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.

---

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. ^↩

Michaelmas term in review

Training at Westgate, picture taken by Mu'adib 'Keymore' Shakir

With the first term of this academic year over, I wanted to give a huge thanks to everyone who made it what it was! It's been great to be able to train with so many different people this term, and it's a good time to look back over the year and remind ourselves what we have been up to.

Last term, our aim was to really inject some more variety to how we train and what we can train in Oxford.

Our sessions were organised every week and mostly ran on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Compared to last year, we've had more coaches, each with their own unique take on the discipline and their own eyes for movements. We have also scoured Oxford to find more interesting, varied locations, which has meant that the people training have got more choice of where to go.

Finally, we made a push towards encouraging non-structured sessions. As the name suggests, these sessions have been more about getting people directly into the spirit of training without the strict guidance that tends to come with the structured sessions. The ability to find movements and routes for yourself is a vital skill for a Traceur, used to progress your training in the direction that interests you.

Its been also been fantastic to have had some of you guys organising your own sessions and training on your own as well! I am hoping that more of these impromptu sessions keep happening next term, as it not only means that you guys are able to train more, but it also helps visibly spread parkour to others, meaning that our community is able to grow.

Talking of next term, you can expect more of the same to keep happening, but with one small addition: we will be putting on trips to visit other parkour communities in the UK. Nothing injects a spark of enthusiasm and inspiration as training with new people, be it in their local environments, learning to move through a new space, or getting another community to visit our home turf and cast fresh eyes on our now familiar obstacles.

Looking forwards to training with you all again in the New year! As ever, follow us on the Facebook group to see what you get up to!

Cat Balance

I have a new respect for cat-balance.

For those who don't know what it is, it's quadrupedie (crawling, but hands and feet, not knees) on a rail (or railing, as I'm told it's more properly called). It's called cat-balance presumably because this is how cats walk along the top of fences. You should move your hands and feet in same order as a cat - left hand and foot in the middle, right hand and foot front and back (or vice versa) and then alternate moving the back foot or the back hand. The reason for this is something to do with balance and making yourself closer into the middle and/or diamond shaped instead of parallelogram shaped to be more stable (I think), but try it for yourself and you should see.

Not the best photo but hopefully you get the ideaalso

I haven't done this drill properly for at least a year, despite knowing it's theoretical benefits, but with a minor ankle injury from a precision (very minor, it's barely noticeable only three days on but I'm giving it until next weekend) and a wrist weakness from a few months ago I thought it was an ideal movement to practice today. I was right.

The first suitable rail I found was about 60m long going up a hillside path at the side of a road, the incline was noticeable but not huge. After testing it out and finding it harder than I'd anticipated, I set myself the challenge of getting from one end to the other, with a checkpoint on each 2.5m section for when I fell off. I probably fell off somewhere between fifteen and twenty times overall.

From halfway, sweat started dripping off my face and my breathing was heavy. Then my wrists because sore, my arms started to shake, it became painful round the back of my shoulders and, right at the end, one of my quads started to cramp up. I would guess it took me around twenty-fine minutes to complete, but I wasn't timing and could have been longer (or maybe it just felt like longer!).

It's a pretty good all round exercise! It works wrist strength, the general core (front and, I think, back too), and general upper body; it also works endurance for the quads (hence the cramping) and around the ankle, though maybe not quite as much; and last but not least, balance and coordination. It's also useful because it is non-impact (apart from when you fall off), so if you have some sort of wrist or ankle injury then this drill should be possible sooner than other movements (running or weight on hands). It can be done in all weather and all light conditions, so it's a pretty flexible drill.

From this glowing feedback, you probably won't be surprised that I would recommend that you include cat-balance more in your training than it probably already is (if mine was anything to go by). If it's too easy, crawl downhill or backwards (or upwill-backwards). If that's too easy, also blindfold yourself.

I remember being asked during a session (by Harry, I think) whether there's any practical application (in movement) outside of being a drill. Initially I was unable to answer, though it is definitely a drill worth practising anway, but I have since thought of one: climbing up (or down) something that's around a 45-degree angle. It's too steep to comfortably walk on, but not vertical enough that it can be climbed, so crawling works best. This isn't particularly common and this drill is more than worth doing just for the drill's sake, but it does at least have some possible application!

Parkour: Be Useful

I've recently read the (out-of-copyright) translation of David Belle's book about parkour. It's definitely worth a read - tells you more about parkour, in a way, but also isn't about physical parkour and is more a discussion of his life and life philosophy, meaning that even if you don't care for parkour it's still very interesting. I also saw a couple of interview transcripts from David earlier today, which were also quite interesting.

I don't want to talk about what parkour is or isn't. But I will talk about a part of it. 

One saying that David and the French guys had (they had quite a few little slogans) was "être fort pour être utile". They actually got this from George Herbert, the guy who developed Methode Naturelle*, and I hadn't realised the extent to which Parkour developed out of that. At one point David even says that people should do two years of methode naturelle training before starting parkour.

Anyway, this saying has been taken on by parkour too. Be strong to be useful. I'm going to talk about it a bit and say what it means for us in actual application.

The first meaning I see is that we should be strong. Strong is good for a number of reasons (I'll take it as given that you agree that 'strong is good'). For parkour especially, when we're bouncing around concrete, strength is useful. We don't want to damage our bodies from this training (on the whole, we're making them better, but there can be damage as part of this whole), both through normal training and when we fall. Lots of experienced parkour people can fall quite spectacularly but still be fine - for example, David Belle here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A86eL9ynDXo - which is quite incredible. Watch it and marvel. Another of the parkour sayings is 'etre et durer' - to do and to last - which I won't go into in more detail (this post is long enough already), but thought worth mentioning.

A few of us doing some strength training. It's also 'functional'!

The second meaning I see is that it means that the strength we want is useful strength. It isn't enough to be able to bench 100kg, what's more important is whether you can get on top of a wall you've grabbed with one hand, onto a bar you're dangling from, or how far you can carry somebody, or all of these other useful things. In this sense, what we want is functional strength. It's not about bodybuilding but your physical ability to actually do, not just muscles which look good and have some statistical strength. This also means strengthening the tendons and ligaments and bones, which some gym training doesn't really do.

'Functional strength' is a phrase thrown about a lot among people who exercise. I think it's commonly used to mean exercises which aren't isolated liner muscle movements (like bicep curl or leg press) but instead ones with a chain of muscles doing something, as typically these have some actual use (function) to them. But there's more to it than that. Not only does the body part of us have to be strong enough to do something, but we have to be able to mentally do it too. Obviously we need the technique for it, but we also need to be able to do it. This sometimes means overcoming fear: you aren't able to use your ability and be useful if your fear stops you (or inhibits you, as it's usually harder to do things well while scared). This is true function: what the limits of your ability are. Sometimes these are physical (I can jump so far, so precisely, I can do this much weight, I can pull myself onto a wall this many times, I can get up a wall this high). Also to take into account is consistency: being able to grab a 14ft wall one time in ten doesn't help if you're being chased by a dog and need to make it, for example. And third, as I said, is the mental limits. "Yes, I can make this jump, but only if I prepare myself for it." Or, "I can do a cat-leap 10ft, but if there was a drop beneath my I'd be too scared to do it". 

Rail precisions are scary

Until recently, that's all I thought this phrase meant. Be strong, and have useful strength. Turns out there's more to it than that.

"Be strong to be useful" doesn't just mean we're being strong so that we're able to be useful (like functional strength); it also means that with our strength we should be useful. It's a call to actually be useful. This the same idea as "with great power comes great responsibility": do something with your strength. Carry someone's shopping, or a suitcase up the stairs, or whatever.

Interestingly, David Belle seems to think that a key purpose (if not the main one) of his parkour training was so that he could rescue his family if need be - his family had a past of being fire fighters (good ones, in the Paris squad which apparently has a great reputation). Blane (Chris Rowat, now with PKGen in London, very inspirational) has said a similar thing in the past.They train for other reasons too (or at least get other benefits from parkour), but this is a focus for them. This is probably utility fully realised, the ability to save someone's life. Both physically and mentally (especially not being overwhelmed by fear and being able to focus and do). This is why, for example, height training is good, as that gives us fear, and practising with fear helps you to learn to deal with it. Similarly with any jump that needs breaking or a movement that makes you scared. 

Moving over a wall quickly

 "Ok, great!", I imagine you saying, "you talked in a philosophical way about the discipline of parkour.". How about some application of all this to training.

In parkour, we must train to be useful. There's the obvious stuff: improve what you can do, get stronger, overcome fear and other barriers. That's what we do in parkour training most of the time (aesthetics are kind-of irrelevant, and showing off is not the point and is bad for parkour). Then there's the active step of actually being useful. But here's some suggestions for how to train to be more useful.

1. Train in all conditions. Not reluctantly, but embrace it. When it rains, you've got this whole new environment to try out and challenge yourself in (I've written about this before on the Oxford Parkour blog). But you also need to become capable of moving in the rain, not being scared, and knowing how the rain affects the environment for what you can and can't do. Train in the cold, train in the heat, train in the wet and the icy. If you have to use real parkour (instead of artificial training) by running for the bus, escaping from something, or saving a life, you can't choose the conditions, so get used to it.

2.  Train in a more realistic way. I've noticed this when I've had to run for the train this week: there's no warm-up and you need to be ready. Try doing some training without doing a warm-up and wearing the clothes you usually wear, and see what you can do. Go straight for the difficult stuff (for you) and with speed, because when it comes to it you have to get it right first time. 

3. You should always be ready. Physically, this means looking after it with stretches/mobility/massage (lacrosse ball!) and nutrition. Mentally, pay attention: be aware as you walk. Don't listen to music too loud or get distracted by your smartphone; instead be aware of what's going on and the environment you're in. When I'm out at night or in a dodgy area or get a bad vibe, I pay more attention. But I do it at normal times too: seeing where cars are, what other people are doing, etc. (This has its own merit instead of being incase something bad happens, it means I have fewer accidents and can do things like cross roads at efficient times and wait less at traffic lights). Be always ready, always alert, and ready to act without hesitation if you need to, as if something happens you probably won't have time: for example if somebody starts a fight, tries to steal from you, or a car is going to crash into you.

So there are some thoughts of mine about parkour philosophy and training style!

*Methode Naturelle (natural method) is a style of training meant to be all-round and natural, including running/swimming/fighting/climbing/lifting heavy things like rocks and logs/other things. It's modern reincarnation is the MovNat franchise (not sure if franchise is the right word), which is also great.

(This post is written by Alex, also at www.alexmay.co.uk, my blog which also includes non-parkour things)