Something that I immediately notice every time I get video of myself doing parkour is my lack of speed. I didn't start out in a slow and controlled manner when I started parkour but it has come to be my default rate of movement. "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast." That's a phrase we pass around the gym a lot. I've forgotten its origin and I seem to have missed the second part through my training. Often times I will be trying to make a jump or a flip and finally realize that I could just run faster into whatever it is I'm doing. The most explosive thing I train regularly is tumbling because it was emphasized to me that a quick turnover rate is essential to clean tumbling and force distribution. Turnover rate is essential in sprinting as well.
My reasoning for attempting to train power cleans on a regular basis has been all about force production. I don't know what the conversion rate is but I can do a deadlift with a really high weight or I could do a power clean with a fraction of that weight and produce the same amount of force. The factor here is speed. After all, extra speed and power is what I'm looking for when I set out to do some weight training. Perhaps this is why so many practitioners can a get away with not using weights even though they produce insane amounts of force. Their sport specific approach has them taking a set amount of weight, their BW, and pushing or pulling that rate at increasingly faster speeds for the particular movements that they want to train for. They don't have to bother with weights because they are focused on skill execution at hyper speed. Maybe weights aren't necessary and i just need to move the weight I have faster. It's a continuous self debate and requires some sort of objective test to figure out.
The flash is just a regular guy who gets zapped in some cliche lab screw up that gives him the ability to move at super speeds. It is later revealed in the comics that the source of his power is a fifth force called the speedforce. The flash taps into the speedforce and he can move and think at super speeds. Much like the super saiyans, the flash is always in a heightened state, ready to go at a moment's notice, and out of pace with the rest of the world. Even doing mundane things like cooking or brushing his teeth can be done at an accelerated rate. My point with all this is that the Flash and super saiyans both function with a high base rate of movement and strength.
For normal humans, that high base rate of strength and power can come from years of training. But I'm more interested in the constant application of this ability rather than the mere capacity. Yeah sure I can do a backhandspring with little or no warm up but could I spontaneously bust out 20 or more in a row without breaking a sweat? What about other things like reading and writing? Can I do those at an accelerated rate? What about talking? I mean why not? The rest of the world has a common pace but there's no reason we shouldn't attempt to surpass that. I've always wanted to train my body to move as fast as my mind does. That said, there must be time for breathing and relaxing but my idea is that moving faster and applying great strength regularly can become the default so you're not constantly taxing your adrenal glands. The body takes time to adapt.
Another way this relates to parkour is in how we figure out the most efficient way to do things. For example, I walk from my bed to the living room every morning. How many steps do I take? Are there any extraneous steps that do not help me to get where I'm going? Why do I move at one pace rather than a faster one? The answer to these questions has to do with habit and tradition. For years and years I've moved a certain way and pace that I never bothered to change simply because I never thought about it. This is a form of parkour I call deep practice because it infiltrates into the very heart of how we move outside of a 2 hour "time block" that we set aside as our moving time. This deep practice penetrates into every facet of our life. Even if we're sitting down reading something, we can apply this principle of efficiency in the pace of our reading.
Before I started reading about reps, sets, the SAID principle, load, intensity, volume, 1RM, rest intervals, interval training, etc. I just went out and trained, a lot. I trained according to how my body felt. If my legs were feeling not so good, I would climb something or do handstands and vice versa. If everything was tired, I could still work on balance training. There was always something to train and the training didn't stop when I got home or went to the grocery store. I'd QM when I was in my house or precision everywhere. I would run to the store and do shoulder rolls through the aisles and then curl the grocery bags as I ran home or balance them above my head. From a more "scientific" perspective, it looks like random madness with too many variables. I mean what am I getting good at in these scenarios, what specific goal am I working toward? The goal is to infuse parkour into every aspect of life I suppose. The SAID principle is still at work here, you adapt to the demand. If you spend 2 hours every day training but you spend the rest of your time sitting on your ass, what are you adapting to? Perhaps traditional approaches are not enough but they are useful for measuring our progress. I think it's stupid not to read about training approaches if you're trying to get better at something but I also think it is wise to not take things too seriously and lose focus on your original goals. I know when I first got into weight training, it became all about the numbers and I geared all my other training around the weights. A part of me died that day. It's kind of like quitting food in favor of dietary supplements and vitamins, you lose a lot in the conversion.
Now to gather all the strings together, my intention is to move and think more quickly, to practice my art more deeply again, and to recover from the barrage of information out there that tells me to do one thing when I clearly want something else. I will attempt to keep up with pace of my mind, rather than the pace of everything else.
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