Familiar Peaks
I hate it when you find truth in a cliché.
“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” “Youth is wasted on the young.” “Don’t grow up too fast.”
My life seems to have gone about 180 degrees in the last year. From October 2007 to October 2008 I was living. I was teaching martial arts, training in the martial arts, training parkour, and doing performances and traveling because of parkour. I got to go to some amazing places I had never been to before; Chicago, Las Vegas, Hawaii. I was in the best shape of my life. I got to meet and be trained by some amazing people; Bill ‘Superfoot’ Wallace, and the Parkour Generations instructors Kazuma, Forest, Dan, and the Vigroux brothers. I got married to a wonderful woman who supported all of this, even letting me train on our honeymoon in Europe.
Unfortunately, life has its ups and downs and leads us all down different paths. I ended up getting an 8-5 job for various reasons, moving and buying a house, and finally “growing up” as some of my relatives so nicely stated. Needless to say, the time I have for training has been drastically cut short.
Where at one point I felt as though I was progressing, charging forward, ever expanding and improving, now I feel as though I am merely working to maintain. Strangely enough, that is just as exciting to me at this point. Having to work so hard to constantly achieve the same thing, while frustrating at first, afterwards provides the same liberating feeling each time I climb those familiar peaks. I now treasure each true training session, as long and difficult training seems to now be a more rare occurrence; most of my regular ‘training’ has become merely maintaining physical conditioning which rarely involves overcoming the fear and skill barriers that I have yet to rise above. Each instance where I find time to revisit, I walk away thinking “You’re not too old yet. You’re not past the point of no return.” It is a shame however that I did not work harder when I had the time, because if I had, these familiar peaks that I am constantly re-visiting would be a little higher.
“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” “Youth is wasted on the young.” “Don’t grow up too fast.”
My life seems to have gone about 180 degrees in the last year. From October 2007 to October 2008 I was living. I was teaching martial arts, training in the martial arts, training parkour, and doing performances and traveling because of parkour. I got to go to some amazing places I had never been to before; Chicago, Las Vegas, Hawaii. I was in the best shape of my life. I got to meet and be trained by some amazing people; Bill ‘Superfoot’ Wallace, and the Parkour Generations instructors Kazuma, Forest, Dan, and the Vigroux brothers. I got married to a wonderful woman who supported all of this, even letting me train on our honeymoon in Europe.
Unfortunately, life has its ups and downs and leads us all down different paths. I ended up getting an 8-5 job for various reasons, moving and buying a house, and finally “growing up” as some of my relatives so nicely stated. Needless to say, the time I have for training has been drastically cut short.
Where at one point I felt as though I was progressing, charging forward, ever expanding and improving, now I feel as though I am merely working to maintain. Strangely enough, that is just as exciting to me at this point. Having to work so hard to constantly achieve the same thing, while frustrating at first, afterwards provides the same liberating feeling each time I climb those familiar peaks. I now treasure each true training session, as long and difficult training seems to now be a more rare occurrence; most of my regular ‘training’ has become merely maintaining physical conditioning which rarely involves overcoming the fear and skill barriers that I have yet to rise above. Each instance where I find time to revisit, I walk away thinking “You’re not too old yet. You’re not past the point of no return.” It is a shame however that I did not work harder when I had the time, because if I had, these familiar peaks that I am constantly re-visiting would be a little higher.
Labels: american parkour, cliche, freerunning, making time, parkour, parkour training, training
posted by Sam Slater at
8:31 AM
2 Comments:
Sam I love you.
I was going to make basically this exact same post today.
Also I think you mean 180 degrees. :p Or maybe not, I'm terrible at subtext. Or something.
<3 Sammich.
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