By Henry A. Collie

Imagine this-
It's a Saturday afternoon, you've been preparing yourself for a serious training session for days. You put on your gear, walk out the door psyched for the day ahead and suddenly find yourself drenched in rain, snow, sleet or some other occurrence which is out of your control.

Being from Ireland this happens to me just about every day of the week and I used to feel I had to give up the training for another day. For those of you who also find this a problem there is a very simple solution. Use your mind. We all know how important a mental workout is for any serious traceur, and there are a lot of ways of parkour training with your mind which are easy, entertaining and generally fit in with your normal day.

The type of workout I'll be describing here is highly beneficial to understanding your surroundings and how they will react to your interaction with them, which is as important a technique as the interaction itself.

Right now look around you, wherever you are and pick the first thing that catches your eye. Look at it and study everything about it. Study the colors, the textures and the little imperfections and imagine how it would feel to touch or hold it. You should feel like your hands are actually touching the object, like when you can really taste a particular food you are imagining.

The above may take a small bit of practice to get the hang of but is well worth the effort.

After having done this touch the object and see how close your imagination was to the real thing. Chances are first, or even tenth time round it wasn't but keep trying and eventually you will understand how your sensitivity works and after doing this for a while your brain will have built up a multitude of new textures which you will then recognize from sight. This will help your parkour immensely by giving you the ability to understand how object textures and your own body work.

As you touch the object begin to gage your grip to find how much is is too much and too little. This will help you to examine objects in a run more quickly and thoroughly, and the benefits of that are obviously huge.

The more you practice this technique the faster you will be able to do it, and eventually it should become a hab it.

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