hot tip

ive been ill all week so no training ergo no blogging.
Learnt a cool thing from the physio regarding trying to train chin ups but my wrists and elbows getting knackered very quickly and that is; tape the chin up bar so you have a wider surface to grip releasing some of the tension from the forearms....the same solution that gets applied to a tennis racket when people have tennis elbow.

thats all....going to the PK Gen Jam on Sunday with the focus of enjoying, keeping an open mind, playing and keeping moving.Lets see.

PISS EASY

im corpsing from the reality check of that last post by Sola......regarding find some piss easy moves and have some fun....YOU ARE SO RIGHT!.:.)

Currently most specified Parkour moves have now become scrambled...the paralysis of analysis my teacher used to say when we got tangled up in long dance sequences of 36 counts of 3 with 300 different variations of body shape rather than letting it flow. I literally can't slide monkey...cannot ......brain haemorrhage territory. So Sola; no i wont be doing any slide monkeys, though sadly not through choice:.). The upside of this paralysis is that if this is how effective my brain is when it focuses on crap things imagine what a tool it could be if I could turn it around and harness it for good?!.

The only move i'm enjoying right now is 2ft to 2ft precision between walls. Broke a nice one that was very high for me around Oval on Monday night with much support from Mr Bourne. Apparently he has never seen anyone quite so animated, or indeed acting quite so stangely before a jump. (We aim to please..if someone is going to wait around in the cold for an hour at least you can provide some entertainment:.) The cool thing about the difference between going for a jump and not is a weird shift of perception that my dancer/martial arts/tai chi trained friend pointed out on their first ever PK session.If you push your face forward so that you can't see the rest of your body in your peripheral vision and see the wall you are jumping to flowing toward you I get this feeling (when i'm really focused) that part of me has jumped already and i'm almost supposed when reality snaps back and I find myself still on the first wall. This is opposed to the anxious watching of a wall that is sliding ever further away from you and I now know when that happens there is no way i'm jumping unless i adjust something.

But....as Sola added it is great to move from the perspective that you are blessed to have the body you have as one day you that could all change in an instant and so a good old leapyjumpskipabout with an open mind and a grateful spirit is the best challenge I have ever been posted. Thankyou v.much.

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? :.)