Obstacles

How is training going you ask?
so what's new?.......and what's old?

Training in snow is certainly new even though they were only baby flakes. Today was my second pk playdate of the year and me and Blue Lou Boyle and the soon to be departing Mr South Africa went to Vauxhall for a few hours. There were some familiar moments; still nervous of the left side slide monkey, still nervous of anything in fact that could catch my feet and send me head first, nothing new here. But there were also moments that were new..smoothing out wall runs to the point where they were pretty nice, lighter than they have ever been, my first rail to rail precision higher than a few feet, and better still it took less than a few minutes to get on with it rather than hours. It was a similar story on Saturday for my first PK venture out of 2009 for a Jam in Latimer Road, smoothing out things, a new ease with other movements, new faces (new to me anyhow but clearly not new to parkour) but with it more well intentioned feedback from people who dont know me, same old same old.

I struggle with this partly because, as someone who looks beginner and is also female, I tend to get quite alot of 'tips'. It seems that a majority of Pk folk, generous and enthusiastic as is characteristic, see me moving, see where I could do it better and tell me how. In all honesty rarely is this useful, partly as there is an assumption made; maybe im doing it a certain way on purpose, maybe its a injury, maybe I am moving with the same aim they are and what they just witnessed was actually a mini triumph for me or just an investigation. This then leads into a conversation (maybe I should just ignore?) to say thanks but and then justify which then sounds like an excuse. And involves talking more, which im already good at and moving less...which isnt the point. On the other hand comments when people say what they see and then the possible implications of that but hold the advice e.g 'you are reaching out with your arms after your legs and that might slow you down' are extremely helpful as they add information to the pot but not judgement. So me being an irritable grouchbag isnt new (:.)!) but my confidence in sticking to working through things the way I desire is, as is the patience to work simply, even though it looks spectacularly unimpressive, and trust in the building blocks im establishing.


Another new thought sprang out of this issue of getting comments from others and for that im grateful, (I would be also grateful if anyone else has thoughts on giving and taking comments...), and this is it,

One of the joys of Parkour is of having the solution to the obstacle and applying it effectively, a solution that you earnt the right to enjoy even more as there was a time when it when you didnt have it as a resource and had to rely on less options. Even now after a gazillion trillion steps good old walking can be enjoyable, its a movement option that we had to learn and movement is always inherent enjoyable (maybe because movement=change=life=good!). Now when someone is pushing for me ( or I push myself) to do something which I find really hard and is so many evolutionary steps away from my current abilities that I can't build a bridge to it, im no longer finding solutions to the obstacles, im instead facing more yet obstacles. Maybe to some this is the point of parkour: finding obstacles in order to solve them, maybe this was once how I saw Parkour, maybe tommorrow it will be the way I see Parkour. Right now I see Parkour as movement than solves rather than searches for obstacles, the more solutions the better. I think life presents enough problems without going looking for them and a challenge that is too hard becomes a problem rather than a gift. I'm interested to see if I do a 180 regarding that mind womble especially as tommorrow i'm going to do something very new and see an NLP practioner about my fear of foot catching, pavement eating,and various other fears related to vaults....definate insight to be gained here as the trade off to my current perspective is maybe not leaving room for incredible feats and huge leaps of understanding. My last NLP session gave me the courage to walk on across hot coals so it will be interesting what a change of state could bring.

Lastly, the best thing that is getting old?; practising Pk ! .....i'm starting to get a process of training that feels familiar, a stock of moves that feel familiar and i grow ever fonder of the ever familiar faces that i get to meet through my Pk trails.
Happy New Year everybody!!
xx