American Parkour

he did two for an interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pST2mC3oTTY

i didn't mean to denounce weights/ external condit.

i am certain that one who pole vaults will have some sort of coach to train and condition; but his coach isn't one to tell him that increasing cat leaps and precisions in his pk training will AID in strengthening his upper-body/core



clearly to pole vault he has to condition, but he did not ask for the best way to condition, he asked: " if there is any parkour movement that i could do more than usual to improve upper body and core


-assuming that he does condition^ the average joe scenario does not apply because he DOES do the hard exercise; he just wants to know what to add to the fun/easy

Conditioning through training will get you nowhere.

maybe not conditioning through "freekour" training


but as far as i know parkour, one of my few conditioning tools [next to capoeira, surfing, and longboarding] is what has developed my entire body to its current level of fitness.

maybe im a magical being who doesn't need weights to develope strength.. or possibly im a close descendant of the men that good ol George wrote about..
"Their bodies were splendid, flexible, nimble, skilful, enduring, resistant and yet they had no other tutor in Gymnastics but their lives in Nature"


have you ever heard of la methode naturelle? Georges Hebert? or David Belle?

i mean the reason why i practice what it is i do [PArkour and the natural method] is best summarized in a translation of hebert's words:

"The final goal of physical education is to make strong beings. In the purely physical sense, the Natural Method promotes the qualities of organic resistance, muscularity and speed, towards being able to walk, run, jump, move quadrupedally, to climb, to keep balance, to throw, lift, defend yourself and to swim."

ok? points well presented but still fallible..

mistake 1: you seem to think that emergency exit= rooftop

mistake 2: you seem to think that training low level movements is solely for the purpose of being able to do higher level ones

now, parkour almost never grants instant roof access, and getting down in many modern [fire escape-less] buildings can be quite IMPOSSIBLE.

fear is a necessity of the body, eliminating it IS reckless in most circumstances.. if i didn't fear i would have no reason to be running from an assailant in the first place

if i spend most of my time at ground level, then my emergencies are most likely to occur at ground level. if an emergency occurs at ground level: then the parkour used to evade will be done at ground level.

if you enjoy being of rooftops, and spend a majority of your time on roofs, and feel that it is more likely for YOU to need to escape on roofs then feel free to train rooftop pk; as it would be YOUR environment..

-which must be limited if it can be the only thing you can use to escape.

parkour free's us from the right or wrong way concepts of society, and enables us to see the world for what it really is.
it has given me the vision to see that rails are not boundaries and neither are walls for that matter.

in terms of efficiency ground level is like driving and rooftop is like flying; sure you get away faster.. and once you're up you're gone

 but would you prefer crash in a plane or a car?



now parkour is a defined philosophy and i tend to be very anal about that..

i can understand the roof top training but it is not necessary if it isn't your environment.. sure it's useful
but im sure endurance running in the sahara as just as useful [i mean technically its pk]

if you spend time on roofs, do roof training.
but for the people who spend as much time being traceurs on roofs as they do in the desert.. it really isn't needed per se but it IS useful

As for Parkour, that is a stickier situation. Because it was created inherently as a non-competitive activity, an activity rooted in helping others and the idea of "efficiency"     

       excuse me but you kinda just said that parkour is non comp

if the thread's first sentences give the definition of something; why is everyone discussing ways of contradicting the discipline

to me it makes more sense to leave parkour as it is, underground communities [imho] are better than mainstream fads.

-we already know what happened to skateboarding.. lets learn from, not repeat history

is competition truly necessary

is competition pk/fr/laddp?
-lets not confuse the part with the whole guys::

if i am playing tag and i run up a wall and kash down the next obstacle, i am still playing tag and nothing more.. the game of tag doesn't become parkour just because i am moving efficiently

if i am racing a fellow traceur and we traverse any and everything in our way, we are still RACING not doing parkour [we could be utilizing efficient moving but that doesn't make a race laddp]

for instance: if i were a decathalon runner, and i ran to catch a thief (as fast as i would for a decathalon); i did not just run a decathalon.
-reason being it doesnt fit into the definition of a decathalon..

competing is not parkour [or any motion art as a matter of fact]

The guys who run barefoot to prefer the FeelMax shoes http://www.feelmax.com/site/

At $85 [60 EU] [for the Panka] they're pricey. They're in Euro sizes. No stores in the US yet. That doesn't include shipping.
They only ship within Europe.

well given that the vibrams let me grab the corners of chain link fences with any of my toes; and that they are essentially a peice of super-grippy rubber contoured around your foot and toes

<a href="http://s238.photobucket.com/albums/ff311/jd9200/?action=view&current=Photo551.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff311/jd9200/Photo551.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket">[/url]

<a href="http://s238.photobucket.com/albums/ff311/jd9200/?action=view&current=Photo555.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff311/jd9200/Photo555.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket">[/url]

<a href="http://s238.photobucket.com/albums/ff311/jd9200/?action=view&current=Photo559.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff311/jd9200/Photo559.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket">[/url]

in terms of natural barefoot protection, this is as close as it gets.. they are gloves for your feet

with exceptional grip that surpasses a lot of the shoes i've trained in
[the only thing i wouldn't do in them is go longboarding for fear of needing to foot brake

Capoeira+Muay Thai

I enjoy medieation most pwo

Helps me deal with the relative pain from sore muscles
- I let my body go, and take the focus off of it to where I feel like a massive blob of cells, then I feel so much better when I reconnect

there really is no set hieght to measure, as there are no set rules

-it's all relative to your body

-head high+ is usually discouraged for the first year  and for me a six foot drop [about 1/2ft overhead] is usually accomplished in a turn vault to cat, then a lache to roll or a leap to roll but never a straight jump



DB is human, DB does pk for what DB wants, therefore only DB can determine why he does pk
-although i wouldn't be shocked either..

________________________________________________________________________________________

speaking of natural, anyone get down with traveling kongs? [or up/over/across ]

yup this is true[the speed vaults]

i think they slow it down to gain more control [mainly hand wise] but the other day i tried to speed ove this short wall [with a film of water on it] and when my hand started sliding i tried to put my foot on to safety out, but i made contact with the center of my foot and the entire limb hydroplaned..leaving me to land LUCKILY on my jumping foot [which magically found its way through the fish-out-of-water vault]

it would have been best to do a safety kash [monkey then dash after landing a foot on the obstacle], giving me 3 balanced points of contact



but the way pk gen did it really centered themselves onto their arms [so gonna try it if it rains again tomorrow ]