I've been thinking lately...

This post will be very short and and straight to the point. I have realized that I have spent to much time recently working on team business (not saying my friends aren't important), watching videos, filming videos, updating sites, and things of that nature. Even though they are important to me, I've realized that I have neglected my training a bit. I used to train 5 days a week and 8 hours a day; 4 hours parkour and 4 hours conditioning. Now, I'm somewhere between 2 - 6 hours a day of whatever training I can get. What I'm saying is put down the camera, do the business later, stop arguing, and the updating can come afterward. I'm not saying stop them period, all I'm saying is...JUST GO TRAIN!!!

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.

Slowly but Surely

Slowly but surely has long been my credo for training, as my friend m1l3s put it so well "you always have another day, but you only have one body". I see lots of people pushing Parkour in lots of different directions and I just wanted to express my goals, my mentality, my direction and my methodology.
Slowly but surely doesn't mean that you shouldn't be training as hard as you can, because I absolutely think that you should be pushing yourself as much as you can towards your goals. It's more an agreement with yourself to build a strong foundation and to continue to build on it through your training. If you only do things that make you stronger you don't need to worry about many problems that seem to plague the Parkour community.
Now I've had my fair share of injuries, and while I wouldn't attribute any of them to my training they are relevant to it. Treating your body with respect after an injury seems to be something that a lot of people have a problem with, starting over, doing lots of rehabilitation and prehab to help make sure whatever happened doesn't happen again. With parkour that means giving your body ample time before getting back to the level you were at something, because while you may still be physically able to perform, you no longer have the foundation necessary to do so without further injury to yourself.
I see a lot of people with the mentality, especially at jams, to do the biggest thing they are capable of, regardless of experience or their level of conditioning. These same people will make passing comments about their health, say that their joints hurt, but make no correlation of this with their actions. I think that any time you encounter joint pain or muscular discomfort you need to take a step back and reevaluate your training. Responsibly and correctly putting more emphasis on becoming stronger and better conditioned for Parkour will translate not only to fewer Parkour related overuse injuries but will help phenomenally in your mastery of the art.
When I train Parkour I train for kinesthetic awareness, I train for repetition, I train for life. I train for small movements done perfectly, and as my skill and conditioning level increases, so too does the size, the speed, the accuracy, the power, and the control of the movements I am capable of.

The clip that started it all ... for me

I was searching Youtube the other day and found the media regarding parkour that eventually got me into training. Back in 2001, Ripley's Believe It or Not did a piece on the Yamikasi, and it was remembering that piece in 2004 and discussing it with then room mate Brian "Doc Akh Horus" Belida that got us both to start going out and training. Thanks to pkmbyte for posting this for us all to reminisce. Enjoy.

PKNY Friday we had a big BBQ and plenty of jamming in my backyard.
People came from as far as Michigan, Colorado and Atlanta. Several
visitors put a lot of hard work into building a precision garden,
something I’ve thought about since I first heard of plum pole
training. Between plenty of food, great weather, and a customizable
setup people were jamming well in to the night, with some people even
going out for a circuit at 4am.
At 6 the following morning Zac, Bryan, and I woke up to start
breakfast, though admittedly I didn’t play a very crucial part. By 7
we had pancakes flying off the griddle and a short blast of my stereo
had the whole crew up and at em. We were able to get out early and
head over to Central Park where we would be starting the days jam. We
met up at Heckscher with everyone just coming for the day, played
around on the fence there for a while, then started a huge game of
Zombie Tag, to great success. Once nearly everyone had arrived we got
up on to the rock for a group picture and split up into groups.

My group headed out for some training in the ramble, but not before a
good warm-up on the way. A short jog brought us to the gravel along
the path to Bethesda Terraces where we started a session of Indian QM.
We began by demonstrating several different methods of QM that we
train, and then explained the concept of Indian Running. Everyone QMed
along the gravel in a designated fashion while the person in the back
of the line would make their way to the front, at which point they
would decide a new designated fashion to continue along with. We kept
it moving and finished off the last 50 feet of gravel or so with
inchworms, Bryan pushing through them with just one arm.

From there we went down into the terrace and I introduced a shortened
version of a circuit that we do there frequently. Once everyone got a
little comfortable with jumping between the pillars and traversing
along the walls we set the rules for the circuit. You could do an
inchworm between the pillars instead of trying the jump, if you tried
the jump but failed you would have to do an inchworm and 10 pushups or
20 squats. If you fell off at any time during the circuit you would
have to do 10 pushups or 20 squats. We started by QMing down one set
and traversing around the wall, where many people continued to fall
off throughout the Bethesda session, resulting in hundreds of pushups.
Others were able to climb along the wet sandstone and jump along the
pillars, QMing up the stairs on the other side and coming back around
for another pass. Once everyone felt thoroughly warmed up we headed
over to the ramble.

We started by just wandering a bit, rambling if you will, it seemed
like a normal session in the Ramble might be a no go with mud and wet
rocks and trees, not to mention that several in our group that made it
this far had not had previous experience with training parkour. We got
to the waterfall we often train at and after a short bit of messing
around, Sky began carrying logs down the hill. From that we all began
carrying two large logs up and down the hill, passing off at the end.
Between various methods of carrying and the differences between
traveling up and down hill, along with the added difficulty of
navigating through mud and rocks made for a pretty intense session,
not to mention the hilarity of seeing Rob and I slipping in synchrony
time after time. We finished the session up with a swift pace
traversing through the ramble to Belvedere Castle, where we worked
flow a bit in the heavy rain before heading over to the subway to meet
up with the rest of the group.

We ended up at the banks after a short stop for a meal at about 3:45,
where everyone met up and dispersed along the rails to train their own
thing. Chris Price and I had a nice session of untrained and
underappreciated movements, with some races to prove at least decent
effectiveness. Nikkie started a nice session with several traceurs
holding a bar for others to vault. From there we all headed back to my
place for another BBQ, where people ate and hung out into the night,
outside despite poor weather, and inside playing cards. An early
morning diner run replaced last years light conditioning session,
which is unfortunate, but we can always make next years twice as
light.

On Sunday we started off by heading to an amazing castle playground
near me around noon. Just as we were setting off someone mentioned
Chinatown Park, and I said in passing that if this park got torn down
I would probably cry. We were woefully greeted at the park by a pile
of rubble, and after messing around for a bit at a stream nearby we
grabbed some of the old playground and headed off to another park
nearby.
We headed to a park near me that has some amazing trees to climb and
play around in, but were unfortunate enough to get there the same day
as a massive crafts fair. From what I understand the group that went
to play in the trees was not able to do so for very long. My group had
gone over to the track and put together a pretty good little workout
that we didn’t get the chance to add upon. Along one side of the
track, about 100m or so there are thick green rails, about 7 feet high
or so to the side with the track and a little over three to the side
with the stands. There are a couple gaps about five feet wide along
the rail for stairs that run up the stands. We decided to run a mile
and balance the rail each time we passed it. Going from the elevated
heart rate from running to trying to calm and focus for balance proved
a good challenge. Once we weren’t able to stay in the park any longer
we headed over to a school with some nice rails and a decent
playground to play around on. After a couple hours we headed back to
my home for a bit of a smaller BBQ as people headed back to their
respective homes. We made a bon fire, had reeses s’mores and enjoyed
the feeling you can only get after a great jam.

Making Time

In February I started working a full time job (8am to 5pm) after having worked "part time" in a couple of different jobs (driving a delivery van in DC, teaching Martial arts, office work) for two years. I immediately noticed that with the time at work itself plus the communte time (about 30 minutes one way), I was starting to find less and less time to train with others. I would get off work and have to run some errands, or I would head home and make dinner and spend time with my wife, or I would volunteer to teach an hour or so of martial arts, and before I knew it I had to hit the hey or I'd hate myself in the morning.

With the sudden cut in training, I decided that I had to 'make time' for myself to work on my parkour and martial arts training. So far I have been using my unpaid lunch hour to go out and train, as I am lucky enough to work in a building that has showering facilities. This however only leaves me maybe 35 or 40 minutes to train, as changing and showering and such take up the other 20 or so minutes. This really effects the way I train, as I used to take my time warming up, and then drill something for a while with no particular rush. Now I have to get right to work and try to squeeze as much into my weekly sessions as possible. Quite often I found myself finishing a warmup and workout and not getting any time in to train specific skills.

So the question becomes, what can I cut out next? Starting next week, I'll likely be getting up significantly earlier and going to train before work. Propapby going to try to get teh workout/conditioning done in teh morning, and then just train skills at lunch. We'll see how well and how long this lasts.

What sort of things do you do to 'make time' for yourself and your training?

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.

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

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.

Rain

To train or not to train, that was the question. Whether tis nobler to combat the elements and persevere in the pursuit of a thought, nay a dream.

Needless to say it was raining today, and I had to make that choice that everyone has before them at one time or another ... should I go train in this weather? I usually train for 40 minutes in lieu of a lunch break, and the thought of going out in the rain when it is 45 degrees out and then coming back to work was not an appealing one.

So I went out and trained. I remember having discussions on the internet when I first started about whether it was safe and responsible to train when conditions aren't safe. You just have to think about what you are going to practice that session and plan accordingly.

I ended up running for 15 minutes, then doing some work on nearby stairs (sprints up, QM or bunny hops down) for another 10 minutes or so, and I finished by practicing precisions on the lines in the parking lot. It was miserable while I was outside, however when all was said and done, I felt good. I was glad I went out and trained, because I enjoy knowing that I can push myself and work on something I enjoy no matter what obstacle may try to get in my way.

Now I just have to hope I haven't caught a cold.