Beast Coast

Most of the NY crowd was able to get to Beast Coast on time after an all night session of PDQ and a nap on the Chinatown bus. As we got to Primal there was a small group already training, people mingled and hopped in to the little vault session as more people from all over poured into the gym.

Skipper arrived with all of the food a little later and got to grilling. Mark told us it would be about half an hour before it was ready and rhetorically asked if people wanted to get ‘Primal’. He led a great warm up with a range of dynamic movements and static holds and afterwards told us all to line up for three rounds of wall climbs on the 8 foot box. He timed us and kept the people in line waiting to go busy with more exercises. By then we had around 40 people and we made the first round in a miserable 3:33. Mark told us that for the second round, every second we got more than 3:00 we would have to do 2 burpees. We heeded the warning and with a little strategy managed to pull off the second round in an excellent 2:06. Of course this meant that for the last round, we were told, that any second over 1:50 we would have to do 3 burpees. After some serious pumping it we managed to get 1:45, less than half the time of the first round!

More people started coming in, the food was devoured and a good jam session was started at Primal. With a couple interesting setups and lots of people challenging themselves, the boxes at Primal saw some good use. Afterwards we headed out with a full crew to a park nearby on New Jersey Avenue. There was a group somewhere in the park working on just about every element of training. At one point we even got a 55 person game of PDQ together.

From there a few groups jogged over to Meridian Hill Park and got an early start on training there. The hot weather lent to being lazy but there were plenty of people working on wolf crescents and big precisions. There was a slackline set up for a while and a hack circle, it was a great place to climb and jump around as well as to just chill out. Everyone headed their separate ways for dinner and met back up at Primal where people got back to the modifiable training ground.

After a short session in the gym everyone headed upstairs for Skipper’s film festival. It featured over a dozen great parkour videos from all over the country that were presented to us for the first time. It was excellent to see people pushing parkour both in terms of movement and in terms of capturing it’s essence through video. There were videos submitted from people with a range of skill levels and videos that have taken 16 years to shoot to one that was shot the day of the event. Overall the festival was well received and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing it again at next year’s Beast.

Once the film festival ended everyone either got in line to shower or headed down stairs to keep training. There was a great tricking session, a few people drilling the basics, and some troopers ending the day off with a crossfit workout. Training went on into the night but eventually everyone decided the smartest thing to do was to find some place to lie down and get some sleep for the next day.

When I got up the next day we were being pushed out of the gym so we could get an early start. After a trip to Safeway we headed to the Metro so that we could get to Gateway Park in Rosslyn.
Interesting architecture and a large amount of open space lent to it being a great place to start off the day. Travis and Mark led a warm-up with everyone that I only got to see the tail end of, followed by a conditioning session led by Mark. By the time that was ending there were people spread out throughout the park pushing themselves towards different goals. After missing the warm-up and conditioning I knew I needed to get some quality training in, so a small group was pulled together and we all did QM drills through the grass. Between the hot sun above us and the cool grass below, it was the perfect way to spend a morning.

After jamming around Gateway for a while everyone headed across the bridge and got some lunch. People began meeting up at the Exorcist stairs and I revisited my old challenge of QMing to the top without taking a break. When I finished Zac started and by the time he was pushing up his final stairs more people had taken it on. For some background to this, two years ago I told Mark this was my goal, before having seen the stairs of course, and he quickly said it was impossible (10 pushups). That day I got up just past the second landing and took a break, proving him, at least temporarily, right. I trained a bit and came back the next month to complete it. From then to now I can’t say how proud I am of the parkour community, the number of people that completed this past Sunday what Mark had once told me was impossible was nothing short of astounding.

Once we finished some more conditioning on and around the stairs we all headed up to George Washington University. There were plenty of rails, walls, and jersey barriers to keep everyone occupied and the group quickly spread out around campus. I didn’t make it past the parking lot, but there were several groups wandering the grounds and a large one trained at the chapel. Once training finished we said our goodbyes to some and headed back to Primal to say the same to others.

I headed back to Zac’s house where we got a big post-Beast BBQ together. 14 of us chowed down on steak, chicken and burgers, along with a range of veggies and for dessert some excellent s’mores. The s’mores were a little unconventional in that they were made with Reeses topped by the marshmallow, no graham cracker necessary. With some creative and adventurous thinking we also managed to accent them nicely. With a great weekend of training and full with good food everyone headed downstairs and passed out.

We woke up to a bright and sunny day and decided the best way to spend it would be out on the water. We piled people into a canoe, swam around, and had an excellent time. We even set up a slack line between two pilings over the water. Slack water muscle ups and slippery feet led to a lot of laughs. The Severn River was warm, the sun was hot, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

The winds changed a bit and the sky grew grayer as we packed up everything and put it away. We headed back up to the house to hang out and cook over the grill again. After plenty of burgers and dogs and chicken we all headed downstairs to finish off the night. We started a game of Pushup Poker, with everyone in it and playing to win. The dealer chooses the exercise, everyone in ante’s a certain number with relative difficulty, and deals out the chosen game of poker. Rounds of betting involve adding more of an exercise to the pot and people have the opportunity to fold out and do exercises equivalent to the pot. Lots of creativity and terrible poker playing led to some serious working out. Chris Salvato lost the first big hand having to do 90 Squats. The biggest loss was by me and Adam Kroll who found ourselves owing 26:00 of plank. After spreading out 20:00 of it throughout the hours of the game, we decided to finish strong. We ended it with 6:00 straight and decided that we should just go straight through and do another 6:00.

The group thinned out to 6 of us and we decided that if you wanted to leave the game you had to admit you were a bitch. In the same respect, the game stopped being poker when we decided you had to say the same thing when you folded out. I rode more bad hands all the way to the end than I can count. After 7 hours of so many different kinds of pushups, squats and squat holds, handstand holds and shoulder taps, pistols and pistol jump burpees, more exercises than I can remember, and of course, way too much plank, the group thinned down to 3. Bryan Augestine, Adam Kroll and I headed out in to the rain around 5am to finish it all off. We QMed down to the water from Zac’s house. With steep wet stairs and holly leaves to get stuck in our hands and feet the trip was a rough one. Once we got there we had a workout on his pier, complete with several rounds and kinds of QM, plenty of lunges and enough different drills to leave us thoroughly trashed. We jumped into the water to finish it all off with 15:00 of treading water. The minutes inched on and when we finally reached 15 we decided to keep pushing. At 15 we did a minute of just legs followed by reaching 16 and switching to a minute of just arms. The worst part of this came in the middle of it, at 16:30, when I asked Adam the time his watch said, I registered it, and continued to struggle to push myself up with my hands, my head sinking lower than it had before, I remember looking up at the sky, counting out my strokes, the whole world slowed down, and when I asked Adam for the time again it was 16:37. Once reaching 17:00 the last three minutes to 20 failed in comparison, and we emerged with a muscle up on Zac’s dock victorious. At 6am, after 8 hours of tough training, standing in the rain at the end of the pier, we were champions.

Beast Coast was an overwhelming success. More than 120 people from around the country showed up to train. The technical skill and conditioning level being pushed forward was impressive. The camaraderie between traceurs bettering themselves and helping to better each other was amazing. It was so great to see so many people coming out and moving, pushing themselves in so many different ways.

(b)East Coast Reflection

(b)East Coast; a yearly Memorial Day weekend Parkour and Freerunning jam held in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area. I have participated in this event for the last 3 years. The first year I was there, there were perhaps 30 people at the event. Last year there were around 60 or so. This year there were over 130 people participating in the training and group events that the Beast had to offer!

This jam is usually my wake up call and my yearly reminder that no matter what I feel I have accomplished in the last year, there is so much out there that I have yet to see and do. Some of the places that we all trained in I have been to many times before, however people saw things at these spots that I hadn't thought of before. I saw people accomplish feats that inspired me to want to train harder. I saw people pushing themselves to accomplish amazing things, which made me proud to say that we were doing Parkour training.

I also met many, many people who I had only heard of or read posts by on APK. It was amzing seeing so many people get together and have so much in common for having never met each other face to face. I even saw some minor hero worship as new practitioners watched on as menbers of the Tribe who were in attendance worked on various routes and jumps. I can't blame them though, as I love getting the chance to watch Tribe members in action, and at the jam, everyone was encouraged to train with them.

I am not the biggest fan of large Jams, as I prefer training alone or with a small contingent of people. More seems to be accomplished in those settings. I will say this though; I am a fan of what these larger national Jams can do to inspire, open one's eyes, and to bring together teh community.

The Summertime Challenge

While Parkour takes up a large part of my life, I also study Marketing and Business, with a focus in technology. I spent a better part of the Winter and Spring looking for summer employment, hopefully doing some sort of Internet Marketing. Due to the economy, however, it's unlikely I'm going to be employed this summer. I'll be out making contacts in the community, but there will be a lot more free time than I anticipated.

At school, we don't watch television. My roommate is actually going to sell his TV, it's been so long since we last used it. But in the summer I'm not around as many people, and often I'll turn the TV on as background noise while making breakfast or something. Often I'll get sucked into whatever I'm watching and end up wasting half the day. I always feel like crap after, but it's just what happens.

So now I'm in a quandary. I'm going to have a lot of free time, but I don't want it to get sucked up by TV. So I've come up with a summer challenge for myself, and I invite all of you to partake as well:

The challenge is essentially "No TV during daylight." No movies, no video games, nothing. Computer use is restricted to email and business uses. Instead, I propose everyone create a list - a long list - of things to do.

This list should comprise of skills to learn, books to read, places to go, and things to do. Mark each one in a category, and then write the skill. Don't limit yourself to Parkour oriented skills - use this summer to make yourself a more rounded person.

An exerpt from my list:

• Gymnastics: Consistent 10 second handstand


• Gymnastics: Front Lever Progression - Advanced Tuck


• Tricking: B-twist


• Tricking: Flashkicks
  
• Marketing: Read at least two SEO books


• Marketing: Attend at least 3 networking events a month


• Juggling (balls): Factory on both sides


• Juggling (clubs): Cuts with clubs


• Juggling (poi): Five beat weave


• Circus: Learn to ride Unicycle


• Slacklining: Vertical jump


• Slacklining: Horizontal jump at least two feet.


• Reading: Read 5 fiction books


• Reading: Read 5 non-fiction books.
  
• Anatomy: Learn names of major muscles in the body, how to ID them.


• Martial Arts: Find local Kali group and learn basics of Kali.


• Martial Arts: Track down Taekwondo instructor, train with him.


• Cars: Learn how to change my oil


• Cars: Teach sister to parallel park.

Again, this is just an exerpt from my list. I want everyone to make their own list for the summer, print it out, and put it on their refridgerator. When you complete an item, physically cross it off.

Your list doesn't have to be realistic for the time constraints. I doubt I'll get all of this, let alone my entire list, complete in twelve weeks. But at least every day, I'll be able to wake up and know that I have a lot of things I can do instead of watching television.

Jam Wrapped

The Atlanta jam was a blast this past weekend and I am grateful to all those who came out despite the light rain we had on both days. Rain is no excuse to cancel training and only provides a new challenge to your training. Just be sure to take caution, especially to people with no prior rain training experience. Water changes the the way you should interact with the environment, (smooth surfaces generally are more slippery when wet, while rough ones usually remain quite grippy) Just approach rain training for the first time like you would the first time you ever tried practicing parkour and you will be fine.

A few years ago I did a photo shoot with this photographer Andrew Kornylak for Time Magazine. He was recently a featured photographer in Nikon World Magazine and did a audio slide show for the site.
If you are interested here's the link to the article and click where it says "audio slide show" (I'm photo number 4)
http://www.nikonusa.com/Learn-And-Explore/Nikon-World/ftt52d8a/1/The-Moves.html#

Also I can't wait for beast coast, I've never actually made it these past four years so I am making it a point to make this one.

The (B)east is lurking...

HIpk - Parkour Awareness Month

During the month of April we did what we called a Parkour Awareness Party. What that meant was that we would bring our equipment to certain beach parks that we knew were busy on the weekends. We did one day out of every weekend (sat, sun, sat. sun) We set up at key busy points, always near the ocean, was very welcoming and we did make sure to invite or at least have a little chat with whomever was an observant. Our main goal was to open the doors to any question or interest to join and participate, to enjoy a different beach day. We had a banner and flyers. Got several people joining and still coming. Lots of normal inquires based on curiosity rather than interest, so I am sure we also did our part educating the regular curios type, perhaps if they see parkour/freerunning again in the future/media/etc they will think of the day at the beach when a group of some crazy jumpy people expressed to them how "crazy" this really journey.

All for the want of a shoe

I'm going to say this right off the bat; I am not a big fan of corporate control. It upsets me when a company see something only as a means to profit as opposed to a possible venue for mutual benefit.

That being said, I have to speak about the possible ending of the K-Swiss Frerunning line of shoes. In my personal opinion, I have not seen any other company do so much for Parkour and Freerunning as K-Swiss has. The tours and demonstrations that they set up in an attempt to launch their line were staffed and run by experienced practitioners whose goal at each event that I have seen (both in the US and overseas) was only to safely and effectively spread proper knowledge of the discipline. The line was supported by a founder, Mr. Sebastian Foucan, and it's demonstrations featured absolutely awesome talent from around the world, including Levi Meewenberg and Daniel Illabaca. K-Swiss was even giving away tutorial DVD's to people so that they could assist in the proper education of people interested in these disciplines.

Unfortunately, the line is possibly going to be ended; K-Swiss has already removed most of the information regarding Frerunning and the associated line of shoes from it's site. I am not going to preach that the K-Swiss brand of shoes were the best shoes to train in, as I think that depends upon where you are and what you prefer. I will however say that the loss of this line is a step backwards in the advancement of these disciplines, because there are few companies out there willing to support traceurs, attempt to promote them in a positive light, and who will assist in having actual practitioners get face to face time with the public to promote these arts we love.

If you are interested in saving the K-Swiss freerunning line, Mark Toorock would like to hear from you. He is meeting with K-Swiss on Wednesday, May 20 to discuss the end of their support for Parkour and Freerunning. He would appreciate if anyone willing would send "Ariake Love Letters" that detail why you like the K-Swiss line of shoes, and what it means to you that they are discontinuing them. It would be appreciated if you could include a picture of your shoes and you training in them with your letter. You can mail it to: m2@americanparkour.com

Flow Jam

Hey just wanted to talk a bit about a great training session we put together in NY. A little over ten people came out to train, a few of them doing parkour for the first time but had trained extensively in other disciplines. and a couple completely new people. We started it all off with a proper warm up and it was great to see some of these new guys trudging on right behind me on all of this QM they hadn't tried before. Everyone managed to push out every step and everyone ended it off feeling satisfied.
From there we broke the big group down into 3 smaller ones led by Nikkie, Irish, and myself. Nikkie led an extensive railwork section teaching people how to flow and weave through rails. One of the guys there would have no problem doing muscle up after muscle up, but when it came to those underbars he was working up a sweat. Irish led a section on vaulting, teaching people to keep tempo and to transition well between vaults. He put everyone through some time trials on some circuits he made up. I led a section on plyometric work, teaching people to better bound and rebound through their environment and of course stressing to always use proper landing technique and never train plyometrics too frequently. To finish it all off we broke down in to two groups and each set up their own circuits incorporating what they had learned.
It was a really positive experience, it's great to have new people coming and training hard and striving for self improvement.

Videos and Parkour

I started training because I saw a Ripley's Believe It or Not with the Yamakasi featured in it. It was brought up in conversation with Brian while I was in college, but it wasn't until I saw videos of it online that I started thinking "maybe I should go out and try this."

Part of the fun of training when I started was filming what we were doing because we loved editing video and I think we all wanted to be Jackie Chan at heart. I look back now and think "Why would you even film that, it is so ... bad." The answer though is very simple ... because it was fun.

When we started, training was all about fun. We had a good time together and we were getting better at something we enjoyed. As we got more serious, the training became more serious, but it was still fun to train and to do it together. We stopped filming as much because it got in the way of the training, but every once and a while we’d pull the camera out to review what we were doing.

I have heard and read a lot of comments saying that internet videos (usually YouTube is singled out here) are a leading proponent in the defamation of parkour and the creation of negative viewpoints on it, but I can’t help to think where I’d be if there weren’t videos (and quite a few that we saw when we started were not good by any means) on the internet to spark interest and lead people to find more or better information on what we do.

I bring this up because Brian and I read about the film festival that Skipper is having at (b)EAST Coast this year and we thought, "Why not have a little fun?" I don't know if we'll be able to get together and film and edit anything between now and then, but we will try. It actually makes me kind of excited because this activity has made me remember all the good times had when we were just jumping around trying to be creative, both with training and with filming. And while I can guarantee we won’t be putting out an amazing video like those from Levi or Frosti, perhaps something we do will inspire someone on some level.

Regardless, we’ll have fun.