A fine balance

The past month has been all about balancing for me. I am lucky in that I do two things that I absolutely love: parkour and physical anthropology. They both give me great benefits, but I also have a sense of responsibility towards both, which sometimes causes tension. Two weeks ago, I flew to Bogotá for a parkour performance (you can see the video here). The show was great, and it was awesome to see a new country, to interact with some very friendly locals, and train with Frosti, Ryan and Adrian. I didn’t get to stay to play in the city, though, because I had to teach three phys. anth. classes back here in DC, and then, less than 24 hours later, get on a plane to South Africa. I had been invited some months ago to collect calculus samples from some early human ancestors, which was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up! I’m back home now, profoundly grateful that I was able to be involved in both of these projects, but also rather tired. Luckily, both work and parkour are going back to “normal” and I’ll keep working at finding that equal balance between them.

Thank You Pilou

I drove down to DC today to be a guinea pig for Pilou's Herbert style training in Rock Creek Park this morning. I am not a fan of distance running, but it was good to get out in nice weather and job through the park with friends. I was particularly happy to take part in the training and listen to Pilou explain Herbert's philosophy on training to the group that had decided to come out today. Everyone seemed very receptive of the ideas behind the method, and it sounds like this training will be a weekly event in DC.

Thanks Pilou. You're the man.

SwS

What weather?

Last year, the DC community trained nearly every weekend in the winter. This year, we haven't been jamming anywhere near as much, mostly because it's been snowing a lot. Yeah, I know, there are areas of the country that get way more snow than DC, but I'd argue that maybe they're used to it?

Anyway, used to it or not, winter is often a time when people train less, because it's not as nice out. Pilou and I have been doing a lot less training than we're used to, but decided during the last major snowstorm that we were not going to sit around any more. We recorded our in-home training and made a video. We hope you're inspired to train inside and out! Check it out here: Snow day in DC

Positive Energy

This is a post from an experiment I've been doing at

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer"
- Albert Camus

There is an eternal positive energy source, I definitely haven't tapped it yet but I'm starting to grasp the concept. Negativity was a powerful force in my life, and I saw times when I could use it for this project. I used to rationalize and say that negativity redirected to positivity was a good thing, and in a situation where you don't know what to do, if you're angry or sad and you want to go train to get it out, this is a good solution, but I feel now that the best thing to do is find your invincible summer.

When I say negativity was a powerful force in my life, what I mean is when it came to me I tried my best to redirect it positively. This harbored a destructive relationship though. My training was laden with self denigration. There was no desire to be stronger, it was only a desire to not be so weak. I used it similarly elsewhere, and feel as though I could have used it a lot in this experiment, to potentially better results.

Strictly speaking I didn't succeed at my experiment this month. In the end I fell short of all of my goals, but what I did came from positivity, a desire for growth. My goal was to take a step into the unknown to see what I could see, I may have only gotten one foot out the door, but I know I'm on my way.

I know what I've learned this month will continue to help me, I look forward to next month and a new array of interesting challenges!