I'm fresh back from Wedding Two in Italy, I caught the bouquet!. I have also moved flats and I now live on the 20th floor of a high rise council block complete with a stupendous view but the soul crushing noise of the neighbouring scrap yard. The move is partly the reason why I'm 2 days late with posting the blog (the other reasons being illness and unreliable internet connections). After lunch and much discussion with Julie Angel and Mr Bourne yesterday I came to realise something interesting for this blog.
The common theme uniting my thoughts whilst in Italy and since returning is Doing Parkour and Being A Women!. Here are my current 4 tangents of thought, please feel to add yours.
However, before I continue I would first like to say thankyou to girlparkour.com as I recieved a heads up that have added me as one of their blog links to which I was super pleased (thankyou very much!).Amongst other useful information the site also features updates of Parkour events one of which being the introduction of Sydney Girls Jam organised by Shi. Good for you Shi for being proactive and if you are in that area and have never tried one then get involved!. Girls Jam have always been very supportive, enjoyable and valuable in my experience:.)
Issues
1. Am I designed for Parkour training?.
I was glad for the opportunity for a break in Italy to give some healing time to some ripped shoulder muscles, achey wrist, elbow tendonitus, a collection of knee bruises that look like a flowerbed of pansies, and quadriceps so tight my kneecaps are permenantly in my lap. To recount such poor condition sounds like someone who either doesn't know either how to work, or how to look after themselves or both. However, after 4 years of intensive dance training I feel sure this isn't true.I never work push an injury and pop to the physio rather than popping ibuprofen. I warm up and cool down properly and have a good sensitivity to when pain is joint pain or muscular pain, good pain or bad pain, pain that needs ice, pain that needs warmth and when something is out of alignment etc. Parkour is clearly not dance training, they both have very differents aims and so very different methods. The main divergence is the mental intensity of conditioning, and something more difficult to pinpoint about the spirit of the conditioning.I will try and deal with defining this later but basically again and again I have forced myself to stick with conditioning drills to the bitter groan enducing end and again and again I have walked away with muscles so tight by sports physio wonders how I function (and I stretch for at least 20 mins), with strength gains that are not that significant, and with tendonitis from tendons that can't keep up with the muscle growth and occasionally sprains and tears. And so i ask myself, have I missed something?, is it unatural to train this way? am I not made for this?, is it because i'm a girl?
2.Pain is good but so is pleasure!
After a week night swimming, feeling sun on your skin, eating ripe figs off trees,dancing outdoors and walking along winding Tuscan hillsides I remembered what pleasure was. Pleasure and comfort are not the same thing which I often confuse when I am trying to decide between going out into the dark/cold/rain to train or staying at home, watching a film, drinking a class of wine. My reasoning is the more challenging one will take you somewhere new, the comfortable one will keep you where you are. However endless teeth gritting, risk taking, conditioning, and muscleup attempts has left me feeling a ying/yang type of imbalance of testosterone fuelled vs softness, gentleness,subtlety, skin on skin rather than skin on concrete ;.)!
In general I feel like I want to know how I can move with this feminine energy within parkour3. Maybe the answer lies in the task?, or maybe its the approach to the task thats important?, maybe its about more focus on breath, quality of touch, fluidity?, maybe its about seeing the route in a less linear direct way and thinking of it in more being more indirect and intricate? either way I want to know and this leads onto a the bigger question of.......
3.What is the identity of Womens Parkour!
This tangent was much aided by Julie Angel who has developed a expert eye on Parkour movement through the course of her filmaking and general immersion in the daily workings of PKGen. The key questions seemed to me to come down to
-if we model only the techniques of a man do we end up as lesser versions of men as our potential to amass strength is less?
-has the natural advantages that women tend towards to e.g better balance and fluidity and grace really been exploited?
The current period in Womens Parkour where the community is rapidly growing and is undoubtedly benefitting from support and attention to their specific training and representation from practioners like those within PK Gen is very exciting. It seems there is so much untapped potential for a different way of movement, a whole vision that hasn't been explored nearly enough. Of course, answers won't come about overnight as there surely must be a period of openminded investigation and exploration of these issues. As it is an area that really interest me one of my new goals to take it upon myself to give more attention to addressing these tangents both discursively and physically. There are many women out there who have valuable experiences and insights regarding a female parkour and so a visit to the video archives will be an interesting jumping off point to get better aquainted with Girls with Flow.!!! Keep you posted.
CHALLENGE 2 UPDATE - Tree climbing- failure!!
.....genuinely found no trees that had any branches under feet except olive trees or that were not on someones land and had big dogs…however the challenge is to be evolved and reformed into a more exploratative nature challenge whereby I try to more organic parkour in general. Might be illumninating on some of the womens parkour issues above.
I did only a miniscual amount of Parkour related activity in Italy some rail balancing in the village and a cat balancing along a girder that held up ceiling in our apartment in Florence. I’m quite scared of height and although it was almost a foot wide it was about 10ft+ high and it took me lots of trips along and back to get my confidence up. Mistakes would have meant broken bones but the chance of mistakes was extremely unlikely.
WHAT I LEARNT
I have noticed that my first reaction to imagining a move is to imagine the doomsday scenario after..... slip, land, crack, embarrassing calling own ambulance scenario (again) and then me with plaster cast;
MY STUDENTS/CONCERNED O.A.P ON THE 188 BUS/GREEK CHORUS
How did you do that?
ME
I fell off a ceiling girder.
MY STUDENTS/CONCERNED O.A.P ON THE 188 BUS/GREEK CHORUS
What the ding were you doing up there?!
ME
I was doing a parkour thing,
That’ supposed to be quite dangerous isn’t it?
ME
.... apparently so.
MY STUDENTS/CONCERNED O.A.P ON THE 188 BUS/GREEK CHORUS
Have you broken anything else?
ME
Yeah, my hand as well.
MY STUDENTS/CONCERNED O.A.P ON THE 188 BUS/GREEK CHORUS
..you aren’t very good at it are you?
This imaginary conversation is a legacy of my broken hand incident in March that continues to haunt me. I became so bored of explaining what had happened that after a while I found it was easier to say I had acquired it streetfighting. I landed badly out of a cat balance on a railing because rather than a/ going to a cat position alongside the rail, b/ putting my foot on the lower rung of the railing or c/ falling the small side, I decided to jump off the tall side. (cringe) I was about 10ft up and after landing on my heels, my back took the rest off the impact followed by the heels of my hands, one of which fractured at the scaphoid. In retrospect, the previous parkour session I had been turn vaulting to drop down over a slightly smaller height and think that had a part to play in conditioning my decision to jump. I also remember been quite cavalier about the risk in a ‘lets find out if its dangerous by doing it’ kind of way and not working out what I would do if I wobbled. Even worse I remember tipping towards the small side and then telling myself to 'think positive' (meaningless irritating phrase ) and stay on the rail and I tipped my weight over onto the other side, thought 'now what?' and bailed. All very poor thought processes.
Afterwards I learnt not to underestimate height which is great but I also embedded a belief in the weeks after, as it throbbed and itched and I only wore sleeveless clothes and had to ask people in the street to do up my shoelaces, that thinking through the worst case scenario is prudent. I still think considering what could go wrong is wise but maybe not as the first thing you think anytime you see, try or imagine a movement. I need to interrupt this default process or I’m not going to progress and I think it accounts for a lot of my mental block issues.
(For the record the calling my own ambulance was an unconnected incident involving an asthma attack in New Cross...."I c c c annnt b b bbreeaathh...please h h help me. Very Dramatic :.))
DAILY TASK
for tommorrow find some new training spots close to your new home!
Sunday, September 7, 2008
New Term, New Spots.
This evening I adressed yesterday's challenge with a hour walk scouting out potential training areas. Ideally for my level and preferred training methods I was looking for
-round and flat railings for a quadrepedie and upright balancing session preferably of a suitable distance for a good old womble,
-some small interesting precisons that could be drilled,
-some decent height walls for wall runs, traversing (thing of hideous impossibility) hopefully progressing to very cool pop vaults which so far are not a part of my repetoire (current repertoire currently headed up by the much overused step vault)and also
-some trees!.
Most ideally all all these archetectural events should be in a reasonably secluded area e.g not on a main road, not overlooked by 500+ estate residents on all four sides, not the favourite haunt of bmx kids, drunks,anyone likely to say "are ya going to do a somersault?" (no), "have you seen Man on Wire?" (sadly not yet but maybe Wednesday night),or "you should be careful you might break something doing that kind of thing" (been there, done that still plagued by the psychological legacy).
An hour or so mooch 'casing' the estates of Deptford and then finally various parks yielded happy findings, many with good potential to invent simple exercises that could be challenging drilling with high numbers. Particularly good finds that i'm keen to get head back and have a play on (which is always a good sign) are;
-a very erratic, dense and unique rail jumble. Its positioned by a mound of unmentionable rubbish that The Rat King of Deptford could use to hold state banquets but its also walled of on 3 sides so get involved I say.
-a tree in a very quiet pleasant spot which i can just about tag the bottom branch with a tic tac of the trunk and has lots of sturdy branches upwards of that. Good project.
-a park which is also quiet, nice railings, wobbly toys to balance on, monkey bars etc
but most beautifully of all
-THE RAIL OF INFINITY!! it goes on uninterrupted for a staggering 400meters or so. I had a visions of meditatively walking the whole thing on a frosty morning, mist in the trees, London still eating cereal and listening to traffic reports,just me and the rail,onward and onward, misty breath, tactile footsteps.... me wearing a nice scarf in flattering autuminal colours perhaps in a mohair or lambswool weave ?. I digress. I think i can definately get some womble action on that.:.)
So in terms of challenges:
I still have a rail hanging challenge from Thomas that I got whilst in Italy that I will do tommorrow. Another challenge I am going to set for myself is to get up at 5 (bleughh) to be out and about whilst its quiet and have some alone time with the new finds. That must be completed within a fortnight (quite a loose time frame i know but it has to fit around going back to teaching, I like to feel I have laying strong foundations for the new term, be on good form, able to be energetic and generous with the students etc).
Also think of a task that could be interesting for how do women move differently issue.Or think of a task for how do I move? and reflect upon whether the results are gender specific or not.
-round and flat railings for a quadrepedie and upright balancing session preferably of a suitable distance for a good old womble,
-some small interesting precisons that could be drilled,
-some decent height walls for wall runs, traversing (thing of hideous impossibility) hopefully progressing to very cool pop vaults which so far are not a part of my repetoire (current repertoire currently headed up by the much overused step vault)and also
-some trees!.
Most ideally all all these archetectural events should be in a reasonably secluded area e.g not on a main road, not overlooked by 500+ estate residents on all four sides, not the favourite haunt of bmx kids, drunks,anyone likely to say "are ya going to do a somersault?" (no), "have you seen Man on Wire?" (sadly not yet but maybe Wednesday night),or "you should be careful you might break something doing that kind of thing" (been there, done that still plagued by the psychological legacy).
An hour or so mooch 'casing' the estates of Deptford and then finally various parks yielded happy findings, many with good potential to invent simple exercises that could be challenging drilling with high numbers. Particularly good finds that i'm keen to get head back and have a play on (which is always a good sign) are;
-a very erratic, dense and unique rail jumble. Its positioned by a mound of unmentionable rubbish that The Rat King of Deptford could use to hold state banquets but its also walled of on 3 sides so get involved I say.
-a tree in a very quiet pleasant spot which i can just about tag the bottom branch with a tic tac of the trunk and has lots of sturdy branches upwards of that. Good project.
-a park which is also quiet, nice railings, wobbly toys to balance on, monkey bars etc
but most beautifully of all
-THE RAIL OF INFINITY!! it goes on uninterrupted for a staggering 400meters or so. I had a visions of meditatively walking the whole thing on a frosty morning, mist in the trees, London still eating cereal and listening to traffic reports,just me and the rail,onward and onward, misty breath, tactile footsteps.... me wearing a nice scarf in flattering autuminal colours perhaps in a mohair or lambswool weave ?. I digress. I think i can definately get some womble action on that.:.)
So in terms of challenges:
I still have a rail hanging challenge from Thomas that I got whilst in Italy that I will do tommorrow. Another challenge I am going to set for myself is to get up at 5 (bleughh) to be out and about whilst its quiet and have some alone time with the new finds. That must be completed within a fortnight (quite a loose time frame i know but it has to fit around going back to teaching, I like to feel I have laying strong foundations for the new term, be on good form, able to be energetic and generous with the students etc).
Also think of a task that could be interesting for how do women move differently issue.Or think of a task for how do I move? and reflect upon whether the results are gender specific or not.
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