Bad habits.

Training schedule recent weeks:
1 or 2 Outdoor classes a wk
3 Outdoor sessions with friends or alone from 1- 4hrs
Running
Dance and acro classes. (acro is new partly for my job but also for the fear and for the strength)
Hours and hours of lying on tennis balls and stretching and breathing because Im waking up in knots walking like a geriatric.

I'll admit i'm in a training slump at the moment as although i'm moving alot and parkouring every second day I feel (or did feel )disheartened.
I know its not helpful or productive but lets admit it;most of us have had a moment where the thought "i am just so sh*t at this" has crossed their mind. I know I have spoken to a lot of girls about this.....maybe girls are more open about their inscurities or maybe they are more inclined to doubt themselves physical capabilities but either way at the point where you feel you need motivational rescuing what can you do.....??

Finding out where and when the thought arose is quite helpful. In my case it came from making comparisons between my technique and others. Bad habit. BAAAADDD habit. I wonder if all confidence failures come from comparison?. Left alone in a landscape and learning to run, jump and climb either for fun or for survival, comparison would'nt be an issue, progress would still be made and possibly goals made and achieved aswell. Comparing yourself with anyone will always potentially end unfavourably and it seems tempting as comparison (seems) to give you a frame of reference for your progress. However actually it is a distraction that is a waste of time so i'm going to stop doing it. More thoughts on healthy goal setting soon. Im still addressing the pull up challenge although somewhat held back by pretendonitius symptons in my elbows. Hopefully by the end of this week I will have a proper plan of how to train after seeking advice from various professional types with body know how.

Bitesize Parkour

.....it takes me exactly 6 times longer than the typical outdoor student to get a new movement.........

Took my usual friday outdoor class, was introduced to the technique for a pop vault, a much needed nut and bolt of many potential routes, did a few things I wouldn't have looked at in January (precision to a lampost and back). Overall I feel i have a 'to do' list as long as the round rail at Kilburn of things that I take six times longer to achieve and have only tried with varying sucsess 5 times. This is neither depressing nor exciting, it is just an inevitability that needs addressing. I have been watching students overtake me (for want of a better phrase) in that they started after me and can now do everything I can do and more. However for the first time I am not in the slightest bit bothered, which I find very heartening. Normally I'm a very competitive soul but I feel like I have genuinely tried as hard as I can, and I'm at where I'm at so any comparison to another person is irrelevant. Its not a race etc. For now its me and my to do list, much of which I feel I have to start on alone and so I'm considering taking a 'revision break' and not go to class.

Its kind of an autuminal, new pencil case, got a huge textbook that you need to have absorbed by May for an exam kind of vibe.

Bitesize Parkour; here we come.

Slowly slowly catchy monkey.

Things Done, Attempted or Achieved since Sunday..lets keep this brief i have; turkey steaks to cook....(!)

climbed a small tree near my flat...
trained with Dolphin,faced up to long rail at kilburn for the first time in the wet...
did lots of vaults at Kilburn, Vauxhall, over ballet bars, on the way back from tescos, on that damn blue beam at indoor classes....
revisited a few exercises outdoors and indoors e.g turning 2 foot precisions, swinging around on scaffolding, wall runs, standing on the walls at Vauxhall and leaning into neighbouring walls with my eyes closed whilst trembling....
took the stairs twice rather than the lift to the 20th floor. Caught some 'rad air' so to speak whilst passing hoodies chillin in the corridor.:.)
always took the direct route over the small wall to the bus stop rather than the long way round (the same route that I shied from and then missed the bus a few weeks ago)
practised balancing on railings, ballet bars again, wobble boards, during a nice balance sequence in my technique classes that im currently teaching.
picked the blood blisters off my hands. (GGROSSSSSSS not an achievement but fun nevertheless)
got my first Parkour name, Laura Who Jumps Over Stuff. not catchy at all.

Little and often is my current approach as the blitzing it all or nothing left me reeling...
no adrenaline rushes sadly but a slow burn approach seems wise. The same goes for my 4 outstanding arm challenges, little often and cumulative rather than overuse injuries thankyou. I'm also sneakily working precision, touch, jumping, balance and quadrepedie elements into my dance teaching (smiles smugly... no emoticon for that).

So although i'm not blazing any trails my injury count is nil and progress is steady. I read a training tip posted by Kat from Mexico about focusing on commiting to training regularly rather than getting fixated on a goal and progress will come naturally. I have found that having goals had pushed sucsess away as often as it has brought it. I can't help but be aware that Rendevous is coming up and I would love to celebrate my 12th month of Parkour by entering the room konging everything in sight and leaving a trail of dust behind me but realistically this won't happen and i must confess this is motivated by fantasy and ego rather than anything useful (although imagination and self belief are in contrast very valuable). Its really important for me to remember that Rendevous is just another opportunity to learn something new, to challenge myself and to enjoy moving and nothing more or less. Am I getting more mature? aaagghghhg hope not. :.)

DINNER!!!!!

Persistence and Parkour Spirit.

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.

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? :.)

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.

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.