This great article by Sam "Disciple " Slater talks about one of the
seemingly contradictive parts of Parkour - training inefficiency to
achieve efficiency. Exceprt: "I have been asked
questions similar to this many times over the years, usually from people who
feel that the only useful training is training that directly applies to the
situation that you are preparing for.
When these people see a ‘traditional’ or more eclectic martial art, they
see much of the training that is done as extraneous and unnecessary if the root
of the art is supposed to be combat.
Because of the prevalence of modes of thought such as this, there are
many new self-defense systems that have been created following this philosophy
of training." - Read More for the full article.
While training martial arts the
other day, one of our adult students approached me. He had been watching me practice some high
kicks, spinning kicks, and jump kicks for a few minutes, and had a question
about my training.
“Sir,” he
said, “I have been here a year, and I have watched you in class, and I have
never seen you use most of those techniques you were just practicing in
sparring or self-defense applications.
Why do you practice them if you never have a reason to use them?”
This was an
excellent question. I have been asked
questions similar to this many times over the years, usually from people who
feel that the only useful training is training that directly applies to the
situation that you are preparing for.
When these people see a ‘traditional’ or more eclectic martial art, they
see much of the training that is done as extraneous and unnecessary if the root
of the art is supposed to be combat.
Because of the prevalence of modes of thought such as this, there are
many new self-defense systems that have been created following this philosophy
of training.
I have also
had this conversation with people who watch my training for Parkour. When they are given the definition of
“getting to a destination as quickly and directly as possible with minimal
effort” and then see me practicing precisions, working on weaving over, under,
and around rails, or doing quadrupedal movement they immediately ask how that
applies to getting somewhere fast.
“Why would you be crawling somewhere? If you were trying to get somewhere fast, why
would you stop after a long jump?
Wouldn’t it be faster to just run around that rail than to be moving
through it?”
In their minds I should just be
practicing sprinting, jumping, and upper body strength. While these are very important aspects of
training, they do not train the body to be able to adapt to various
situations. They do not train the mind
to see the multitude of opportunities for traversing obstacles that are in
one’s way. Without the more creative
elements of training, the individual ends up only training the body and not the
mind. Moving in a straight line might be
the shortest distance between two points, however if your mind isn’t trained to
be able to creatively view the environment that you happen to be in, you could
miss a safer route or a route that would make it more difficult for a pursuer
to follow. Thus, by training
“inefficient” movements you become more efficient on the whole.
Training,
especially in a discipline such as Parkour, should be about expansion and
growth. Based upon the definition that
Parkour is a method of training for instances where the individual must
overcome the obstacles in the environment more expediently, it would make sense
to develop the body and focus on expanding the realm of its capabilities. The more your body is able to do, and the
better able your mind is to perceive the body’s capabilities and control the
body’s actions, the better prepared you will be for whatever situation you find
yourself in. If you were to only train
in certain areas of development and you happened to be presented with a
situation that required you to react or move in a manner that you had not
trained for, then I would hope that it wasn’t a life threatening one. Life is unpredictable. The best one can do to be prepared for the
multitude of minute changes that can occur in any situation is to become as
fully aware of oneself and his or her capabilities as possible. This is done through a firm grounding in
discipline at first, and then once the individual has grown to a certain point,
their expansion should also move outside the realm of that discipline and begin
to include other disciplines so as to better develop the individual. (This could be a whole other topic)
Now some
might argue that through the training of anything might then count towards
training for Parkour. I would have to
argue that this is not true. Training
the body and improving oneself are an important part of Parkour, however it is
the mindset during training, and the addition of training in certain specific
scenarios that set Parkour apart from other movement disciplines. Without the philosophy behind the training,
most all movement disciplines become just movement or exercise.
In the end,
all disciplines are systems with a guiding philosophy that aid the practitioner
in achieving some end. They are guides
to action, thought, and life, but they are just guides. You can follow many guides on the path to
personal development, or you can strictly follow one. What is important is that it is understood
what the goals of ones discipline are and what ones own goals are. Don’t let a discipline limit you.
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