We finished the South Bank "Sisyphe" project sucsessfully on Saturday night but the reverberations of 16mins of constant vertical motion are still with me. Julie Nioche asked us to think "Why do you jump?". It's a pertinent question and not dissimiliar to the question "why do you practise Parkour?" proposed by Laurent at Rendevous II.
There are many thoughts on this (e.g try Parkour Generations for a huge worldwide response to this on the forum). From the simple but entirely complete "I just love it!!" to many more existential (guilty!)musings on Parkour as metaphor for ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING in life, to ask the question is to also to reflect on what you percieve, value, fear and aspire to most strongly. I love that whenever I have asked people that I train with this question they know an answer instantly.
In particular the themes of insistence, persistence and resilience from the project, inherent in staying on one spot (ooops mostly... sorry Jacob!;.() and not being still no matter how nervous, bored or exhausted you become have really stayed with me. It echoes the sentiments of Stephane in the Parkour documentary...always this voice inside me saying again , or the phrase "etre et durer" or "to be and to last". To some the project was only a Parkour project in as much as the group of performers shared an interest in Parkour but in other ways I feel the project was very much about the spirit of Parkour, which in some ways is more important than the activity itself. In other ways the spirit and the ideal is nothing unless rooted in action. ......and so i remind myself to stop writing and go and do something......!!!!.
Update
Tried out the 'Rail of Infinity' this weekend. Unfortunately it has a few gates and huge gaps where the rail has been removed meaning it is not an uninterrupted loop. However it is still uberlong and has some a few nice loose panels for maximum wobble interest. It took about 45mins to walk round the whole thing and apart from enforced stops where i took the opportunity to adjust my warped vision in which I swear i can see portholes to other dimensions, I only came down once. More visits will be paid.
The 45 mins I spent on the rail were heavenly and this reminded my that of all the things I could potentially value, freedom is my no. 1 choice. Juliet and Gabriel reminded us during the project of the story of Atlas who spends eternity carrying a huge rock up a hillside, lets it roll down the hill again at the top only to be fetched and carried back up again. It was suggested that rather than being in a hellish state Atlas' freedom from choice and decision made his situation blissful. It's an idea I had mused on during conditioning drills where sometimes by questionning whether you can or will do what is asked of you makes the activity much more tiring than just handing your body over to the instructor and getting on with it!. I certainly felt that, once the decision was made to get up on the rail and put one foot in front of the other until I had come full circle I had been temporarily liberated from the noise in my head. Recording these mental wanderings also fulfills a similar purpose of liberation and for that I am v. grateful.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
A day without Parkour is like a night without stars.
Just a short one. I’m aiming to go back to making blog entries every day and practicing everyday as it was one of the intentions of the blog to make Parkour a way of life.
Caught the second half of the womens class this evening.
I can speed vault outdoors! :.):.)
The BEST thing about this is the revelation that it was so easy. I had speed vault on my list of ‘Tricky movements I must deal with’. I had envisaged a session of psyching up for it, emotional trauma, banged knees and only then eventual triumph. Not so!. Turns out the difference between a fluid and light step vault (which recently I have specifically worked on) and a speed vault is just lengthening your top leg a few centimeters. By aiming to contact the wall a tiny bit further than normal from your hand and by delaying this contact with the wall the tiniest bit you are already over the obstacle and your wall is behind you, done and dusted, a footnote in history, toast.
Did you hear that wall?! Your’re toast!...Speed vault, speed vault, speed vault, cha cha cha cha cha chacha!
Makes you think…what other things could be achieved with the softest, smallest little adjustment? :.)
Caught the second half of the womens class this evening.
I can speed vault outdoors! :.):.)
The BEST thing about this is the revelation that it was so easy. I had speed vault on my list of ‘Tricky movements I must deal with’. I had envisaged a session of psyching up for it, emotional trauma, banged knees and only then eventual triumph. Not so!. Turns out the difference between a fluid and light step vault (which recently I have specifically worked on) and a speed vault is just lengthening your top leg a few centimeters. By aiming to contact the wall a tiny bit further than normal from your hand and by delaying this contact with the wall the tiniest bit you are already over the obstacle and your wall is behind you, done and dusted, a footnote in history, toast.
Did you hear that wall?! Your’re toast!...Speed vault, speed vault, speed vault, cha cha cha cha cha chacha!
Makes you think…what other things could be achieved with the softest, smallest little adjustment? :.)
Movement is your birthright!!
Theme of the week is being self consciousness and public parkour. I’m currently doing the South Bank project which involves jumping up and down on one spot in front of an audience until we expire. (Catch us at the Clore Ballroom at The Royal Festival Hall from 6.30pm on Friday 19th and Saturday 20th, ). Part of the deal is to let go of worrying what you look like in order to properly give your energy and intent and therefore exhaust yourself. I guess this is the true essence of expression; when you give all of yourself and don’t hold back for fear of judgment. Under the banner of ‘art’ is certainly a far more protected context than in the everyday on the way to the shops kind of setting. Working and socializing in the dance world for a long while I have enjoyed being surrounded by people who favour ‘weird’ over ‘normal’ and it this way I have operated in a little bubble that has allowed me to think I am physically and socially confident, maybe even rebellious (e.g. singing “Why do birds suddenly appear..!”whilst dancing with a sweet potato in Sainsburys New Cross for a guerilla theatre project, or getting into the school showers fully dressed then undressing wet and dripping whilst walking through the college atrium, or many other similar activities that caused people to say “bloody dance students!!”:.)).
However my recent Parkourless days have highlighted the fallacy in this belief. Why have my days been absent of Parkour?. Am I busy? Ill? Injured? Not warm?. To be fair a little all of the above is true. However many times there has been a railing or a wall or something that has spoken to me and I haven’t answered back and climbed on as I was concerned that I would look silly in front of ‘them’….whoever ‘they’ are!. Joe Public, society, the majority, the crowd, the herd…..a mostly faceless bunch that influence my world too much.
Now, I have recently been quite vocal about my dislike of London. I can feel trapped and drained here, squidged onto tubes, taunted by constant adverts, trampled on by tourists, mugged daily by over-inflated prices and presided over by arc of grey that is consistent only in the bringing rain. Parkour has somewhat liberated from this but nevertheless on a bad day London doesn’t seem to leave you any space to be a human bean.:.(
Another thought regarding this sense of being free to play and express yourself came from watching some really young children in the playground while I waiting for my bus today. Between climbing up and through the railings, doing cartwheels, rolling down the hill, pretending to faint, balancing on one leg and kung fu fighting each other these younglings openly explored their bodies and environment is a variety of expressive, creative and sometimes competitive ways. They knew I was watching and smiling at them and even asked “do you speak?!” and that only emphasized more how strongly I felt a million years from who they were. We really are an entirely different species once we have been shoved through school and the other systems of our existence, we end up all wrong and then build monstrous cities to contain this wrongness. This is of course a worst case view. Many people live very happy and healthy lives here. But most inspiring to me now is the vision of a traceur who can transcend it all.
The SouthBank project is also about the rebellion of the jump, the desire to defy gravity, the provocation of not being still. We were asked by the choreographer Julie Nioche to think of this as our project in that she is providing the starting point that we continue to explore ourselves after the performance is over. Until now I wasn’t sure what this would mean to me but now perhaps the idea of the public jump will be my biggest challenge. In Parkour we speak of having the eyes of children but this can be not just for the movement opportunities you see but the judgement and expectation you don’t. The challenge of having this childlike quality and of finding ways to transcend the problems that take the spring from our step and prevent you from reaching out with both hands might well save me and help me find ‘my way’ in the truest sense of the word.
However my recent Parkourless days have highlighted the fallacy in this belief. Why have my days been absent of Parkour?. Am I busy? Ill? Injured? Not warm?. To be fair a little all of the above is true. However many times there has been a railing or a wall or something that has spoken to me and I haven’t answered back and climbed on as I was concerned that I would look silly in front of ‘them’….whoever ‘they’ are!. Joe Public, society, the majority, the crowd, the herd…..a mostly faceless bunch that influence my world too much.
Now, I have recently been quite vocal about my dislike of London. I can feel trapped and drained here, squidged onto tubes, taunted by constant adverts, trampled on by tourists, mugged daily by over-inflated prices and presided over by arc of grey that is consistent only in the bringing rain. Parkour has somewhat liberated from this but nevertheless on a bad day London doesn’t seem to leave you any space to be a human bean.:.(
Another thought regarding this sense of being free to play and express yourself came from watching some really young children in the playground while I waiting for my bus today. Between climbing up and through the railings, doing cartwheels, rolling down the hill, pretending to faint, balancing on one leg and kung fu fighting each other these younglings openly explored their bodies and environment is a variety of expressive, creative and sometimes competitive ways. They knew I was watching and smiling at them and even asked “do you speak?!” and that only emphasized more how strongly I felt a million years from who they were. We really are an entirely different species once we have been shoved through school and the other systems of our existence, we end up all wrong and then build monstrous cities to contain this wrongness. This is of course a worst case view. Many people live very happy and healthy lives here. But most inspiring to me now is the vision of a traceur who can transcend it all.
The SouthBank project is also about the rebellion of the jump, the desire to defy gravity, the provocation of not being still. We were asked by the choreographer Julie Nioche to think of this as our project in that she is providing the starting point that we continue to explore ourselves after the performance is over. Until now I wasn’t sure what this would mean to me but now perhaps the idea of the public jump will be my biggest challenge. In Parkour we speak of having the eyes of children but this can be not just for the movement opportunities you see but the judgement and expectation you don’t. The challenge of having this childlike quality and of finding ways to transcend the problems that take the spring from our step and prevent you from reaching out with both hands might well save me and help me find ‘my way’ in the truest sense of the word.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Ask and the universe will answer and sometimes the walls too.
Coincidence,fate, karma who knows? but one thing is for sure;
.... one day you might (mistakenly )decide to cheat at Parkour...e.g avoiding a slide monkey on your left because you only like your right and the next day's training will always, eggs as eggs, so frickin certain its spooky, bring that missing lefthanded slide monkey right back to you only this time in a way that means avoidance is not an option. (I write 'slide monkey' tentatively as I thought it was called 'sly monkey' for a good 3months or so....which personally I like better alongside other potential names like 'tricky monkey', 'creepy monkey', 'slippy monkey', 'huggy monkey' although I know it won't catch on). It's almost as if the walls are saying to you...."nice try...but your not going to get out of it that easily". And thats not the only thing they say....oh yes....it seems once you start naming walls, they talk to you, try and piss you off, whisper their doubts, although if their nice ones sometimes they call out to you in your sleep and invite you to play. At the worst of times they say nothing and no matter how you reason, argue, plead, cajole, suprise or spend time with them they remain exactly as solid immovable and constant as ever. But then they are always (nearly!) where you left them so you can go back and try again later.
On the pleasurable side, just as the universe will supply punishment for breaking the Parkour rule DON'T CHEAT!, it always listens to what you need. After some blog musing (and much more actual real world musing) on my dance and parkour techniques and how they could become less disparate and more symbionic what should pop into existence but the SouthBank Dance Parkour project. Perfect!, the first stage of investigation begins!!!!.
CHALLENGE UPDATE
I'm no longer posting a seperate daily challenge as i'm no longer posting a daily blog!. However external challenges from you folks are still welcome and very much sought after. Current outstanding (as in not done although they are also good suggestions!) challenges are:
1Shi- laches on tree branches
2Sola- pull ups
3Dan - 5 consequtive pull ups by October
4Thomas - 2 min rail hang on a round rail.(1 min best so far)
Again fortune has clustered them into addressing similar muscle groups and actions so my daily challenge becomes to work towards these 4 simultaneously. Thanx so much for taking time to think of them you 4.
.... one day you might (mistakenly )decide to cheat at Parkour...e.g avoiding a slide monkey on your left because you only like your right and the next day's training will always, eggs as eggs, so frickin certain its spooky, bring that missing lefthanded slide monkey right back to you only this time in a way that means avoidance is not an option. (I write 'slide monkey' tentatively as I thought it was called 'sly monkey' for a good 3months or so....which personally I like better alongside other potential names like 'tricky monkey', 'creepy monkey', 'slippy monkey', 'huggy monkey' although I know it won't catch on). It's almost as if the walls are saying to you...."nice try...but your not going to get out of it that easily". And thats not the only thing they say....oh yes....it seems once you start naming walls, they talk to you, try and piss you off, whisper their doubts, although if their nice ones sometimes they call out to you in your sleep and invite you to play. At the worst of times they say nothing and no matter how you reason, argue, plead, cajole, suprise or spend time with them they remain exactly as solid immovable and constant as ever. But then they are always (nearly!) where you left them so you can go back and try again later.
On the pleasurable side, just as the universe will supply punishment for breaking the Parkour rule DON'T CHEAT!, it always listens to what you need. After some blog musing (and much more actual real world musing) on my dance and parkour techniques and how they could become less disparate and more symbionic what should pop into existence but the SouthBank Dance Parkour project. Perfect!, the first stage of investigation begins!!!!.
CHALLENGE UPDATE
I'm no longer posting a seperate daily challenge as i'm no longer posting a daily blog!. However external challenges from you folks are still welcome and very much sought after. Current outstanding (as in not done although they are also good suggestions!) challenges are:
1Shi- laches on tree branches
2Sola- pull ups
3Dan - 5 consequtive pull ups by October
4Thomas - 2 min rail hang on a round rail.(1 min best so far)
Again fortune has clustered them into addressing similar muscle groups and actions so my daily challenge becomes to work towards these 4 simultaneously. Thanx so much for taking time to think of them you 4.
Estranged
Couldn’t go to class today. Not sure what that was about. Partly it was because my eyes were closing and my chin dropping by 5pm but partly because I knew it would mean conditioning for an hour plus which today was equal to forcing, pushing and struggling. I lost some faith in the process of struggling and to commit your energy you need to believe. Don’t get me wrong, you have to condition, to be strong, to protect yourself, to challenge your mentality and physicality, all of this is an absolute necessity to grow. I know this, I know this, I know this. So what’s the problem (apart from thinking to much?! :.)).
I feel there is a lot to be said for alignment. The peripheries of the body function more effectively when the spine is aligned as weight is distributed properly and muscle chains can function sequentially. The principle of alignment can be taken more broadly to suggest that if your head, heart and body are all heading in the same direction you have unity which brings economy, clarity, and fluidity. If you are running contradictory systems then the point of contradiction leads to tension and struggle.
Its not that I’m wanting to give up. It just feels like hammering away isn’t sensible in a ‘if you do what you always do you get what you always get”. Its hard not to have a voice that says I ‘should’ be able to do this by now (‘this’ signifying kongs outdoors, running precisions, tic tacs etc). The frustration is that I have spent 8 years training very physicality and for 4 years very intensively; a lot of work focusing on form, on flow, on tactility, on dynamic, rhythm, coordination. All of which should be transferable skills but during Parkour they seemed to be locked inside a room labeled ‘Out Of Reach’, my normally communicative body desserts me and I’m left alone with my doubts. I tend to be a holistic kind of girl so I’m listening. However I respect that maybe the best advice is maybe Just Get On With It!!!. The commitment was to keep training and to keep moving and so tonight I took a beginners acrobatics class so that in some way I can say to myself "Yes! I kept moving!".
I also tried out Thomas’ challenge: hanging off a round railing for 2 mins. In 2 attempts I managed 1 min and 1.01 and it’s the fingers that aren’t up to it!.
I feel there is a lot to be said for alignment. The peripheries of the body function more effectively when the spine is aligned as weight is distributed properly and muscle chains can function sequentially. The principle of alignment can be taken more broadly to suggest that if your head, heart and body are all heading in the same direction you have unity which brings economy, clarity, and fluidity. If you are running contradictory systems then the point of contradiction leads to tension and struggle.
Its not that I’m wanting to give up. It just feels like hammering away isn’t sensible in a ‘if you do what you always do you get what you always get”. Its hard not to have a voice that says I ‘should’ be able to do this by now (‘this’ signifying kongs outdoors, running precisions, tic tacs etc). The frustration is that I have spent 8 years training very physicality and for 4 years very intensively; a lot of work focusing on form, on flow, on tactility, on dynamic, rhythm, coordination. All of which should be transferable skills but during Parkour they seemed to be locked inside a room labeled ‘Out Of Reach’, my normally communicative body desserts me and I’m left alone with my doubts. I tend to be a holistic kind of girl so I’m listening. However I respect that maybe the best advice is maybe Just Get On With It!!!. The commitment was to keep training and to keep moving and so tonight I took a beginners acrobatics class so that in some way I can say to myself "Yes! I kept moving!".
I also tried out Thomas’ challenge: hanging off a round railing for 2 mins. In 2 attempts I managed 1 min and 1.01 and it’s the fingers that aren’t up to it!.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
"You make me feel like a na-tur-al women...!"
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!
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!
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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