Since starting parkour 8 years ago (time and ability apparently have an inverse relationship in my case), I have seen firsthand how quickly things have developed since the ‘discipline’s’ UK inception. About 6 years ago, youtube didn’t really exist, and the dissemination of parkour developments was through forums (mainly parkour.net) and shared videos that had to be downloaded, MSN sharing and forum uploads occupying the role that youtube would later replace. Looking back, I have a much bigger appreciation and respect for those who actually innovated and created the discipline, literally creating their own movement drawn from threads as broad as comic books and military training. From the beginning, David Belle essentially relinquished the role of being parkour’s ambassador, at least on a large scale, and with the brief exception of the Parkour Worldwide Association (PAWA) that seemed to be quite unorganised and cryptic from the outset, the direction and nurturing of parkour has been split between numerous, unofficial organisations. The argument of who has and hasn’t done a good job of this aside (and we all can point fingers), the once obscure and counter-cultural practice that originated from such a small parisian suburb is now predictably regurgitated over and over in good and bad media incarnations alike.
Jump London.....where it all really started for the UK.
In the wake of a decade of international growth, the overall level of practitioners has also seen a very linear progression; what is considered average now would have been quite outstanding 6 years ago. I remember when “Concept of Dash” released a video showcasing a palm spin, and later, a wall spin. Its quite hard to imagine that a now almost cheesy movement like the wall spin was considered so technical and innovative as it then was. Times were simple then (nostalgic sigh*).
Recently my friend linked me to a forum thread discussion concerning Blane’s past blog posts, a traceur who I have always considered to be an indisputable beast and all-round legendary chap. The argument centred on how two articles by Chris, published years apart, showed a change in his training methodology, particularly focusing on the apparent errors of the former article. Aside from a lot of bollocks spouted by the initial posters, what is clear, is that like any normal sentient being, Chris’ understanding and implementation of his own training and methodologies has changed and evolved over his own training history.
Now, just as much as I don’t want to return to the dark ages of telling people from my high horse to drill 1000000′s of precision jumps and cat-crawl in carparks for hours on end (we have INDEED been there), I equally don’t want to scream that doing squats and deadlifts is every traceur’s salvation.
With that said, here are my PERSONAL changes that would have been made would I have travelled back to my 16 year old self with what I know now (which is still very lacking).
LIFT WEIGHTS
What a predictable surprise! It does seem that many practitioners now do acknowledge the benefits of lifting weights…..that said, many still exist in ‘Thousands of Pistols Give Strong Legs Land’. I used to do lots of pistols, squat jumps, bounding, drops, isometrics…..who remembers when traceurs were all over the vert program ‘Air Alert’? Despite being able to rattle off 100 unbroken pistols per leg, my back squat was horribly weak. Why is that? Because body weight training can ONLY take you so far with lower body strength…..100 pistols is closer to a cardiovascular workout than a strength exercise. What I didn’t understand was how muscles adapt to different stimulus, how that all I was doing was becoming more efficient at muscular endurance. The joke is, all that was actually HARMING my power! “Maximal strength is regarded as a perquisite for high movement speed (power)” (Zatsiorsky, 2006, 156). You can say that lifting odd objects like a fridge or a log is just as good for strength development, but why the hell would you bother when you have the precision of measurement that barbell training affords? Its quite disturbing and a reflection of the knee-jerk defensiveness (myself included) that characterised the parkour community that its only in the past few years that it has been starting to seep into our idealistic skulls that weight training is SUPERIOR for lower body strength development. Obviously people can survive without picking up a barbell. For me, however, my own horrific weakness handling a barbell after what I thought were 5 years of effective parkour training highlighted a massive deficiency that gave me all the persuasion I needed to continue to lift. I have to acknowledge William Wayland for relentlessly banging his head against the brick wall of the parkour community that finally began to give. Its disconcerting how basic and accepted this stuff is in any other sport and activity outside of parkour. But wait…..I thought parkour was ‘special’?
RECOGNISE THE POSTERIOR CHAIN….SUCKA
This revelation came from becoming more involved in lifting and reading more about lifting. It seems that, actually, our ass and the other musculature ’round back’ has a lot to offer. How does one develop these? Lifting! Wow, I am even pissing myself off saying that all the time now. Sprinting and kettlebells help too, but really, a barbell is going to give you the most benefit. Parkour movement-based strength and conditioning is very much quad dominant: drops, jumps, pistols. After 5 years of parkour, my first deadlift was a maximum shy of even 100kg, a glaring indicator of how terribly underdeveloped and jelly-like my posterior-chain was. I fully accept that I could naturally be a weak little lad, but its not as if parkour training and endless hours of hell-night-esque training had done anything to help my glutes, hams and erectors. Its widely known that the posterior chain is the power centre for sport and movement. Its no coincidence that olympic lifters have a big booty and are also, by definition, the most powerful athletes on the planet.
BULLETPROOF THE BODY
I have taken my fair share of long-term injuries, as have we all, and while many are unavoidable, I do think that preparing the body can go a long way toward injury prevention. The most important place to strengthen is the middle of the body; all the musculature of the back and abdominals, to provide a strong corset from which other movements can be expressed and impacts and hits can be adequately taken. Again, not to labour the point, but lifting weights significantly strengthens the connective tissues of the body, as well as increasing bone density and thus the body’s overall resilience to injury. Perhaps if I devoted some time to developing a strong centre I could have avoided fracturing my vertebrae during a warm-up game. Then again, who knows. Regardless, one can’t go wrong with investing extra time into full-body strengthening, chiefly achieved through lifting weights. As well as this, adequate mobility and flexibility should be achieved. But I think that many, including myself, have devoted a decent portion of time to this aspect of training, something that I am letting go a bit too much recently, conversely.
PUSH THE COMFORT ZONE
Looking back, and especially now, I have to admit that I have a tendency when training to stay within my comfort zone. We all now how it is, we like to practice what we are good at and spend less time developing our weaknesses. As such, I find large, extroverted movements such as running jumps or striding to be quite unnatural and intimidating. Instead, I should have invested more time into becoming more familiar with heights, as well as practicing more opened out movements, especially running precisions. I remember watching an old 3RUN video a long while back where the take-home point was “try something new every time you go out to train”.
TRAIN BOTH SIDES
Parkour is an activity that favours the ambidextrous and scorns upon those who have a bias of side. The importance is not seeing yourself as having a strong or weak side/arm/leg, but that they are just two, equally capable sides. When you forget which foot you prefer to jump from then you are doing good. Effort does need to be made to spend time developing both left and right abilities, since we (mostly) all have a natural tendency to prefer one arm or leg. Jump from either leg, roll either side (and all directions), cat pass from either leg, land split foot on either leg, 180 from arm jump either direction, side-somersault both ways, even learn to cartwheel on both sides. We all know how it is when running at something to jump from, only to have to do the classic “shuffle dance” just metres from the edge as you try in vain to time the footing for a right leg take-off, only to kill all your power in the process.
READ SOMETHING
Instead of just going off what everyone else was doing and reading T-Nation posts on how to cut (because I wanted to look like Bruce Lee and didn’t want to get ‘too big’), I wish I had just picked up a decent book like Supertraining or Science and Practice of Strength Training and saved a lot of hours of endless traversing and pushup sets. Then again, I probably would have thought none of it applied to what I was doing anyway…..everything has its time I guess.
EAT MORE AND BETTER
I would have ditched all the flapjacks, raw broccoli, brown bread, humous….and eaten about 1000 calories more per day, focusing on meat, vegetables, lots of dairy, nuts, and some fruit. I would have not been scared of fats, especially saturated fats, and would have counted calories to make sure it was worth my time, not to avoid eating too many. I would have eaten less porridge and much more eggs, less raw vegetables and endless fry-ups of vegetables with zero calories and little oil that just filled the stomach, and instead eaten calorie-dense, high protein, high fat foods. I would have drunk litres of Gold Top milk and seen 70 kilos as a weight to get way over, not stay under. Carbohydrates would be down, protein and fats would be up. All this combined with regular and heavy lifting at near-maximal percentages.
