Termly Roundup

We've just got to the end of Michaelmas Term 2014 (or, for non-students, December 2014 just started!), so we thought we'd do a roundup thing.

Who are you: Nikolay Timofeev

What was your involvement?
President and 'coach' - Organised sessions, maintained communication with people contacting Oxford Parkour with regards to... All sorts of things really :/ Also managed various IT and web things (inevitably breaking things along the way) and found some time to jump on stuff in between all that.

What did you think went well: 
Because we have more people able to organise sessions, we were able to run around double the amount of sessions as we did last year. Better yet, I have had the pleasure of training with SO MANY OF YOU! Thank you to everyone who has turned up so far, I have enjoyed getting to know you all immensely.

Hopefully we have had more variety of session as well, combining both structured and unstructured styles of training, as well as the odd gym session here and there.

What didn't go as well as you might have liked:
One thing we haven't done too much of is stepped out of pattern very much. We have the regular sessions, but as far as doing other one off things, such as trips to other cities and communities, that has not happened too much, which is a shame as that brings communities together and shows all involved a fresh approach to training, and pushes people out of their comfort zone, thus helping progress.

We have also not managed to organise a social, something like a parkour movie night or just an meal or something like that, to bring our community even closer together, which was something we were hoping to do.

Finally, we have not done very much exploration of Oxford and not done any days where we explore new (or even just different) locations, which we could do more of!

What you hope to do next term:
All of the above! And it would be nice to slowly start putting out more media - Oxford's a wonderful city, full of great architecture - showing more movements here will lead to more people joining and will make a nice historic record for future practitioners to look at and be inspired by.

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Who are you: Alex May
What was your involvement: I coached the Tuesday BCS and the Wednesday COM session, and trained a bit outside this too. And I helped discuss things and organise this with Nikolay and Harry (despite not being elected or on committee!).

What did you think went well:

• We got loads of interest at Freshers' fair, and the attendance in 1st week was huge (I think 60+ different people turned up to try out parkour). The two sessions were well attended, usually around 8 on Tuesdays and around 3/4 on Wednesdays, despite the weather.
• The COM Wednesday session was a success, in my eyes, in encouraging diversity (in non-male form) into our community.
• There's now a good number of people in the Oxford Parkour Community, which is great!

What didn't go as well as you might have liked:

• I found that I was busier with the usual Oxford-stuff than I had thought, so didn't have as much time, meaning that I didn't get to train much aside from coaching and that I didn't put on any additional sessions as I had hoped.
• Didn't do more advertising after the start of term - should have sent reminder emails to the mailing list to encourage more people to come along to the Tue/Wed sessions (though until 4th week, the sessions were full!)
• The tshirt company I used was busier than expected, so took them longer to do the order than I had hoped, and they didn't arrive far enough before the end of term to sell them.
• Security (from the university) seemed to be fairly active in asking us to leave various areas, which is a shame.
• Nothing social. I've been wanting to host a parkour social for awhile, but didn't manage this term, partly due to busyness, partly because the one attempt I made to book a room in college got confounded by the rules on filling out event forms in advance.

What might you do differently next term:

• Put on some 'Focus' sessions, not aimed at beginners, for the non-beginner components of the community. And hopefully a bit more variety outside of that
• Social!
• Sell the tshirts!

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Who are you: Harry Cruse
 

What was your involvement: Vice President. I organised the freshers' fair, organised many sessions and a few gym trips, designed and ordered the business cards. I also gave my opinion and advised on many issues and decisions that the group faced.

What did you think went well: We got a huge number of new members this term, mainly from the freshers’ fair, it’s always nice to see new people trying out our sport. We got them all off to a good start, and a decent number of them stuck around. We’ve also had loads of sessions this term (up to 4 or 5 a week) which is brilliant, the more parkour the better!
Our new Facebook page has worked well, and due to it being public it’s brought in a few people that don’t have Facebook. It’s also nice to have an official entity that can post when the sessions are, so it’s organised by Oxford Parkour rather than by a person.
 

What didn't go as well as you might have liked: I think we have been a bit forgetful and lazy in some situations. We never got round to organising a social or a London trip, and the gym trips only really started happening towards the end of term. It would also have been nice to have more weekend sessions (which is entirely my fault).

What might you do differently next term: Be more on the ball! We should get better at organising things, and let people know earlier in advance. We should definitely do a social, with at least a week’s notice; and a London trip would be great, but I’m not sure if that will actually happen. I think we’ll also advertise the gym trips more often, and I’ll make an effort to put on more weekend sessions.

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We would also love feedback from anyone who has attended - please be honest and direct, we won't get offended and it's useful for us to improve things!

Feedback form:
What did you do with the group this term?
What parkour experience did you have before training with us?
What did you think was good about the sessions you attended?
What could be improved, either sessions or group organisation or anything?
Thanks!

Why a Female and Trans training session?

This is to explain the decision to run a Female & Trans beginners introductory session as part of the weekly sessions this term with Oxford Parkour.

This was originally called "non-male", but the language has been improved to "female and trans". There might be some inconsistencies with how it's used due to this change.

It's slightly different with potential controversy, so I thought I'd do my best to explain why I've decided to do it. Neither Oxford Parkour nor the coach in charge of this have done this before, so please excuse any poor use of language or misguided action.

What's the general aim?

To increase participation of parkour (in Oxford) by people who identify as female and trans. Parkour is for everyone, yet the participation is heavily cis-male, I want to encourage participation outside this, and I think this will help.

*for those who aren't aware of the term 'cis-male', this means somebody who was assigned gender male at birth and currently identifies as male. If you don't know what this means that probably includes you, but it is in contrast with somebody who identifies as a different gender to the one they were assigned at birth.

How will this help?

Hopefully, in a couple of ways:

1. For the marketing, to overcome the general perception of parkour as being masculine. A direct counter is “actually, there's a female and trans session you can come to, so it is for you!”.

2. To make this minority* feel more comfortable about coming to try out parkour. A kind-of 'safer space' for it to be tried out in with less perceived pressure or expectation – there isn't any pressure or expectation normally in our community, but that fact doesn't mean people don't worry about it, so this measure is to deal with the possible worry.

* minority within parkour - not within the population as a whole!

The 'segregation' is aimed to encourage female and trans participation, not to keep them apart: all of our other sessions are open to anyone, so this just gives more option to non-males to take part. 

This is also why the name is different and doesn't include the word 'parkour': a different marketing approach to try and shrug off some of the effect of the media misconception of parkour (imagine all you knew of running was from seeing the Olympics and thought that because you can't run 100m in under 11 seconds, you can't run at all!). I noticed that lots of the gym classes which are attended by mostly females have vague names that say little about the content or style or dogma of the session (Total Body Workout, Bodypump, Aerobics, Bums & Tums) and thought about coming  up with a similar thing for a parkour session, which is what I've done here. (All of the example female gym classes could also apply to this - it will work your whole body, be aerobic, and use your 'bums & tums').

Will the coaching be different?

No, but a little bit.

Parkour is not gendered. We don't teach girls differently to teaching guys. We teach individuals; all individuals are different: different bodies, different personalities, different experiences. So in some ways, coaching girls is no different to coaching guys.

There are some general trends among individuals within the gender classes. Guys tend to have both more ego and be more willing to take risks and try things that may be less safe – there are exceptions, of course, but a slight tendency. Guys are, on average, a bit stronger and taller. So to a small degree, the content will be different in that there might be less variation within the group and so the content can be more tailored. But this is nowhere near the sort of variety within, say, different aged practitioners: teaching 7 year-olds, 12 year-olds, 20 year-olds and 55-year olds is quite different!

So it is no different to any random group of people, that the coach will tailor the session content to fit the participants. And this is not the reason for running a non-male session.

Here, though, it's more about excluding (cis-)guys to allow for a non--cis-male space, not about splitting off the non-males.

I must mention though, the coach will be male, as we only have male coaches at the moment. I feel that's better than nothing though, and will look into seeing if a female coach could come along at some point later on in the term.

Further Information

Here are a few videos, incase you are interested (or not convinced that parkour is for you).

This one is an interview with a female practitioner and coach from London.

This one is a video of a youtuber doing parkour for the first time (without bias or vested interest as this was her first time).




And this one is my mum doing her first ever parkour session!

Start of Summer Holidays and a Year in Review

Hello guys and gals - with Trinity term just about over, I imagine a lot of you guys will be heading back to your respective homes. It's been a fantastic year, and I guess, if we don't see you over the holidays, then we hope to see you at the start of the next academic year in October!

Do keep an eye on the group if you can, as I will keep posting the usual helpful links and we will be sticking up votes for next year's committee (I realise I completely forgot to do the whole election thing this term).

Looking back at the year, a lot has happened! Here's a round-up of the biggies:

Working on online Content

Cherwell Tries - Parkour

We have been involved in the filming of a short documentary with Cherwell Lifestyle, which was fantastic fun! Here's the finished piece:

Huge thanks to both Tess Colley for giving parkour a go and to Lily Taylor for filming it! Was a pleasure meeting you both!

Parkour Map

Throughout the year we have been working hard on finding new places to train, and as a result, we have compiled a map of training locations. If you wish to collaborate, please get in touch!

Click here to see the map!

New Styles and Approaches to Training

Unstructured Sessions

Rather than continuing with the traditional 'coach and student' model of training, we have been experimenting more and more with the unstructured approach to training.

Typically this includes the usual group warm up and joint mobilizations, followed by seeing what people fancy focusing on that day. This dictates the locations we will train at and the time we take to spend there. But the movements that everyone spends their time training are completely up to the individual.
This is how parkour began in this country and the beauty from this approach is that the practitioners who know what they need are able to train exactly that, whilst those not so sure are able to draw inspiration from those around them.
What you end up with is a melting pot of styles, techniques and experience levels. This is underpinned by the beauty of a parkour community - at any point, no matter who you are, you can approach a fellow practitioner and ask them for advice, or they may in turn offer some insight for you, if they have experienced a similar puzzle in the past or spot a fault which you may not have done.

Buildering

Dale Wood ascending the
Botley Rd Bridge

Due to more and more climbers joining our group, we have started finding more and more buildering puzzles in the Oxford Area.
If you are not sure what buildering is, then it's a if you have ever attempted bouldering (a rope-free form of climbing, typically trained at lower heights with shorter, more technical routes or puzzles), then it's basically the same thing, but on man-made structures. A great introduction to the sport is the Foundations of Buildering series by Julie Angel (episode 1 can be found here)

While climbing should be a very important part of any parkour practitioner's movement dictionary, it compliments the more traditionally dynamic form of parkour training very nicely.

New Indoor Training Locations

Abingdon Gymnastics Club

Keymore performing a
standing Back Tuck

We have also been lucky enough to have access to an indoor gymnasium available for us to train in. This environment is very different to what we are used to - the hard surfaces replaced with sprung floors and foam blocks. This is a fantastic location to begin your journey into tricking or acro, or to try any of those movements you have not been able to find a place for outside. To date, the sessions have been on Tuesdays, 8-9pm, however these are being replaced with Monday evening sessions, again at 8-9pm from the 28th July.

Sundays at Pumphouse Parkour

Alex and Sam training
at the Pumphouse

As if one indoor training facility was not enough, the Pumphouse in Faringdon have not got anything much Facebook page to make it happen! happening on Sundays lately, and thus has offered us the use of their space for our training! Not only do they have a large hall and stage area to train on, they also possess two sets of Freemove Portable parkour equipment, which is a great mix of vault boxes, platforms and scaffolding. These will be happening on an ad hoc basis, so please show your interest in this on our
In Addition to this, Dale Wood and Rob Chamberlain still run classes on Saturdays in the same location. If you do grab the chance to check them out and get in touch over at www.thepumphouseproject.co.uk/

The Holidays and Looking to Next Year

Over the holidays, we certainly will still be training in Oxford (and surrounding towns, such as Didcot, Tackely, Reading and anywhere else anyone wants to visit) among with anyone else, willing and able! I mean, with weather like this, it'd be criminal not to!

Looking forwards, we shall of course open up for a new committee in time for next year. The next big event will of course be Oxford Freshers' Fair, running from 8th-10th October. Any help with manning the stall anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated.

If you have any thoughts on how the year went and how to make it better, do not hesitate to let us know on our facebook group, or email us on president@oxfordparkour.co.uk!

Dale Wood performing a standing precision at the Castle Mill Stream Lock

Many thanks to  Mu'adip Shakir (Keymore) and the Pump House for providing the pictures.

Creativity, Parkour Vision, Adaptability, etc.

 

Take a look at the set-up in the photo. What do you see? Please, take a minute to consider what you could do here - if you "do parkour", make a list of all the different things you could train here (and I mean all the ideas you have); if not, think about it anyway. Compare it to any experience in any sport you have, or even to what someone might do in a fitness studio/gym to get stronger. What different ways might you (or another) be able to move here? [The metal frame and trees behind it don't count, too overgrown, but the wall going along the side away from the stairwell does].

This staircase is nothing special - I'm sure there are many just like it all over the place - but this one one was found in a park in either Padova/Mestre (Italy, right by Venice), where I had gone as part of an interrail trip to an event with a 10km-zombie-chase-game the previous night and a parkour jam on the Sunday (blog posts to be found here and here). The park was huge, with a number of different full-size spots throughout (one with lines of rails and some steps, another a concrete built garden thing, a third with a disabled access ramp with rails/walls and a roof spot, etc), but a number of hours in we had moved to a big patch of grass against the plant structure you see in the picture above (but on the side of it), doing some tricks (I had ended up, somehow, being better at tricking than most of the people and was teaching butterfly kicks, twists and possibly a flip of some sort too) and sitting around. This then turned into movements with the flat wall (on a different side of the square plant structure, but the same wall that the steps in the photo are built into) before we came round the corner 15m to this stairwell.

I would guess that we spent ninety minutes on the wall surface and these stairs, mostly just four of us (two of the Italians involved with the event, and Finn from Cologne who had gone along too). We shared moves, both weird movements and well-known ones, that some of us could do and others not, learning and trying new things, and came up with various challenges, routes, things to play with on the stairwell. It was probably one of the best sessions I've ever had (though it's hard to pick looking back, as it's all an incremental development and there were others that led up to this point and that have continued from it), as it seemed that at this point my eyes and mind were open to the possibilites that existed in such a simple spot. On the flat wall we did at least ten different things, some of which I don't know the name of, and at least the same number of challenges and routes around the steps - but I'm certain there are many, many more that we didn't get to. Can you tac off the wall to get to the top? On both sides? Can you do this set of strides? This particular jump? Spin around like this? Do it with your eyes closed? How high can you jump up the steps? Can we all make this jump perfectly first time? And this? That? Heard of that move? etc. And the environment was great - because of the way this "training" was taking place, it was not a hierarchy of who was better like might happen at some spots which have lots of obvious standard movements and much more a melting pot of ideas of the four of us working together. Each of us had different things we could and couldn't do better, different eyes from previous experiences, etc, and so on. 

The moral of the story for parkour people - or better, the slight insight I'm trying to impart - is along the lines of "play around with small spots lots". Maybe confine yourself in a session (or more) to a very small location and see what you can make of it - there's certainly something to be said for creativity happening when you set yourself limits to work inside of. And what is a "spot" anywhere - if parkour is about adapting to the environment, the concept of a spot doesn't make any sense. 

As for non-parkour people (if any of you actually read this to here), this really makes me question the way we treat exercise/movement with gyms (with a very specific set of movements, little variability for the body, less mental exercise with playfulness/creativity/fun) or childrens' playgrounds.

Inspirations I've had towards this style are Steve Moss (when he was in London with PKGen), capoeira that I dabbled in a bit last semester, and videos from the people like Scott Houston, Naim L'1consable ("Spots are Everywhere"), and some random German and Finnish people, I've played with it more recently. Thanks to them, though most of them don't know I exist, and check them out if you're interested in it too.

PS Some of the words I've used are in "these", because the word "training" or "spot" or "parkour" is a bit of an odd word, which I might not agree entirely with the way it's used but is understood for what I'm trying to get across.

PSS This post also at my personal site Alexmay.co.uk, which has more thoughts about parkour and non-parkour things., 

5th Week @ Oxford Parkour

5th Week @ Oxford Parkour

This term we're running a special mid-term event in 5th Week with training every day and a variety of different types of sessions – probably something new for everyone!

If you will be joining us, please let us know here: Event Page

This gives the overview for each session, there will be slightly more detail including a map of where we are meeting on our facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/OXFPK Don't be put off by the word “parkour”, it's just a label we use to refer to a certain style of movement/exercise/play/thinking which is probably quite similar to how you used to play as a child!


Sunday 16th February – 1100 at St Giles

“Introductory Workshop and Training”

We're kicking the week off with a training session open to all abilities – especially complete beginners! If you're not really sure what it is we do, come along to this to find out. We'll have a few different coaches on hand to take you through basic movements (and more) and you'll probably finish the session surprised at what you can do!

We'll have some coached structured training to start with, then after that there will be free jam-style training (ie not coached and unstructured) for those who want to stick around!

Monday 17th February – 1930 at St Giles

   “Hell Night”

Want to get stronger? Hell Night is a very physical type of session aimed more at building strength and discovering where our limits really lie than a technical movement sort of session. It will be packed with a variety of different exercises to work different muscles and aspects. It'll be tough, but the point is to make us tougher. If you want to find out more about the idea, look up what Blane (the practitioner who popularised the idea) has written about it (though ours won't quite be at that level!).

This session will be coached. It's open to ability as the idea is that we all work at our own limits, wherever they are; all you need is some resolve and a desire to push yourself.


Tuesday 18th February – 1800 at Westgate, 2000 at Abingdon Gymnastics Club

“Unstructured Training and Abingdom Gym”

There will be unstructured training in the Westgate area from 1800, after which we will go to the Abingdon Gym for indoor training at a fully-equipped gymnastics centre: foam pit, crash mats, high bars, a sprung floor and more! This gives a chance to those who want it to try out things which are less safe to learn outside, such as tricks and flips.


Wednesday 19th February – 2230, at New College Lane

“Parkour Nuit”

This session involves running around late at night in a near-silent follow-your-leader style. Inspired by David Belle's video of the same name, we'll be exploring the city long after the sun has set doing route-work in as close to silence as we can.

This session will be led and all abilities are welcome.


Thursday 20th February – 1800 at Westgate

Coached Session

This will be an example of the typical training session we have been doing throughout the year. Lead by Nikolay, it will be focusing above all on quality of movement. Typically, the session starts with a thorough warm-up. From there, you will be given challenges designed to work on specific aspects of movement, be it balance, fluidity, creativity, climbing or just the efficient application of power! All levels of ability welcome!


Friday 21st February – 1600 at St Giles

Coached Session

This will be a “standard” Alex-style training session: all organised and coached with focus on certain techniques or aspects of parkour. Typically the session is split into slots 10-20 minutes long with a certain focus and changes between them. If you have any particular requests, get in touch!


Saturday 22nd February – 1030 at South Parks

“Games Session”

Remember being a child playing tig/tag/it in the playground and how much fun that was? For some reason, we play these games a lot less as we get older, even though they are quite fun (and you don't notice the fact you're “exercising” as much). And so we have a session focussed all around playing games! Expect varieties on chasing games such as manhunt and capture the flag, among other things. Feel free to invite anyone who might enjoy it even if they aren't interested in “parkour” specifically.

This session will be organised and led (but due to its nature, “coaching” isn't necessary!).


Sunday 23rd February – 1030 at Manor Road

“Training Session: Walls 101”

Up-and-over. This is a coached training session with particular focus on going up and down walls, such as climb-ups and wall-runs. Focussing on a particular technique helps us to develop it more than the general approach to training usually would and this technique is one with a lot to it.




Sessions will typically last 90 minutes, including warm-up and warm-down, unless otherwise stated.

Sunday 23rd February – 1230 at Castle Mill Stream

“Oxford Jam!”

To finish on a high, I invite everyone to join us for a day of training all over Oxford! We will meet at Castle Mill Stream (map: http://goo.gl/5raD3t), near the station, warm up and train there for a while. From there, we will be moving from spot to spot and training everywhere we can, just like the good old days!
Bring food, bring water and bring your friends!

Meeting notes, Alex's Return and the Week of Awesome!

On Wednesday 29th Jan, Nikolay, Alex and Harry had a long and only slightly rambling chat with regards to how stuff is going and our plans going forwards.
This was prompted by two things -

1. Alex is coming back to Oxford for a few weeks and have we got some plans for you guys!
2. The fact that we had a new committee and it's nice to channel the burst of enthusiasm into something worthwhile.

Here are the outcomes from the hour that we schemed for:

Alex's Visit

First of all, lets do the exciting bit: Alex will be in Oxford for the entire week between Sunday 16th - Sunday 23rd Feb (and then a week after that as well)!

Let excited flailing of arms commence!

For those that have not met him, Alex is the guy responsible for the creation of this group and has been on a year abroad in Germany, for his studies, and is and if it wasn't for his hard work and dedication last year, then many of us would not be training today.

16th - 23rd Feb = Week of Awesome!

Because of this, in part to welcome Alex back, in part because you guys asked for it and in part because we just can, we are planning to run training sessions near enough every day that week! Alex will be bringing his unique twist to the training sessions, where he will either be running or helping run the sessions. Because of this, variety will be the flavour of the week, and the goal will be to get everyone to experience as many new things as we can!

The event for this week is now up and running - Join in now!

Recap of how things have been going:

The state of the club itself is... pretty good I would say! We have ploughed on with between 2-3 sessions a week. Tuesdays are unstructured, "Old Scool" sessions, where we train the old fashioned way. Thursdays have been more structured, with much more focus on structure, perfectionism of the technique of the day and with more guidance. The turnout has been both consistent and filled with exactly the sort of spirit that we look for in a Traceur.

Yeah, you guys are awesome!

New Members Drive

Some of you may have seen an email drop into your inbox. Because we will have Alex down, we are taking advantage of the extra coaching muscle and running a push towards getting new-members to coincide with his arrival. We will be running some beginner-oriented sessions to help people get started (or re-started!) with parkour. If you have been wondering if now is the time to start, then wonder no more! If you have had had that friend saying “yeah that sounds cool, I’ll try it out one day”, now is that day!

If you are reading this and want to learn about dates of what is happening when and where, or just almost sort of kinda want to see what all the fuss is about, Join the community on our Facebook group and say hello!

Financial Situation and Thinking Ahead

Financially speaking, we aren't in an awful place, but we could certainly be doing better. Since our creation only a year and a half ago, the group has been run in a state of perpetual debt, with the guys running it funding things upfront and hoping to recoup costs later - that is some of the members have personally paid up front for things like Freshers Fair, Site Hosting and T-shirts, then recouped the expenses from the club fees, once we have enough.

The initial costs for for these expenses tend to be well into the triple figures, and it would be very nice if we could reach the start of the next academic year without the need for an individual to be out of pocket for however long it takes to recoup that money.

As was always the plan, any money that is made above and beyond the basic running of the group will be spent directly on you guys, be it through hiring a coach for a day, subsidising transport for trips to other communities, the funds will give straight back to the community.

As such, for 100% transparency of what is going on, we are switching to an open book format, which you are all able to view here. Now, everyone is aware of exactly where we stand, what our targets are and what we are spending the money on. It's probably a bit bare-bones at the moment, but we'll be working hard to get our targets/goals and expenses up to date.

To start the ball slowly rolling, I (Nikolay) will be donating some money to the pot every session (including the unstructured ones). Anything that anyone else could contribute during our sessions would help us out a hell of a lot!

Conclusion

Our plans for the coming weeks are:

• More Alex!
• More training!
• More people!
• More new experiences!
• More Awesomes!

Breaking a Jump

This post is my attempt to explain one of my parkour experiences with words, to try and convey what goes on inside my head when I did a particular jump.

Standing two metres high on top of a wall, I glance down to the ground below me, and then rub my hands on my thighs as if to rub them clean. I crouch down, looking across at a window ledge on the other side of the alleyway. My heart is pounding and my hands are shaking, not unnoticeably, from fear. There's an empty sick feeling in the upper part of my stomach.

I climb down from the wall again, angry at myself. Worse; disappointed.

I walk across the alleyway to the ledge, jump up and grab it. Hanging onto it, I pull myself up to test the grip, then check where my feet are against the wall, then spring up into the air and land on the ground. I do this a second time.

I hear myself say to Nikolay, my training buddy of the night who is waiting patiently underneath, that I know I can do it. And I do know it. The distance is comfortable. The height, though at a couple of metres off the ground, is not a physical problem. I can easily take the drop without risk of injury. The techniques have been practised more than enough to be instinctive: my feet will hit the wall first to take the impact and stop the wall slamming into me, to give my hands time to grab on, and to rotate my body so that my legs are below me incase I fall to the ground. I know that in the air, I'll first look at the wall and then concentrate on the ledge for my hands to grab.

The knowledge should be comforting, but fear isn't always a rational emotion. I wouldn't consider doing the jump if I thought there was a risk.

"I've got it this time", I say as I climb back up the first wall, bouncing up it with unconscious ease. Heart pounding, hands quavering, and feeling sick, I look towards the wall again. Two metres off the ground, it's scary again. I stare intently at the ledge, then crouch again to look across. Crouching means a different angle to help gauge the distances, means that it doesn't look as high, and because the ledge is only in line with my waist, I'll have to take off half from a crouch anyway.

Two minutes pass. Apart from some more crouching, mumbling and rubbing off hands on legs, nothing has changed. I climb down again, frustrated and defeated. A feeling of worthlessness comes over me. Physically, this is nothing difficult, and if I can't do something that's easy then what can I do? I'm filled with an odd mixture of frustration and despair.

It's about ten minutes since I started. I've been up and down the wall at least five times, and at least three people have walked past. I imagine that Nikolay and two others with us are bored. When I first climbed up, I knew that I had a small window of opportunity which I should use, before the wait and excess thinking built up a fear that this jump doesn't deserve. But I waited too long, the window passed and the fear grew.

I climb up the wall for a sixth time, again with a positive comment which, as the cliche goes, was clearly more to reassure me than anybody else. It's irrelevant if anyone else believes I can or will do it, we'll find out soon enough.

A minute more of pre-jump ritual glancing and hand rubbing. Suddenly, I lean forward slightly and my eyes sharpen. I've committed.

There's a point of no return with jumps. Now that I've leaned forward, I'm leaving this wall one way or another. It's dangerous to get to this point without the focus, as any mental dithering can cause something to go wrong: half-committing to something means you compromise the movement, and in this case would mean, at best, jumping safely down to the floor, or at worst, crashing into the wall opposite. Any habit of bailing midway is dangerous, but thankfully there's no possibility of that here.

Intensely focussed, time dilates slightly and my awareness heightens. My eyes narrow at the ledge; my arms start to swing to balance me and help tip forward; I can sense the corner of the wall beneath my feet as I keep grip. Crouching and tipping, I explode into the jump. My feet hit the wall and bounce slightly, then my hands catch the top of the ledge. My face is stopped from colliding with the ledge half a foot in front of it. Half a second later, my right hand slides down the sloped plastic ledge and I drop to the ground.

I tried the jump but didn't quite manage it.

Nikolay claps a couple of times. I feel a weird mixture of emotions. Relief and the happiness of success - in actually attempting the jump - flood warmly, but also with some frustration. Not just that I didn't manage it completely - overcoming the mental barrier was much more important - but that it was easy and I wasted so much time building up to it.

Grinning, I climb back up to the first wall. The second jump I usually find scarier and my hands are still shaking, but the experience from the first attempt makes it feel safer. Half a minute later, I jump again, and this time I end up hanging on the ledge. We call this cat position (or cat grab)¹, hands on a ledge and feet against a wall, as that's what cats look like halfway through climbing up onto something.

I drop down again. Happiness spreads, but so does the adrenaline. Oddly, there's more adrenaline after the jump and I feel more scared, though there's no target of the fear. The sick feeling in my stomach is joined by warmth and I just want to sit down and hug myself. It's a strange feeling.

"Once is never", I say to Nik. The adage means that doing something only once is so insignificant that it may as well not count. I promise to do the jump three times.

The three jumps are over within a minute, once I drag myself out of my emotionally raw state. The focus is still there and the fear not completely gone, but the mental barrier is smashed. Broken. After the third, I decide I'd like a picture of it, and get Nikolay to stand down the alleyway with the camera pointing towards me. The camera is just an iPhone and the method is taking a video from which to extract a still. The quality of the picture isn't great, but it's the meaning behind it which is important. The success felt from the jump, from facing up to what built up to be a huge fear, is great, and has stayed with me for a couple of weeks.

This is what we call Breaking a Jump in Parkour: doing something which is mentally intimidating (sometimes because of physical intimidation, othertimes not), and the repeated facing of fear is a key part of parkour practice, one of the things that makes it stand out from other sport practices to me. From it we learn ourselves better, sharpen our mental aspect, and really see where our abilities stand.

If you're interested more about fear in everyday life and parkour, here's a podcast I recommend - download it and listen to it on a train or walk sometime. There's also a post here written by a very experienced practitioner, though it's aimed at practitioners it should still be interesting. I find it hugely rewarding to challenge myself mentally and the experience is great for learning how to deal with your emotions. Also, doing this jump seems to be a slight turning point for my parkour: before it, I was low on confidence and didn't feel I could do much, but now I'm able to do a lot more - today I did a jump which, rationally, should be scarier than this one, but it took me less than a couple of minutes to do.

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1 I've heard this was based on a confusion with french though. The french names saut de chat and saut de bras mean (unless I'm mistaken), meaning cat-jump and arm-jump, got confused by some of the early english practitioners. Cat-jump being cat-pass, or kong/monkey, arm-jump also known as cat leap like I was doing here. ^↩