This video perfectly explains all the major things that are wrong with the modern world.
Fuck Plateaus. You train for weeks, months years, you wait for the perfect day, the day that everything clicks, the day everything is perfect. That's the day you make some SERIOUS progress. BOOM! one at a time, you just nail each of those skills down. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
I stood at the edge of the foam pit, I did my regular backflip practice, but that day BOOM! it clicked. I wasn't gonna have any more of it i ran over to the spring floor, cleared my mind, shut my eyes and... JUMP! I did it! WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO! for 6 months I wanted to get that down but every time my body froze up and stopped me, I practiced every gym session, doing backflip after backflip into the pit, but this was the day everything changed. I wasnt going to get scared this time. I was shocked, every time before that i'd freeze up and pussy out, but this was a totally different game. This day I was PUMPED. I woke up full of energy, I breezed through all my classes, time felt a hundred times faster. It was raining, I didn't care. I ran around the Frisbee field doing my regular sideflips, handstands, and more sideflips. Each move felt like butter, I WAS PUMPED. At gym, I knew I had THE POWER. Today the stars alligned. You reach a plateau, you gotta work, you train every day, you condition, you practice, and you wait for that perfect day, you will feel it. That day you break your mental barriers. All of that training, practice, and conditioning will pay off. You will get there. Whatever it is you want to achieve, you will achieve. Through your actions you will inspire, people love that energy, the energy of accomplishment, the energy of pure joy after doing something they have been waiting ages to do. It really does propagate. People felt it at the gym, I had a good buddy of mine come up to me, and tell me that he had a rough day, but going to gym and watching me explode from excitement completely changed his mood. All I can say is DO IT! train hard, work hard, get the physical ability, and break that mental barrier, INSPIRE! "First, I've learnt to look more carefully around me, and to pay attention to details, to such little border, to such iron piece that comes out of the wall, to such missing brick, well to anything I could use to train and play with. The landscapes usually appear to us in their globality, and we first see their most evidents contours and elements. We see walls and rails.
We do not necessarily see the missing brick, the door handle, the fissure, or the thin border which, though, are also parts of the landscape. Just as any new parkour practitioner sharpens the way he looks at his surroundings as soon as he starts practicing, and sees elements of the landscape that before that didn't appear to him (little walls, rails, etc), we should then make sure to keep sharpening the look we have at our surroundings instead of contenting ourselves with this first step. The walls and rails that from now on appear to us don't stimulate anymore our imagination, as they don't require any effort from us, neither in the fact to see them nor in the use that the vast majority of traceurs will make of them. It's this tranquil habituation that we have to worry about. We should keep being in constant research, and keep looking with new eyes everytime to our environment -even if it's the same environment-. Parkour isn't a dogma, but a quest, that's why it takes constant research process, and perpetual movement -not only outside of us, but also inside-. Now, a lot of traceurs, so proud not to be anymore "normal people" -as they often say it themselves- to whom the architectural wealth of the city would escape, content themselves with this first step of the process as it's enough to flatter their ego. Secondly, the surroundings always appear to us according the point to view we look at them from. In this way, if we look at them through the prism of the "basic techniques" of parkour, then we will see there catpasses to precision, armjumps, wallruns, and running precisions. While the difficulty resides, for the non-practitioners, in the action of detaching themselves from the utilitarian and normative use of the public space to which the socio-cultural learning leaded them, it resides for the practitioners to see the surroundings as they are, with everything they have that make them unique and distinguishes them from any other place, and to make sure not to see it as a random place where we will reproduce again and again these same techniques we use at any time in any place. In order to see what more we can do with what we have, we have to be able to approach the places with a mind free from the usual expectations of the practitioner (catpass to precision, armjump, etc). It is certainly not an easy thing to do, at least as hard as it is, for the non-practitioner, to see the city as a playground. But this is what it takes for those who would like to place themselves in a long term research process, and not cease to surprise themselves every time they train. It takes an intellectual effort, and an increased attention we pay to our sensory perceptions. In order to make it possible, we have to "pay attention to pay attention"..." -L'1consolable The full story can be found on the "Parkour, literally." blog. Danny and Martin go to Santa Barbara, take a look at the footage we got! Colorado is my favorite state. It is flat out gorgeous, if you ever want to go on a trip, go here! I came to Vail the summer of 2013 for vacation and I had an amazing time! Lots of hiking, lots of parkour, lots of beautiful scenery. Just an extraordinary place. - Danny Today Srivishnu, Clark, and I (Mario) went to Gunderson High School in San Jose to train with some people I met at an SFPK monthly in San Jose. Gunderson High School looks like a jail. Despite it's fugly exterior, it is quite amazing for parkour training. It has extremely grippy walls littered around campus, as well as nicely integrated rails and stairs. I noticed my wall moves (runs, vaults, climb-ups, cats, etc) improve dramatically. 9/10, would highly recommend if you can past the used condoms and 4Lokos scattered in the bushes.
After searching through my old back up files, I found photos from my trip to Hawaii back in 2011, on this trip I had the honor of training with, and learning from the Hawaii Parkour founder Ozzi Quintero. He was and is an exceptional athlete who focuses on conditioning, extremely precise movement, and yoga. For the longest time Ozzi held practice session in Honolulu and introduced the islanders to parkour. He is now on a multi-year trip around the world, and logs his adventure on his personal blog. -Danny After hearing about a set of ruins left behind by an old bath house we decided to trek up to San Francisco and take a look at them ourselves. Another adventure paid off, as we found an sick set of demolished concrete structures and stunning scenery. We were there during one of the two weeks in the year during which San Fran is not a blizzard so we got to enjoy the wonderful weather. Sadly we only had a few hours to mess around so we tried to explore as much as possible and agreed to do further explorations later. After an exhausting week of SAT preparation, we decided to go camping; Danny, Martin, Yanik, and Anton go on a trip to Black Mountain. After biking for 2 hours we got to the base of the mountain, we found that the trails are inaccessible to bikes, so we dumped our transport in a heap of poison oak, insuring no one will want to touch them. Originally our plan was to camp on the edge of a quarry, located on the tip of Black Mountain. This soon changed because after a 2 hour hike we were tired, sweaty, and the sun was making its way towards the horizon. We climbed off of the main trail and and had dinner while sitting on the base of a huge electrical tower, which turned out to be a great place to watch the sunset. After filling ourselves and getting a few good pictures, we were now in the dark with barely enough viability to tell between trail and open terrain. What better time then this to break out into a marching chant and run for the nearest hilltop. To our surprise we found a scenic viewing point at the top, and Hoping the rangers would not kick us out we camped on black mountain - overlooking the silicon valley. |