Making a Living

We went out on a ninja mission. It was truly epic. Travis and I waited till after dark and made our way into the streets. We climbed, we ran, we trained, we balanced, we flipped, we conquered fears, we saw new possibilities, we drank really bad bubble tea. It was a good night. At the end of the night we stood on the edge of a building and felt the night breeze traverse the city and find our faces. But what we experienced, or at least I can confirm this for myself, had little to do with the obstacles we had overcome, with the challenges we faced, the interested looks of people who happened to catch a glimpse of our training, or even with the sense of accomplishment that follows achieving one's goals. Instead this was a feeling of completeness, of reality finding its way into the daily struggle of a life we shouldn't have taking over the way of life we were meant to live. In my bones I felt real for that moment, as if I was doing what I should be doing all the time, in being able to move and see the world around me, in being able to believe in something, even if it's only myself, in being able to be as I feel I should be, now with strength in my legs and confidence in my hands.

I am truly lucky, to have the life I have. A body that is capable, a mind that is active, a family that are supportive, friends that are motivational, a job that others dream of. Because of all these amazing things I can do what I ignored my teachers in class thinking about, what I spend everyday training to do, what I write about, dream about, think about every moment: Living. For me the mission wasn't just to practice parkour it was to live life. Parkour to me isn't a way of life, it's a way to live life. In a world that constantly realigns our beliefs of what is important, about what matters, and what it means to live, parkour offers a way to acknowledge the absurdity of existence and the opportunities we have and how we've accepted so many of them waltzing by in pursuit of what we like to think of as "making a living."

On that rooftop what I felt was that I had achieved, at least that night, was being alive.

Freerunnings Lesson for Life Choices

I have sometimes thought about what I've learned from freerunning for my life in general. One of the biggest things it's taught me is how to make decisions with incomplete information and take calculated risks.

When I'm prepping for a new move or run that I've never done before, my mind goes through a certain procedure. First I look at all the objects I'm using and make sure they are strong and safe. Then I go over the maneuver numerous times in my head to make sure I remember every little flinch and timing perfectly. I also take a moment to analyze the state of my body; any lingering injuries, sore muscles, or overall tiredness or lack of focus that may affect my performance. Based upon all that I then have to make the decision whether I'm going to go for it or not. And the thing is, something unforeseen could still go wrong. A brick might come loose, or a hidden shard of metal appear. However because I took the time, I know that the chances of these things is very low. Though if something did happen I trust that I could react instinctively to protect myself. Even though I know there is still a chance of something going wrong, a risk, I also know that I cannot let that possibility scare me into submission. Because I also know that no matter how much time I take to practice, prepare, and analyze I will never be able to completely remove all possibility of risk.

When one reaches that point they have to make a choice about how they will live their life. Are they going to sit around in indecision waiting and waiting for the "final figures" to come in and make the results of their decision a sure thing? Or will they accept that there is some risk and whatever happens, they know that they did their best to prevent it, but in order to live a life worth living, it's necessary to take these risks on occasion.

Where this seems to fall apart for me, is when the risk itself could end my life. The problem here is that if you're dead, you wont have learned anything from the mistake or mess-up! Making the choice to commit to a risky act for the sake of leading a certain kind of life is rendered irrelevant if that life no longer exists.

I've found that this realization has helped me with many other situations in life. For instance making the choice to go on a trip, or the choice to commit my time and effort to one endeavor over another. Life is a big complex mess! So in order to lead a rewarding life, I believe it's essential to master the art of making rational choices based on incomplete information. And freerunning has helped me immensely with this.

Ozzi 2yrs Training Mark Trip

This month of August marked my two years of training. As a way of celebrating I had the great opportunity of making it to the National Jam in Denver, CO. Also had a chance to go to SF to take care of some personal stuff, I while there I took the time to train with SFpk as well. Although I was to busy having fun and training, I did my best to document the trip getting everyone involved. This was a great opportunity to meet the people that i usually interact with online while being challenged by new spots and possibilities.

Expect a more in depth write up soon.

How to I get "good" in Parkour?

I was asked in 07 on how to get better at Parkour and it stirred something in me at that specific time, for whatever reason, and this is the result of it.

It's all about goals, and you have to be willing to achieve that goal no matter what, you need to have the drive, determination, and discipline to make something out of yourself.

If you want to become good in Parkour your sole reason can't be to "be good", "be better than people" or "Get stronger". You need to make Parkour your life if you intend to be good at it, almost to the point where you hold it's importance above all others. Of course this doesn't mean hold this above your friends, family or any one you may care for. I don't mean this in a physical sense only at all, not by a long shot. To progress, the ideas and mindset of Parkour need to be engraved in your soul. You can get strong, you can get fast, you can learn and make yourself agile enough to move over obstacles, but if you have no direction, if you have no mindset, if you have no goal, what are you running for? You must find a direction, and go for it with every fiber of your being. Sure there will be times in training that you don't train hard, maybe not train at all, but just know that even though you may not be moving physically, or conditioning that you don't need to move your body to train your mind.

On the physical side when you do train though do it SAFELY, SMART, and as hard as you can, as often as you can. Don't be in a rush, it only leads to injury. Listen to your body there is a thin line between progressing and destroying your body, but you must learn to know the difference, know when the only thing keeping your from a movement is your rational and irrational fear, you can train your body to achieve amazing things but it takes time. Showing discipline and staying healthy is more important than making due with an injury. Try and Emphasize these things in your training; Silence, sound is a byproduct of wasted energy, less sound, less wasted energy; Control, not just in your body but in ALL things; Precision, think what your body is doing in EVERYTHING, master your body, train to make it do what you want as often as possible, reach for perfection. Train often but listen to your body, not resting does more harm than good to your body. there may be a time when you will be sore and you may have to use what you train though so make your training thorough, you will not always have the luxury of being at the top of your present abilities if you have to use what you've learned, train yourself in bad circumstances, STAY SAFE, but train them to be ready. Awareness is also very important, try and be aware of your surroundings as often as possible, people, places, etc. TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY.

More than anything you must show discipline, you may have the ability to do any number of things but that doesn't mean you always should. Discretion and Courtesy show mastery of emotions, this is important. You can't just focus on the physical manifestation of Parkour, to truly excel you must make it a part of you, make it a part of your mind, body and soul. Achieving this, making yourself as whole as possible, as able as possible, for not only yourself but for OTHERS. Love, Hope, Discipline...this is what drives me.

This is a constant road, a hard road, one you most likely will never find the end to but thats the beauty of it.


Take it slow there is no rush, train and it will come, being physically strong enough is not the main goal, try not to get too caught up in it. These are just my ideas, there are many others, some similar, some different, learn what you can and use what is useful, Find your way. Strive for Perfection, but its not the destination that is most important, its the journey, the changes you've made in the lives of others and yourself that make you stronger, or weaker, depending on your choices, they all have an effect. "People may forget what you've said or done but they will never forget how you made them feel"

Train Hard, Live well, and Best of Luck

Jereme Sanders

Hawaii Parkour Mascot - Roxy's TV debut!!

Our little Roxy had her first Media appearance, featuring her skills as the only legit parkour dog. She was also finalist for the Cover of the Hawaii Pet Magazine, they are currently deciding which of the finalist will make it to the cover. Leave some comment here for the judges to check out as I will be sending them this.

Rehabilitating Human Movement

Here's an article I wrote last year, but I'll re-post it for those of you who did not read it.

Rehabilitating Human Movement

By MaxCalder

Over the last few days I visited the zoo to observe the different primates moving, hoping to learn something from them I could apply to my training. I particularly found the Siamang apes and the Chinese monkeys (I cant remember the name of the species) the most interesting because I saw them playing. They moved and explored their environment, they play fought, they chased each other this was their training. I watched a young monkey stare down a jump to a piece of rope, this was challenging obstacle for it because it took a few seconds to concentrate before jumping. It jumped landed overshot and almost flipped over but was able to save itself from injury by twisting in mid air and landing on its feet. This was him learning.
The more mature monkeys had a sense or an aura of comfort in their movements, they seem 100% confident in their movements, and they too played. Although not as much as the young monkeys, but they still played and moved. And in nature they apply the knowledge learned by playing in order to survive and live.

Now we as humans have a social stigma about playing, we believe it to be immature or not proper for adults to do. So around the preteen age most humans stop playing and thus stop moving, with the exception of basic bi pedal movement (walking, running). Take the average human and ask them to do any movement other than walking and it will seem rather awkward if not impossible for them to do, even their walking is sometimes questionable. They do not have the Aura of comfort I talked about earlier.

I have only trained with only one person who had over 10 years training in parkour and that was David Belle at the New Yorker event. When I watched his movements he had the same aura of comfort about him, he seemed to float over the smallest things with 100% confidence. This was far more impressive to me than the big jump he did at the top of two 20 foot towers. The fact that he possessed something I had only seen animals in nature have was very amazing to me, and this inspired me greatly.

David has been training for about 20 years; this is the age when humans reach maturity. So by this standard he is mature in his movements, most of us reading this are still only children in terms of movement. So this brings us to my next point.



Rehabilitate: Verb)
A) To restore to a condition of good health, ability to work, or the like.
B) To restore to good condition, operation, or management, as a bankrupt business.


Now whenever someone is unable to move for a period of time, usually due to injury, they must go through a rehabilitation process to relearn how to perform basic motor functions.
Say an athlete was unable to walk for several months due to an injury. Upon recovery he attempted to go full pace back into action the next day the likely outcome would be an injury. The athlete must slowly build back their strength before coming back to their previous state by doing various
exercises to bring them where they need to be to move safely and normally.

This is exactly why we as traceurs condition and drill movements, because it is in a sense rehabilitation. We were dormant from playing and natural human growth so we must ease back into it slowly and safely to restrengthen ourselves physically and mentally for advanced movement. If we didn't there would be serious injury. That is why we all preach no big drops, condition, progress slowly. We are artificially training something that should come natural to us. We mimic the repetition and conditioning that comes with many years of play.

Animals who don't behave like the others and do not move are looked at by us as sick or mentally impaired. Why do we not look at our lack of movement as unhealthy?

Well recently we have been.

In an age where PE classes are being cut and playgrounds are being torn down, we as a people are starting to notice how unhealthy and ridiculous this is. A friend of mine who is a major in microbiology told me that there was a study that children who play at a young age and get dirty, build better immune systems and live healthier and happier lives than those who don't. This is common sense but is something we have sadly forgotten.

In the end David Belle and the other OT's (original traceurs) are nothing special, they are just normal. But they are special in a way because they ignored the system, they continued to move and keep moving despite what others told them. We all need to live with movement in our lives just as all animals do. We are no different than animals and we too have the desire to move and keep healthy but it has been forgotten by us as a species.

Speed Restriction

Recently in my training I've been incorporating a new method that I have found to greatly increase my confidence in a technique and also boost my explosive power. I've been calling it Speed Restriction.

The idea is simple, approach an object that you normally use during your regular training, and force yourself to do the same vault, tic-tac, precision, or wall pass with only two steps.

The other day I approached a wall I usually train on that is about 90% of my max height, and employed this method. Try after try, I would explode my right leg up the wall as hard as I could, yet still fail. Days later, I would try again with the same outcome. Recently, however, I have been able to succeed at this 11 some foot high wall using only two steps.

The ability to do most of your skills and abilities with such a narrow distance opens up many new areas for you and I feel is a very important, and often neglected, aspect of regular parkour training.

All I want to do is have some fun.

And I've got a feeling that I'm not the only one...

The driving factor behind pretty much anything and everything kids do is the desire to "have fun." They haven't developed mentally enough to separate things they "have to do" from things they "want to do." There are lots of ways kids can have fun, but over the past 20 years what kids end up "wanting to do" has experienced a significant paradigm shift.

They used to want to play - they wanted to go outside, make believe, be cowboys and princesses, space captains or jump rope queens. Now when parents let kids "have fun" it's generally "Go watch four hours of cartoons" or "Go play XBox for the night." Instead of getting dirty, meeting the neighborhood kids, or expanding the imagination, it's all about the latest and greatest graphics and special effects.



Before the argument comes up that (some) games and (some) television shows can expand the imagination, there is such a huge difference between SHOWING and TELLING.

One of my favorite authors of all time is HP Lovecraft, a horror writer from the 20s and 30s. He wrote differently from almost everyone else though, and helped define the "strange fiction" genre. Instead of his stories describing ghosts and goblins and monsters and aliens terrorizing the world, his stories took a different route. While there certainly were ghosts and monsters, his stories were not about the creature - they were about the person. Mostly told in first person, his stories often followed a character's descent into insanity and madness. He rarely described the creature, and instead described the character's reaction to seeing it. He let you use your imagination to create the details, and in doing so the creature was different for every single person - and each person's image of the creature was terrifying to them personally. What freaks my friend out might not even phase me, but because my image of the creature is different from my friend's, we were both terrified.

Extrapolate this imagination-exercise into a child's situation: They're being shown what the aliens in Halo look like, versus going out into their back yard and imagining they're fighting off aliens that they've created. In order to stimulate imagination, kids need to go outside and play. Give a kid with a good imagination a stick and they should be able to entertain themselves for a whole day.

To help combat society's diminishing emphasis on play, an organization called KaBOOM! has sponsored a "National Play Day" week. September 19th-27th, over 300 organizations will be sponsoring events designed to encourage children to turn off the electronics, get outside, and just play!



Rochester Parkour will be doing their part. We will be sponsoring a free event at Manhattan Square Park, our usual training grounds, for ages 7-13. We will be focusing on the "play" side of Parkour - games, follow the leader, and exploring your environment - and we will be teaching kids about the importance of picking up after themselves, cleaning up trash, and leaving their playgrounds cleaner than they found them. You can find out more information about our event on our Playday Organization Page.

I know another one of these is happening in Madison, and Parkour Visions is considering hosting on in Seattle. Will these three communities be the only ones to help save play, or will you join the cause and host your own?