How to practise BMX Flatland & my riding with yet unfinished trick links

How to improve your BMX Flatland tricks:

My experience and advice about BMX Freestyle riding

If you read the description under my YouTube video, these lines will be familiar to you. I copied the here for the keeping the picture whole and for those of you who found my blog about BMX Flatland riding first. So, here it is, with a slightly different composition because I do not want Google search bots think that I am plagiarizing my own writings, LOL J

If you wanna skip this part, hit CTRL+F, type: ’note’ and click on second search result to jump to the sections not included in the video description, or, keep it ol’ skool and scroll down! J

Unfinished trick links and combos in my BMX Flatland riding

This is not the most viral, spectacular BMX Flatland video on the internet. Many dudes pull more dangerous and more difficult tricks than me. I did not want to lower the standard of extreme bike videos by uploading my creation, obviously I had other reasons.

When I was watching the footage recorded between 2012. March 17. and 2017. November 11. I realized a few valuable ideas to apply in my BMX riding. These long forgotten videos reminded me of some of my tricks, combos and switches I practised during the years. It was great to see how far I have gotten with them. Some tricks I had almost forgotten to practise again, so they will soon be added back into my BMX Flatland riding routine. The reason why you can see many tricks cut somewhere in the middle is because this is how far I got with practising them at the point of recording. I tried to fit the moves to the rhythm of the songs a bit as well, but surely this was not the reason why there are som uch cuts, as you could have read above.

I drew the conclusion from them, which you can read bellow. It might be good advice as well to improve faster in BMX Flatland riding. So here it is:

1.: Stop overpractising a trick when you cannot improve in it:

If you get to a point in a BMX Flatland trick where you can’t get better after a while, let’s say, a few weeks for example, depending on the quantity of your daily riding (I hope you are lucky enough to ride every day), put a pause in practising that trick for a while. For me it is very frustrating to have a great switch between two tricks you know perfectly well even in your sleep, and you can not pull it (I mean get it done flawlessly in the Flatland rider-lingo). ¡Ay, caramba!, I have such ’boogeyman’ tricks as well.

2.: Start practising a ’long-forgotten’ trick again or start with something brand new:

I bet you have cool stuff in your repertoire of Flatland tricks to get back on to practising again. You know, those that your could not imporve in the past. Speaking for myself, works like this: if I take a pause with a trick for a while, I can perform it better when I return to practising it again. Maybe not pulling it flawlessly, but doing it better than in the past. This process can be repeated: if this trick gets to a plateau as well, pause the practise, set it aside, maybe take a note of it somewhere either on paper, or in your calendar, mayba adding some visual to it in the form of a short video or picture.

Starting to practise a brand new, maybe some ol’ skool Flatland trick is also a great idea. Even an easier one for you to have a sense of achievement and feeling of success after the harder-to-learn tricks. Each rider has better skills for different types of tricks. Some ride slower, some ride with bigger speed. Some are better at rolling tricks, some at spinning and pumping. Some riders are masters of decades, jumps, scuffing-type of Flatland moves. I gotta say peace to them young BMX Ninjas who can do anything on any terrain, no matter how shitty the concrete is, like my friend Tamás Varga for example. You have all my respect! I am the exact opposite of you: with my 20 years of age (the other 20 is the experience, you know my steez :D) and I can - okay, maybe I only wanna – practise and get my tricks done right on a nearly perfect surface, preferably only on my spot. I only ride this spot by the way as I do not (want to) and can not travel to keep my little freetime in check.

Having paid my respect to them young Padawans – or rather, Masters of the Flatland Force, I also gotta shout out to those gentlemen in their 40’s still riding and basically can do any type of trick. They represent very unique styles and ways of riding and in many cases it is them who come up with new tricks and combos for copycats like me to practise after them. These BMX Gods are the pioneers of Flatland, like my Hungarain homeboy Márton Szilágyi, Viki Gomez, Martti Kuoppa, just to name a few.

On the world wide web you can also come across amazing riders from Asia spinning at lightning-speed doing amazing unique front and the rear wheel combos.

Do not compare yourself to other riders to the point of having an inferiority compley! Watch them, learn from them and find peace with the abilities you have.

Remember: perseverance can make up for the lack of talent (at least to a point, for sure)

Being very happy to see new BMX talents appearing in the scene and the Fathers of Flatland still ’punishing’ with their tricks, sometimes I am pretty hard on myself for not being able to improve with bigger steps. The happier I am for them, the more frustrated I can get when I compare myself to those much ahead of me. It seems like that almost everyone is learning more, better and harder tricks than me. This is partly because I am not that active in the past few years like I was 10 years ago. The

other reason is very simple: they are more talented than me, or have a better Flatland practise strategy, or both. I always realize when I slip into such an unhealthy mindset, and if nothing else helps, I do not watch BMX videos.

Not being able to ride your bike makes you sad? Do not torture yourself then with watching rider videos!

If I cannot go riding for any reason and if this fact makes my mood bad, I do not torture myself with

watching others ride. I’d better drown my sorrow into work. I don’t mean working a second job. No freaking way! I’d rather focus on my online medicinal mushroom coffee business instead. My goal with this is having unlimited freetime for the things I love to do, including riding BMX Flatland whenever I want to and as long as I want to, not having to adjust to anything or anyone.

Of course I intend to upload better quality vids with the new tricks I will have learnt, simpler and more complex as well. The reason why I decided to share this not-so-pro video footage was that I didn’t want it to sink into oblivion on my hard drive. Hopefully it’s gonna give you some value.

Note: this sections was not in the YouTube video descriptopm from now 

on:

My other reason for putting a lot of hours of editing this BMX Flatland practice video of mine is that I do not want to live with any more regrets. No need to think of any drama here, I will explain: for many-many years, it might be 10 years, I did not make any videos, rarely even pictures of me riding my ’kid’s bike’. I do not want to blame technology for this, but it is a fact that comparing to today’s mobile devices that can embody a whole video studio in our pockets we had to make a bigger fuzz about recording some video footage or shooting some photos. Think about just the size of the gadgets. I regret not having recorded a lot of my ol’ skool BMX tricks and combos. I could do a lot of them. These tricks were scuffin’ tricks mainly, or used a few scuffs in almost every one of them.

What is a ’scuffing trick’ in BMX Flatland? How do you ’scuff’ in BMX Flatland?

It is a move I make with my foot on wheels of the BMX to make is move forward, backward on a circle or straigth in line in a rhytmical way, blocking, braking and making it move. It is kinda like shuffle dancing, if I had to compare it to something.

Why did I stop practising scuffing tricks on my BMX Flatland bike?

I got fed up with scuffing tricks after a while because of two things as far as I can remember:

First reason: the shoes.

Scuffing tricks are shoe-killer. ’’All shoes must die” – like Chase Gouin said in one of his videos, I believe it was in some of the Dorkin’ series. 

BMX Flatland is a shoe-killer extreme sport.

Scuffs put a lot of pressure on the front part and on the sole of the shoes. These moves make the sole of the shoes wear thin in a very short period of time. Back in the day when I was practising an average of 3 to 6 hours on my BMX daily, I had to buy shoes in 2 or 3 weeks. No matter I had a job and earned money, it was an extra expenditure and it was sad to see that those great skater shoes I bought had not a single problem on their top part if one looked at them, except for one: the sole had holes in it and was really thin, to the point that it was uncomfortable especially if I walked on stones or uneven surface. My right-foot shoes, as I was doing scuffing tricks mainly with my right foot first, were affected by this BMx Flatland ’disease’. It sucked also to limp a bit because of the thinner sole of my right foot shoe. I wore the shoes to work after they were of no more use to me in BMX riding, because, let alone, the thin sole with a whole, which no one saw were in a very good condition on their top and other parts. I did not want to throw them away after having just bought them 2-3 weeks ago.

Does one need to buy expensive skater shoes for riding BMX Flatland?

I also experienced with cheaper shoes and football shoes, but they did not work. They were not comfortable and some of them literally fel lapart in one day. These cheaper versions of skateboarder shoes did not pass the test. Basketball shoes were – and still are – fine, but it was sad to see them get ruined as well.

I remember destroying an almost brand new Nike Cortez street shoe in two days as I had to put something on my feet in emergency as my rider shoe died and I did not have anything else to go riding my bike in. The Nike Cortez was a great shoe to walk the streets as an everyday-wear, but it was not designed for nearly anything as hardcore as BMX Flatland riding.

Luckily I found my favourite shoe for riding BMX Flatland: it is Kipsta Strong 500 and can be purchased in Decathlon stores. I am not getting paid any money for advertising these shoes, I am wrinting about them simply because I am satisfied with the price and value and they are very comfortable for walking and playing some basketball too, as they are originally basketball shoes.

Second reason for no more scuff-trick practise: a new style of BMX Flatland riding.

I saw a whole new style of BMX Flatland riding emerge in the world of BMX. I contribute this to two amazing riders, fellow Hungarian Adam Kun and the French Flatland-God Matthias Dandois.

These guys used no or just one or two step-in or scuffs in their extremely difficult and spectacular BMX trick combinations. They use ’pumping’ instead to make the bike move. I decided to forget scuffs as I love the way they ride. I have never thought before that Flatland could exist without scuffs. The older videos I saw were packed with scuffing tricks, which made the riding a bit discontinuous

some time comparing to the much more fluid flow of new-skool BMX Flatland riding.

Before the older, preferably riders of my age start casting stones at me, I have to tell you that I totally

respect and admire the awesome tricks of the earlier years and I know how much effort, time and energy is in those combinations. It is that I am just more keen on the Flatland style without scuffs and using momentum to make the bike move, roll and spin.

I think I am not going to practise my old trick-lines anymore. I want to learn other tricks. It would have been very good to record my old BMX Flatland tricks because of this.

To make up for my laziness for recording videos for so many years, I decided to put some effort into

immortalizing my moves. It is great to watch back. 

There are many (yet) unfinished move, combos and tricks in my BMX Flatland riding video. Some of them I have been practising for years and got stuck with it. It can be and it is pretty frustrating, but I found out a way to deal with such situtations when I can not move on or improve in a BMX trick: I stop practising it for a while and get back to it later, maybe months later. It ensures that I am not flogging myself with how clumsy I am for not being able to improve and postponing practising a bike trick also ensures that the probably wrong or just partially good movement pattern does not get memorized in a nervous level. I read that a move practised often is memorized by your nervous system and can elicit instantanious reactions in certain situation. I think the most common and effective area to think of here is self-defense and martial arts, but I believe it is true in any sports or everyday life moments such as cooking, cutting vegetables thinner or to a certain shape and faster is.

Footage recorded between 2012.03.17. - 2017.11.11. Contains yet unfinished trick links and switches.

My experience and advice:

Pause with tricks you cannot move on with and find those that work for you. Get back to the harder tricks after a while. For more thoughts read video

description. Peace y’all!

All music by Your Memoria:

For a fistful of euros (album:

Buddy)

Your Africa (album: Buddy)

I don’t belong to your fucking

nation (album: Buddy)

Without title (album: My Policy)

More great grooves:

https://szurketisza.bandcamp.com/releases

Do ya homework-out every day, kid! Calisthenics workout from home

Totally cost-effective workout from home with minimal or no equipment

Do ya homework-out every day, kid!

Some thoughts about training by yourself and training with friends

Sports are fun and they are a good opportunity to spend time with your friends. It is very true, unless you are one of those who prefer training by themselves either because you get into your own Zen-state-of-mind this way or because you have a busy schedule. Training - and here I mean training seriously - together with others is only good in my eyes when the session does not end up in chatting about this and that instead of working out. 

After this, let's jump into the 'mysteries' of own bodyweight training straight from home...

Do I really need to spend money on outfits, gym fees and equipment?

Training and getting fit is often associated with having to spend a whole lotta money on gym fees, outfits, shoes, travelling and equipment. You can sure spend money on these, for some sports they are necessary. Media is urging us to buy the latest, in most cases unnecessary equipments that, as the commercials say, will produce the required effects and make us all look like Greek Gods.

So, are all these things necessary? Do I really have to buy all these?

Training in a gym requires a certain level of neatness. If you are a weight-lifting fan, you either go to a gym regularly that has the equipment, or build you own gym at home. In either cases money is very necessary. Having a gym at home might be more budget friendly on the long run, though.

Training is not about the clothes you workout in, it is about the workout

Going to a gym also requires to look good on a minimal level at least. Here I mean that at home you can wear that shabby 10-year old T-shirt you love so much because many good memories you lived in it. In a gym, though, a certain level of looks is needed nowadays. People tend to judge you by the way you look and the clothes you wear, so here you should wear something more nice, not necessarily expensive, but clothes that look good, on the contrary to when you train at home when noone can see it. Of course some of you wear them swag yolo gear even when you sleep....just kidding :D

Clothes get worn and torn pretty easy and quick

I have never been a big fan of expensive clothing, let alone shoes maybe. I have experience in some sports and I know that clothes can get torn and worn pretty easy and quick, so unless you do not have a lotta cash to burn, you might consider what to ride your bike in. I know that from experience that trousers are pretty easy to tear in days. Wear something nice that look good but I do not suggest unnecessarily expensive rags.

Okay, so enough is said about gear and equipment. What’s up with travelling? The cost of fuel, public
transport and the time it takes to get to a gym or a court?

I have a pretty busy schedule because of my dogs and I also limit my BMX Flatland practise and Calisthenics training time because I want to get out of the rat race with the help of my online mushroom coffee business. This need more effort and time in the beginning, an for my long term goals I am willing to sacrifice more of my freetime.

To hell with time management, everyone has 10 mintes a day to workout!

As much as it is important to manage your time right to be able to accomplish more in less time and with more and better results, it is totally unnecessary to do a 10-minute-workout every day. Okay, this short workout also has to or can be planned when to be executed, but due to its lenght it can be fitted easily to a lot of points in your day.

Is a 10-minute-training enough to get fit?

I can tell you that it is very possible to kick my own ass during a ten-minute-workout. I do supersets, which means I switch between two exercises with no or minimal rest. For example, I do leg raises and as a ’rest’, I do tricep dips on the side of my bed.

How about holding a plank for as much as you can? Even a few minutes can be a killer from this exercise. Doing situps, pushups or sprinting or keeping a high-paced tempo for 10 minutes can also get the job done. The 10 minutes I am talking about can be 13, 15, 5 or 20, whatever you want or can fit into your day. The key is on being consisten to do the short but effective training every day.

Time hacks to keep trainings short more effective

A short traiing is also easier to start than to think: ’’Oh,how the hell am I gonna workout for 1 and a half hours? I am dead tired and have so much to do.”

When you only have a goal of accomplishing a short workout, especially from you home, all the problems seem to cease to exist.

My best tips and tricks for Calisthenics training ... 

and time management (here we go again... xD)

Okay, so I said forget about time management as 10 minutes of training needs none of this trendy stuff... I still do think so, but I have some hacks that also help to fit your home workout (or homework-out) into your busy daily routine.

So behold some of my tricks and tips you can apply to spare time and be effective in Calisthenics training at home:

1. Do some housework between sets of exercises:

I do a set of pull-ups and as a rest I take the clothes out of the washing machine. Then I do another set of chin-ups. After this I put some of the clean but wet clothes on the dryer racks. Then I do one more set of exercise, and then I hang some more clothes out to dry. Get it?

2. Start training at the moment you arrive home:

It is also good for me to do some leg raises, pull-ups, pushups right after enter my apartment. After the first set I take off my shoes, maybe pack stuff outta my bag. Then comes another set of exercise. Then I change clothes or just get out of my street clothes.

3. Be a kitchen fairy between the sets:

It is also good make a coffee, o cook or prepare some food meanwhile, but in this case too mush hand-washing is involed, not to speak of having to pay attention not to burn the rice or other food, which I sometimes did, LOL. :D

4. Do a set of exercises as you walk around the apartment:

It can also be good to promise to yourself that every time you go to the kitchen or some other room, you do some push-ups. There is the pullup-bar in the kitchen hallway in my apartment, so it is in the way. This does not work well for me, as I like my training to be done and than it does not bother me, but every now and then I do some random pullups when I walk around.

5. Setting up your own gym indoors to laugh in the face of weather: 

Own bodyweight training requires no or just some minimal equipment, and if it is done at home, a whole lot of other factors are diminished and you can go on with your daily routine without having to sacrifice money and time for the sake of training. I was considering making a small training spot in my living room for BMX Flatland riding. I have seen a great idea by some riders who covered their apartment or room with OSB wood sheets for the same reasons I suggest traiing at home. It is also good to beat weather and being able to train indoors even when it would be impossible outdoors. I did not accomlish this one, though, as I have people living under me. Doing my BMX Flatland tricks that require less space would be disturbing, especially when I drop my bike or it smashes to the floor.

Keep your workouts short, but daily

As for last words: keep it short but workout every day and do it at home if you can.

Simple moves for feeling of success in BMX Flatland and Calisthenics

Go Simple, Feel Fine:

Simple Moves for Feeling of Success in BMX Flatland and Calisthenics

There are days when I decide to keep (some) of my BMX Flatland riding and Street Workout as simple as the mug (or two) mushroom coffee I drink in the morning.

It refreshes my mind and has an excellent effect on my soul to practise some simple moves after drilling difficult moves. It is both valid for Flatland and Calisthenics. 

I start my session with riding Flatland for about one and a half hour. It is very little comparing to the average 6-hour-practices I did back in the day when I did not have 3 dogs to walk 3 times daily and before I decided that my current standard of living and future perspectives with my current job suck pretty bad.

Now I limit the time I spend with both riding BMX and bodyweight traiing in order to be able to build my online mushroom coffee business, that does not require any investment or any special skills when one starts. I can get tired in this lesser amount of time for sure. Just think about doing supersets without resting.

You cannot go hardcore all the
time.

Practise easier moves for sense
of achievement

I always say: ’Ride hard, or don’t!’ but it does not make any sense to always torture myself till exhaustion and frustration from not being able to improve on some tricks. This is why I add some ’ol skool flava’ to my riding: I practise easier moves for sense of achievement.

I learnt those two rolling tricks you see in my video pretty fast, but I have to tell you, it is partly because I have a 15-year-background in BMX Flatland. If I started to practise these rolling tricks at the beginning of my Flatland ’career’, it would have been just as hard as any new tricks.

These rolling tricks – I do not know if they have names – are a bit friendlier to both bike and rider when it comes to bails/crashes. It is easier to simply jump off the bike to the back or front if I lose balance. As my not-so-favourite Murphy’s Law might have a say in things here too, some unlucky crashes can happen here too, but they are less likely than for example when practising nose wheelie or cliffhanger.

Simple bodyweight workouts also
bring results

When I am tired for windshield wipers, pull-ups, or anything, I can always simplify my Calisthenics training to some basic moves that can also make me sweat, with sense of achievement and feeling of success, without the anger from frustration when it is one of those days when I am not in such a great shape to go-all-out-war with da hardcore moves.

BMX Flatland and Street Workout
should be fun

Take it seriously, train hard, but not till the point of getting sick and tired and frustrated from the more difficult moves. I am constantly reminding myself of this. For me it is very hard to accept that one day a trick works out fine, and on the other I just keep on faltering.

One day high, the other day higher

Here I do not mean getting high from any drugs. Hell no! I am straight edge, I do not drink alcohol, smoke or do drugs. Here I mean having ups-and-downs, but I would say this like: having higher ups and lower ups. By being high I mean being in shape, being in control, being in the ’zone’. These all feel awesome, right? 

Unfortunately not every day is our day, so to say. The ’lower ups’ can be cause by whole lotta different things starting from the quality of food and sleep I had or the weather, etc.

I have to make friends with the days when I am not so much in the ’zone’. These days are a great opportunity to do some easier, yet challenging stuff that brings a smile on my face. You know, that kinda that goes all the way from one ear to the other when I pull a trick for the first time. Even a very simple trick did well for the first time can make me jump up and down from joy.

My advice is to do simpler tricks and moves every day.

They boost your self-confidence and sense of achievement.

Fun on a Gun Street Workout

World War 2 cannon used for Calisthenics training

Fun on a Gun Street Workout

Huge advantage of bodyweight training: it is totally low cost!

One thing that I love in bodyweight training is that it is very low cost. The only equipment one needs

to buy are some clothes and maybe a pair of shoes. If you train at home, well…it is up to you, maybe clothes are not necessary, he-he. Anyway, Calisthenics requires only your body and some minimalistic equipment that you do not need to buy as these can be found in parks, streets, playgrounds, you name it. Expensive gym fees are history. Training can be fit into my daily routine pretty easy this way.

                    

Bodyweight training has the advantage of total freedom

Freedom and the quality and quantity of freetime are key factors in my life. I am pretty much bound by the daily 3 dogwalks I must do, so I am happy for every minute of extra time that I have.

Another thing which I find really important and wonderful, that I can train at home whenever I want to. I am not bound by stuff like travelling to gym, putting on layers of clothes before travelling, and basically the whole training can be kept pretty simple by not having to do anything to get to a gym because I simply do not need one. Okay, I have a bar drilled up on my wall, but that is it. If you are considering setting up your own street – or room – wprkout ’gym’ at home, it can be done with some bars for chin-ups and maybe parallel bars. Yeah, these can cost some money, but the amount can not be compared to the price of buying so-called regular gym equipment like barbells, weights, all sors of power machines and so on. I see guys on a parallel bars doing amazing things, and they are ripped

like hell.

’I earn my respect in the streets, so far, ghetto’s been good to me’

This is the verse from one of my favourite rap songs from YZ from the great basketball movie Above the Rim. My hood has always been good to me too. I avoided fights and gangs, did not have any problem with the local people and the streets have always provided my with great basketball courts to

play ball and ride BMX Flatland and, as you see, some World War 2 cannons that I am training on.

Find your own equipment to train on. Keep your eyes and mind open.

These wartime monuments are great for doing some pull-ups, push-ups, hanging leg raises and L-holds on them. The diameter of the barrels of the cannons are kinda big. It is a great challange to find a grip on them. I even had to clutch my hands to be able to hang down from the smaller cannon.

The muzzle of the bigger cannon that I was doing some windshield wipers on is a bit sharp. It could be seen from the grin on my face when I jumped down after finishing the wipers and a short L-hold on it. The muzzle also has some greasy dirt in it, this is why I was cleaning my palms with the nice, colourful fallen autumn tree leaves I found on the ground.

We also used to have a World War 2 tank here near my BMX Flatland court. If it was still here, it would make a great heavy object for me to train on.

Hanging leg raises and pull ups: BMX Flatland bike Street Workout

How to do pull-ups and hanging leg raises with a BMX

BMX Flatland bike Calisthenics workout

Do something new every day

Creativity in BMX Flatland and Calisthenics

Recently I adopted a habit of doing some bodyweight exercises after riding BMX Flatland. Street workout and BMX Flatland practice have things in common. These sports allow me to be creative and train my body - and mind along - outdoors. There are countless moves one can practise on every level. I ride and train before or after walking my dogs, depending on the season, the weather and how dark it is early in the morning.

BMX and street workout have a big difference as well:

While the first, Flatland is often mentioned as an extreme sport, though I think Calisthenics moves can also be called extreme, is not so budget-sparing due to the need of a bike to practise on, the second, Street Workout need no or just minimalistic equipment. All you need is your body and a few pieces of clothes not to scare away people, in case you are not training in the wilderness with Tarzan, LOL :)

The above does not mean that BMX Flatland is a rich-people's sport, but as time flies by, those who are persistent come to realize that good bike parts have a higher price. This can be turned into positive too: money can be spent on rather sports instead of buying all kinds of useless gadgets or clothes to show off with, not to speak of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. 

There are always things to improve

Now let's get back to training. Mouth aerobics won't make a 6-pack. I always have stuff to work on. Keeping legs more straight, not to bob my head during push-ups, using a bigger range of motion performing chin-ups...the list goes on. This is the beauty of it: I have to work for the perfection of exercises on every level.

Weight training vs bodyweight exercises

I am not a fan of using weights or weight training, but despite this I had a crazy though to use my BMX to make my life hard an painful during training :D

I totally agree with 'father' of Convict Conditioning Paul 'Coach' Wade and the Kavadlo bros, Danny and Al in the following: using weights put unnecessary strain on the body and the moves seen in gyms - all of those I also kept doing for many years way back in my teens and twenties- are unnatural and strain the joints.

I make an exception with my BMX Flatland bike when it comes to using weight, I have to admit, though, that I only do these moves, push-ups and hanging leg raises with my bike as extra weight every now and then. It makes my smile and grin when I do these because I love the fact how crazy it is - the people who saw me do it had their jaws drop off as well, he-he. :D

I keep it short and hard instead of pumping for long hours

I am pretty tired after practising my trick on my 'kids' bike', so I keep my bodyweight workout short but hardcore. I would do the same way I think if I did not ride before it. It also fits into my schedule better. 

The benefit of riding Flatland before Street Workout is that I am warmed up, so I do not really spend time on doing some easier stuff. I often jump into windshield wipers first, but it depends on my form and energy level, and whole lotta other stuff on the given day.

I do not really rest between exercises. I do some leg raises and then I jump righ into push-ups or tricep dips. I also do some stretching between the exercises, but I do not really rest, not to speak of sitting down. Of course I do not rush, because that would be on the expense of form. If I feel that I am tired, I rather do less repetitions but those I want to keep as perfect accoding to my level as I can.