Happiness

Yet again I've gone some time without posting, I keep saying that Ill post more but I never do. Never the less I'm writing this because I kinda want to get it off my chest.

I'm not sure where I stand in Parkour or my movement. Recently I've been training quite hard, very hard in fact. As a result of this I have sustained quite a few injuries. I won't go into them and none are too serious however they have all kinda bunched up on themselves leaving me not 100%. Because of these injuries (and I think also from over training) I've decided to rest. I'm not sure how long for, may be a few days, may be a week. But I've decided just to listen to my body and continue training when I feel like it.

Through this period in my journey I've taught allot about how I move. When I first started Parkour (and now I'm sure all of you can relate) it had a certain feel to it. I think its because we were discovering something new. Never before have we been exposed to this way of moving. As time progresses we get exposed to more of this movement, it becomes common to us (not exactly second nature) but we know how it feels to move like this, we become accustomed to it. We also experience different forms of this movement and are exposed to a wider variety. From Blane, to Daniel Ilabaca and 3run, to Brad Moss. All these forms are different but somehow the same to what we are used to. In a constant search to regain the feeling we first had at the start of our journey we explore these ways of moving. We experiment with flips and different movements and somewhere along the way we "loose" the bases of where we started.

Now I'm not writing this to annoy or prod and I'm definitely not saying that we should not experiment with different movements. Were all different, we all come from different backgrounds and all have different interests. All I'm saying is that we should move how we want to move. Now I know that sounds stupid and that right now you're saying "well why would we move like this if its not what we want to do?" But I ask you. How many people wanted to learn flips and tricks because they saw it in a Daniel Ilabaca video?

Just a little edit. I think most of us wanted to learn flips and tucks because they saw them In a Daniel Ilabaca video (I certainly did) Daniel Ilabaca and his movement is a huge inspiration to me, I have met him once and hope to meet him again in the future. His philosophy on Parkour and movement is very deep and meaningful and one I try in every way to follow in my training and I think saying what I just said was wrong, but its the only way that I can think of ending that so Ill just leave it.

I know that for me my training goes in stages (not good and bad training) But training where I focus on Parkour and then decide to try a few flips. Now I must say that cannot flip in anyway. I blame it on the fact that I haven't been to a gym to try them, but I think the real fact is deep down I just don't want to do them. The point in time of my training where I try to get flips and tricks feels very different to my training periods where I focus on Parkour. In these periods I end up hurting myself, causing unnecessary injuries and all the time not getting the same enjoyment as I do out of Parkour. Now this is purely a personal experience and one that may (and probably will) change in time and I'm only writing this because it might help some of those who might be in the same predicament as me.

Ive just read over what I wrote and feel that I might have come across in the wrong way. Its hard to put the feelings in our head into words and even harder to try and get the right point across on the internet. I would just like to say that through posting this in no way do I mean to say don't experiment with movement. All I'm saying is that we should do what makes us happy. In every way we should push and break the boundaries but in no way should we reach a point where doing what we love makes us feel un-happy

Now I want to end this on a progressive note so I'm going to post some recent training pictures, but remember train safe, train hard but most importantly train what makes you happy.

Collection of thoughts

I haven't posted for a while, and to those of you who actually read this I'm sorry. Allot has been happening lately and I couldn't find the time to post.

Both my last two posts ended abruptly and I've had allot of time to think about them. If there's one thing I learnt from when Daniel was here it is to live every moment and express my movement through myself and visa versa. If you read my post "moving in our own way" you will know how I feel about expressive and "free" movement and I've come to realise that this is probably the most important thing in Parkour. If we learn to listen to our body and mind in movement then we improve in flow, timing and technique without really trying to (Max output with min effort). I have been trying to do this in my training. Take a catpass for example. If we just do the movement thinking about hand placement, foot placement, whatever then we will only get so far. However if you listen to your body, feel the movement and move instinctively to what comes before then you begin to realise how much you're improving.

We also need to learn to do this when we are trying new things. I don't mean that you attack your environment doing everything that comes to mind without thinking. Quite the opposite we need to analyse, assess our environment, but not too much. There comes a time when we just have to move. I don't want to dwell on this but I encourage you all to read this

Anyway this form of flow and movement was something that I dont feel was expressed in Summer trainings. Dont get me wrong at the time I was trying to improve flow (no where near as much as I am now, but I was still trying to) But when I was filming I was concentrating on the filming rather then my movement and haveing fun. There was one day where I was wanting to film about 70% of what actually came to be in the video (ended up being about 30%) Before I went out "training" and I say training like that cause at the end of the day the last thing I ended up doing was actually train. Anyway before I went out I had all these ideas in my head of what I wanted to do. I had been to the area a few times before but not for a long time. Now As many of you may know the way we see obstacles and movements in the area where thinking about in our head never turns out to be how they really are. That jump is always a little bit further away or that wall a little bit higher. I went to the area and found out that I could do only about 5% of the things that I was thinking.

Now if I was really training I would look on this as a good thing. Try and get a few things that I had in my head. but because I was focusing on trying to film everything this never happened. I never really trained and at the end of the day I went home angry with myself and felt that I didnt improve and that I never would.

This is something that I never want to experience again. Parkour should be fun. It dosent matter that you dont get that wall. Infact its a good thing! its something to improve on and something to focus on next time. But because I was so focused on getting film all of these thaughts were replaced with anger and disappointment.

Avoiding this experience might mean that I wont film. Or at least take a different approach to it but I guess im just going to have to figure that out for myself.

This entry was ment to be focused more on movement rather then film (cause I find movement much more important) but turned out to be the later. Anyway, ultimately I want you to, next time you train think about your movement and live the moment. Also if your reading this please comment, even if its just a "hi" I want to get a rough idea on who I'm talking to. Take care.

Summer Trainings

New video is up. Can't be bothered to talk about it now, will in the future.

Peace

New accomplishment

I took some time out today to post because today I accomplished my highest wall scale ever!

Wall scales are probably the weakest aspect in my training because I really only get to practice them about once a week due to the fact that there are no suitable walls in my local area. Anyway I've been trying to get this wall for about four weeks now, and thanks to allot of strength and conditioning training, I finally accomplished my goal. I did get some film of it but I decided to wait till tomorrow to put it up as tomorrow I will be uploading a few training clips so ill put it in there.

However I will post a picture of it just so you can get the relevant height. Anyway that's it for now. Enjoy training!

Danny waz ere!

I spent about 10 minutes wondering how to start this blog. Trying to find out what was the best way to express the experiences that I had today. I figured that there's only one way to say it and that was to get straight to the point. Today was awesome!

Considering that it has been raining the past week, waking up today and seeing sunshine was a welcome relief. It was a great day, and with the prospect of training with Danny I was eager to get to Sydney.

I got to Sydney at around 12:30. Met up with Robbie and a few other guys. We started warming up on the trees near Pyrmont then started working on arm jumps and doing some stuff on Rhys's tree.

Danny arrived when basics class started. Ish split us into groups of people who have done parkour before, and people who haven't. Funnily enough the only people who had done parkour before were me, Robbie, a few other guys and the instructors. Danny came over met us all and said "alright lets go" (I didn't think it would be that easy).

After warming up (again) Danny got us to do some silent training. Ninja games he called it. The idea was to move from one point to another without making a sound. This was really quite fun and you will be surprised in the difference of sound you make when you have no shoes on. This concept gave me a whole new type of training (barefoot) I've herd about barefoot training but never really thought about giving it a go. I intend on doing allot more barefoot training in the future as I noticed how much my mental strength improved just with a few minutes of it.

Throughout today I learnt so much, and improved so much both mentally and physically. I didn't really feel like writing tonight but I kinda had to document today. So much more then what I just explained happened today and I will write more in the near future once I've had a chance to practice what I have learnt and think. Until then hers a few pictures of today as well as a video of the K-Swiss performance that was on Wednesday (I wasn't there but Robbie took some film) Enjoy!

Pineapple

Throughout the past week I have been excited about today. Today was meant to be my first trip down to Sydney for parkour and with the possibility that I might be training with Daniel Ilabaca as he is in Sydney for a few weeks because of the K-Swiss performance, you can imagine my anticipation. For some reason though nature decided to screw me over and make it poor with rain all throughout the weekend. Never the less I still went to Sydney for some casual training and the basics class (which ended up being cancelled because of the rain).

I arrived In Sydney at about 12:30 pm and meet up with Robbie and Richard. It was still poring with rain and we found out that Daniel wasn't coming because of it, but we decided to do some training anyway. Over all it was a good training secession. We mainly worked on the basics as it was raining but I did feel that I improved with my arm jumps.

Anyway I haven't written for a while mainly because that there's been nothing to write about but I intend to start writing more frequently now so stay tunned. The main thing for me now is going back to Sydney next weekend. The forecast says sunny so hopefully it is. If it is I still have a chance to train with Danny, so I have high hopes for next weekend.

Our own way of moving

"The physical extensions of Parkour are as follows: Move in such a way, with any movement, that will help you gain the most ground on someone/something as if escaping from someone/something or chasing toward someone/something."-Parkourpedia

Above is your basic definition of Parkour. What every traceur who has either practiced for some time or has been brought into the discipline well, should know off by heart. I look back to when I first herd that definition, when I was first told that Parkour was efficient movement from point A to point B. When I herd this I was just beginning my journey. I was like a little child learning to write. I was looking at different things, different videos like Blane's Docendo Discimus and Vaults 102. I had it in my head that all the "moves" in Parkour were categorised like vaults and climb-ups. I learnt that to do a speed vault you put one hand on the wall or rail and then swing your legs over to the side. Just like when I was learning to write. Take the letter b for example. We learnt that to write a b we draw a line down the page and then put a circle at the bottom of the line.

I also thought that the moves like "speed vaults" and "two handed vaults" were the right way to do parkour. If I didn't progress doing these moves I wasn't doing Parkour. However I think about it now and it's quite the contrary. By thinking that we have to do these sought of moves to progress aren't we setting ourselves even more boundaries? And doesn't parkour give us the ability to progress over our boundaries and even have none?

I think of the writings of Georges Hebert and his progression of movement in Methode Naturelle. In his development of movement he was not practicing Parkour. He was not bounded by movements like vaults and wall scales. However in the true sense of the discipline he was doing Parkour. As I continue to look at the movement of Blane and Stephane Vigroux I see that they are also moving in the same way, in their own way. This is the direction Im going to try and take with my own training. I will no longer look at a section of wall and say I can "cat pass" over that and "speed vault" over that. Instead Im going to try and say. Ok what is the best and most efficient way to progress over the obstacles that are in front of me. Develop my own style of movement (but still remain true to parkour) just like I developed my own style of writing.

Now Im not saying that progressing doing strict things like cat passes is a bad thing however, I strongly disagree to that. Having certain moves like cat passes is a great thing! Think about what I said before about learning to write. We don't start writing fluidly with our own style right away now do we? We all start the same with the long line down the page and a small circle at the bottom. But by doing that and by practicing that we eventually find our own way of doing it more efficiently. At the same time when were more experienced we don't scribble a line across a page and call it a D now do we? We still have that base way of writing it, and a base way of movement. We just make it our own style, and that is what we have to do with Parkour.