tools so if the training pays off then she will be able to decrease the time between her shooting time and manoeuvring to a new position before the next shot.
She began to get familiar with the movements so she was a little more confident so she demonstrated. "You may think these movements may not have many uses but in face they can be used as one or put together in different situations. For example."
"This is a balance jump." She jumped from one piece of wood to the next and as she landed, she readied herself to jump again in the next series of movements to the next piece of wood. "This can also be done using thin paint lines or lines or cracks on the ground but the intention is to jump across to another place where you can land and jump from that if you need to. There is also the connection to the safety roll that can be connected to it."
She continued to turn around and then go back but as she landed at the end, instead of stopping or jumping forward she fell into a roll and then stopped as she rolled and was once again in a standing position. "This helps to cushion your fall if you are jumping across long distances and cannot stop yourself or are jumping to a lower platform. As you go to the ground and roll out into it back onto your feet you will disperse some or most of your forward momentum. If you practice enough you will be able to maximise your jumping potential but also control yourself better as you land rather than continuing to move forward and crashing into someone or something after your landing."
"This one is quite simple too…" She walked to the railing and placed her hand to hold onto it as she jumped over and landed on the other side of it as her feet were resting onto the end of the ship. "The safety jump is a movement used to support your body as it jumps over something like this railing or something like a wall or something else while landing with your back to it also helps build your coordination. If you can move efficiently and have enough control you can smoothly jump over with little effort while also being able to hold onto it for some support to leap to your next destination or lower yourself down from a high place. With more practice this can also be used with precision jumping and safety rolls."
She once again jumped over the railing smoothly with the support of one hand and landed on the wooden step of the side of the ship which was followed by her jumping to another piece of wood into a roll. "Each of these moves may seem simple but are important when put together. What you have learned in the past on Zou may suit our bodies and instincts but there are still many sloppy movements and a lack of efficiency in them. If we did not have this strength and the extra support of Electro our instincts would become our only support but there are always limitations. Out in the world there are many things we do not understand and more powerful types of abilities that can predict our moves. All they need to do is predict our moves a little, get us to react to them and then set a trap for us to fall into. When that time comes it is better to have more experience and skills to be able to overcome it or escape from that person trap."
As for the others they began to finish up learning the basics behind wall running whether it was along or up a wall, the turn vault which had similarities to the safety jump but the uses two hands to support and the legs go higher as the body turns to face the wall or railing that has been jumped over.
Alyssia began to show them again the possibilities of combining the moves and being creative with them.
First was a turn vault but instead of using her body to hold her as her body turned her legs looked as they came into contact with a pole or something nearby and she pushed her foot against it so she could complete her vault and land on the other side which was a combination of the turn vault and the wall run but more of a wall push with a single foot but another one that she mentioned was to go from a wall run that then pushes off the wall into a precision jump.
She tried this on the main part of the ship where the rooms were inside and ran a little across the wall and leaped up to the railing after kicking herself off the wall with a precision jump and then as she balanced herself on the ball of her feet she lowered herself to drop so that she landed on the edge of the ship with her back facing the railing. "From here I can go into a roll, run forward or do another precision jump."
"Finally there is the jump spin which can be added to precision jumps, balancing and wall runs but practicing the basic spinning and landing should be enough to practice for to get used to it so you do not always feel dizzy when spinning. If you wish to develop techniques in the future it is good to have some of the basics mastered so that you can move onto the next stage of adding kicks or other movements into your spins, jumps or spinning jumps." So began the next stage of them practicing 180 half turning to 360 full spins as they jumped until they became more familiar with the movements before moving onto a 540 and 720 spin. "Keep in mind that you need to focus on your feet placement as you land and you do not move away from your original place of jumping or the place where you will be jumping to as you are doing this."
"This one may or may not count depending on the situation but it is still worth adding which is the bar swing or bar leap. A little similar to how we have grabbed onto a branch to catch our falling bodies and then swing to a landing on our feet this is the same but can also be used into or out of a precision jump." She set up one of her staffs up high so that it would not be able to move on the ship and then placed down some pieces of wood again a little apart.
After getting up and hanging from the staff she swung her body back and forth until she was able to swing her body to the landing point after letting go of the staff.
She then turned around on the piece of wood and jumped back to grab onto the staff that was up high again demonstrating the usefulness of these moves. "Whether it is climbing, vaulting, jumping, landing, spinning, running up or along a wall or object or simply holding onto something to help you swing towards the next landing spot… these are the basics that will help you. We are no longer in a jungle or forest type of terrain so you cannot always stick to what you have been used to. There are many islands that have different types of terrain and buildings that may get in our way if we are in a hurry to get somewhere but we also need to gain familiarity with being able to do these moves at sea where it can be the most unpredictable. Especially at the grand line and new world where the seas are unpredictable and we do not know what we will encounter it is best to be prepared for anything."
While the rest of the crew were getting used to their training she moved onto the next section of her training that focussed more towards flips, spins or vaulting techniques which she was excited to begin learning so that she could upgrade her skillset.
She begun to practice a basic cartwheel and realised that if used properly it could be followed with a kick or held for spinning kick like Sanji and Boa Hancock.
The front hand spring could be used to go into landing position and change her position or evade an attack quickly or be used to launch a single or double spring kick.
The Macao which is performed from the ground on her bottom as she faces her enemy could be used from ground and to flip or turn her body back while supporting her body with her hand that facing the ground while kicking out to counter her enemy as the hips and legs go as high as possible while retreating until she is back on her feet.
Although the Butterfly Kick is performed while jumping and spinning the body so that the chest and legs are parallel to the ground and is often considered to be impractical in high end fights unless it is used by an expert but it does have its own use for avoiding attacks and counterattacking so if she was trapped between many opponents she could use this to make several variations to avoid attacks in the air and use her spin to send out several spinning jump kicks.
The dive roll just like the safety roll can be performed in many environments but also helped her gain more practice for a forward flip.
The J Step kick is also another that combines a strong jump, spin and kick together where the front leg is used to kick off as the back leg goes up and over it going into a spin and kick before landing on the back leg after completing a kick and spin.
The wall kick over much like the wall running and wall push is just another wall push with an added turn as the other foot goes over the foot that is touching the wall but could also be used to kick an opponent while pushing off them and turning towards a new target.
The barrel roll can be used to roll in various environments or practice a jump side roll or flip but there may be times where it can be used creatively by using it to roll over an opponents back after they have been hit in the stomach and bend over so that she can move past them and towards the next opponent.
Although she did not know the exact names of every one these techniques the system helped to set them up into different sections so that she could begin to practice these for to word towards more difficult flips, spinning flips, spinning jumps but also adding various kicks to them or just gaining a general control over her body while performing these things.
Even if she could not find a use for them right away they may come in useful later or even just assist her to get closer to mastering the basics of her spinning or spinning jump kicks that were to be used with her round house, side, back, hook, crescent or front kicks but in this world there would also be variations that could happen while adding flips or cartwheels to help generate more power or control when trying to attack from a high place or aiming to attack with her feet towards many enemies from a hand stand position or cartwheel form.
Whether it was leg martial arts, parkour, acrobatics or even staff skills, she wanted to thoroughly prepare her body to be familiar with the movements so that she could master them properly and integrate it all together into one specialty.
Either it was the long time that she had spent working on the basics back at Zou or just her leg martial arts talent but she found herself picking up most of the movements up quite easily but the moves that she had the most progress with were either ones that directly used the lower half of her body but also basic movements that also assisted in allowing the lower body to land, climb, vault off, run up or along something but also kick off it or perform a kick like the cartwheel movements she was able to learn quickly which was a little unexpected.
However she did not question it since it must mean that so long as the movements have some connection to the lower half of the body and martial arts, she should have the talent to learn them faster than others.
For the next couple of days until the auction arrived the crew spent most of their time keeping busy with their own things, training or accepting the occasional duel.