Moneyless Mind Exploration

    Lately I've been feeling very lucky because I now have the space to work on my life a little bit, less distractions less people to hold me accountable for certain things. This makes it so that I have to really deal with myself instead of constantly ignoring certain important parts of myself because I'm so so busy and really really need to work on something and stay busy and help someone else or whatever. But I'm slowly setting myself up for a more contemplative life, a more meaningful and free life. I still don't really know where things need to go for myself, but learning where I don't need to go has been very helpful, or where I'm glad that I'm not stuck anymore. I have been to some places that I know people have not been able to come back from and they are still dealing with the consequences of their actions...

Another hippie ramble

    

Somebody else made this picture, ownership is a lie

     Through all my best efforts I have somehow figured out how to chill out and enjoy life a little bit. For the past few years I have been running headfirst at high gear trying to get somewhere as fast as possible, even if I didn't know where that was. I didn't and still don't know where I am going in life but I knew I had to do whatever it is I was doing really fast. I blame this entirely on the expectations of society that I unconsciously internalized. This pushed me to be more and more "productive." I would practice a polyphasic sleep cycle where I would sleep 2-3 hours a day whilst working and going to school taking way too many units. I became a zombie but consoled myself with the idea that I was moving ahead in life.
     There's a culture of ignorant pride in working so hard that you run yourself down sacrificing yourself to be more productive. On top of this goes a dollop of well deserved indulgences in the form of fast food or whatever vice it takes to try and even out the suffering we put ourselves through to get to the next day. I often imagine what it would be like to be a big shot CEO or just someone with a ton of money and responsibilities. I see how their health is deteriorated while they attempt to do compensatory exercises to give themselves the delusion of "health."
   I just don't think we can get away with denying our evolutionary heritage in favor of being part of the "economy" as if that's a real, natural system in the world. It's made up, a cycle devised to keep moving for the sake of moving, completely ignorant of the natural cycles of the world. I'm trying to opt out in many ways, trying to reduce my consumption of everything. Trying to stick with the things in life that are free and of much higher quality than anything you could put a dollar sign on. I'm tired of considering some leisure activity that I'm doing not worth it just because I can't figure out how to monetize it in the future. Not every experience has to be an investment to help you get the upper hand at some point. Perhaps our life experiences are valuable for their own sake. Crazy, right?
     If I had my food and shelter covered I would just trade my time with people for everything else but as long as I am trapped in a monetary system with everyone else, I will do my best to make sure I'm of service to others. As long as I am somehow mitigating the suffering of someone else, I'm on the right path, even if I'm getting paid for it. One day I will live my life without having to think about money, either because I've lived frugally, having minimal impact, or because we all somehow figure out how to change the economic structure of the world. There are alternatives to money, it just takes cooperation from like minded individuals.
      The gist of what I wanted to write when I started this ramble was that  we all need to take a step back, relax a bit, and take a look at our caffeine addicted, wide-eyed, crazy-haired, frothing at the mouth selves. We need to relax, walk out into nature for a bit, and just be okay with being, to rejoice in being. In accepting myself for who I am, I feel I may just accidentally do more than I would have in life if I just skipped my contemplative self-examinations and blasted full speed ahead.
    Anyways, some of my inspirations right now: Gandhi, omfg watch the Gandhi movie, read about his life, it's amazing, so inspiring, and so sad in a lot of ways, the zeitgeist movement stuff, Thic Nhat Hanh is brilliant, reading about native american agrarian societies, fricken Wim Hof.

Transgender Parkour

   So I'm transgendered (male to female) and I do parkour. How does that work? I'm on hormones that physically change some of the morphilogical features of my body to match my gender. Some of these changes include shrinking muscles and body fat redistribution.

     I'm very early in on my transition, only 2 months on hormones but a lot has changed socially and physically for me. I was incredibly worried about not being able to train the way I did before. I thought that I would just get weaker and so it wasn't worth an ounce of my strength to take hormones even if it meant that my body would change into what I'd always needed it to be. I also needed to be strong and capable, wouldn't I lose all of that? Since I'm already 2 months in here, I've already come to the conclusion that I'm gonna be okay. Working with a doctor who has had several trans patients gave me a lot of confidence and I found myself dispelling a lot of myths about taking hormones that kept me too afraid to get on the path.

     Yes it's true that my muscles will get smaller due to my lowering levels of testosterone. However, this means that my overall bodyweight will drop due to the muscle being heavier than fat. As a parkour practitioner I'm really only concerned about my relative strength/power to weight ratio. It does not really benefit us to be extremely heavy with muscle or fat in this discipline. That's the theory anyway, but there are plenty of real world examples of female gymnasts, one arm pull-up rock climber chicks, and super skinny parkour dudes to show that it's quite possible to thrive with smaller muscles. Aaaand of course don't forget about all the other female parkour athletes out there breaking down all the stereotypes. I draw so much motivation and inspiration from them.

    It's about motor control and neurological training which doesn't just go away with muscle loss. It reminds me of Pavel's work. In one of his books he shared a story about a woman lifting a car off of her husband or something because she was recruiting a higher percentage of her muscle fibers. So there you go, estrogen will allow me to lift cars now. There's your non sequitur of the day. In all seriousness though I'm writing about this stuff because I don't want being a serious parkour practitioner to bar trans women from getting the treatment that they need. Let's see if my theories hold true throughout my transition. I'll do some progress report posts on things as they unfold . Also if there are any other trans parkour athletes out there, feel free to connect with me, we're a rare cross section of people.

Becoming a hippie by accident (ramble)

Over the last 10 years or so I have acquired the many stereotypical attributes associated with hippies. When I say  it was by accident it doesn't mean I'm ashamed, just that it sneaked up on me and I woke up one day surprised. What I thought had been a thoughtful, reasonable, methodical life, had actually just led itself into one of these weird archetypes that I already knew existed but didn't quite understand. So as far as the superficialities are concerned, I have long hair, have a vw bug, ride my bicycle everywhere, eat vegan, meditate on peace and love, and have just recently gotten into yoga. There's a billion other things that make me who I am but its just uncanny as far as the hippie thing is concerned. So why does the word hippie have such a horrible connotation in my mind? Maybe its because what comes to my mind is this totally non-committal person who just wants to smoke pot and not really do anything with themselves for the rest of the time after that. Well I'm certainly not like that. Each and every one of my major lifestyle choices has a strand of reasoning behind it that led me there because I feel that I am first and foremost a philosopher before anything else. So the one big point that I wanted to get across (if there is a point at all) is that I'm not just going to stop being hippie like just because other hippies make it look like that's a bad decision. I'm going to keep on with my various trains of reasoning and their applications and see  where that leads. Another thing quick lesson from all this is to never dismiss a good idea just because it has a bad label associated with it. I often hesitate to call myself a vegan and would rather say plant-based just to get away from the extremist "assholism" that pervades a portion of the vegan movement. Not sure where I was going with all of this but felt I should finally just write something down again. So here's to that. Namaste (just kidding) but really though.

Quest for the Perfect Frontflip

     I've been doing front flips randomly for the last 8 years and I still suck at them. Part of my suckiness can be the lack of motivation to train the movement in a consistent manner. Over the past year or two I actually have been consistently working with this movement only to become incredibly frustrated and confused. I have had varying levels of success with different techniques but what I want to do here is give my criterion for a "perfect" frontflip. Now there are many different ways that a frontflip can be implemented but I want to limit the environment to either a hard, non bouncy surface or grass because if the movement can be performed there, then it can work anywhere. There's a certain level of mastery required for any flip to be completed on the ground like this. The criteria:

• The flip requires very little run up, 2 to 3 steps
• It is quiet both on takeoff and landing
• Zero pain
• Landing is in an upright position with a quarter squat to maybe even a half squat being the most that the person has to absorb, anything further than that is a fail, the quarter or 1/8 squat is the ideal landing. Landing like a pencil is likely to make too much noise

    Doing fronts over things, onto things, from a low squat position, or from standing are all important variations but the one we want here will come before these other developments.

     Now as far as the tutorials are concerned, every one that I have seen where someone does really well, (jenx, marvin ross, etc.) the person is super skinny/ has a high strength to weight ratio. In real life, I've seen the same thing. People are either really skinny and tall, or short and stocky, but still quite lean. Of course strength to weight ratio matters but I think that there are more factors that influence strength to weight ratio, such as the tensile strength of muscle tissue in general. The higher weight you have, the less proportional strength you're going to be able to produce regardless of how lean you are, so i think being on the lower end matters quite a lot. The people that seem to do the best, given the standards I've thrown out there weigh between 125-150 lbs which is pretty low for a male today.
     Anyways I think we've known this for quite awhile due to the selection of gymnasts but there is an "I can do anything" mentality in parkour that makes some standards look pretty unrealistic. I'm not saying its impossible to do a frontflip like i've described at higher weights, just saying that from what i've observed, heavier dudes have to usually take a lot of impact either on the landing, the takeoff, or both to produce the force necessary to propel them into the air super high. At any rate, more data is required. For myself, my landing is too hard if I have a gentle takeoff (like this) or my takeoff is a hard punch for a soft landing(like this). Other variations include the russian front and the half russian front, (kind of like a double elbow strike).
    This post is meant to be a kind of addendum/inquiry after the standard tutorial for front flips where people just say important things like keep the chest up, arch, hollow, hips over head, etc. Also it will be a bridge to the detailed master post where I've finally achieved the perfect front flip after experimenting and training like crazy. I'm asking the internet for a few things, namely,  1) the best tutorials they've seen for fronts that helped them to achieve the perfect front flip, 2)outlier examples of people over 160lbs doing good quality fronts on non bouncy surfaces, 3) their own approach to training these things. Remember, it's pointless to post a video with music that covers up the sound of someone's landing/takeoff for an in depth study.

Parkour as an Act of Civil Disobedience

Watch They Live, Watch it.

    I'm around a lot of parkour practitioners so what is normal to me seems widely off the mark compared to the experiences of most everyday working folks. From my odd vantage point everyone else seems so desperate, scrambling for money in a sadistic game of musical chairs. Everyone is trying to one up each other and make it big so that they can have a big house, fancy car, kids, etc. People are all in debt to whatever it is that society tells them they should want. Once they're in debt, they're slaves to whatever work they can get, probably something under their ability, something rote, something robotic. They're probably working a job that makes them bored to tears but even if they do have something that allows them to express their unique human creativity, it is being harvested by their company or whatever it is. It is being sucked out of them for a specific price. People are essentially renting out their minds and bodies for pieces of green paper that allow them to eat, clothe themselves, to sleep somewhere to recover from the monotony, just to do it all again. Is it any wonder that people don't go outside anymore or at least exercise? Is it any wonder that people who are enthusiastic about exercising do it by overcompensating and crossfit their joints off?

     When we live in the world like we're robots we break down because we're not supposed to be robots, we're not supposed to be slaves. It's not our fault though. It's a form of structural violence. We have created systems to handle and harvest the human mind and body to essentially keep the holy economy moving. Health, happiness, and purpose exist in this system but only as a coincidence,it's not the focus, it's luck really. People find ways to cope but it's not good enough, not in 2015. We're behind in our thinking about human happiness. The stamping out of our physical and mental capabilities begins at a young age and continues throughout our life in one form or another. A church is a school is a prison is a job.

   Parkour is another reaction to all this madness. It looks around at all the things we've built and circumvents the original purpose. The purpose of limiting or directing one's movement. What was once a tool of tyranny is now the means to freedom. We can show the world, and more importantly, ourselves that we're not just cogs in the machine. Yes climbing a tree is an act of civil disobedience, of nonviolent resistance to what we're being told by society to desire. No theme park, video game, or movie can surpass the feeling of masterfully moving your body through space without having to fucking pay for it. Stop consuming, start moving. You can find fulfillment for free.People are already catching on. This is for the people who just weren't sure.

Constant Training

   So when I started training, I knew nothing about fitness regimes or rep schemes. I just went out every day and hammered it. The skills I learned were based on whatever occurred to me at the time. As I got better, I started reading all the fitness advice for this and that. I incorporated a lot of different ideas, threw some ideas away, and certainly failed quite alot. One practical concept that seems to have stuck through all of that is the grease the groove method which I first heard from Pavel. Handstands and bent arm handstand presses benefited quite a lot from this method.The idea is simply to do whatever skill/strength movement you're working on throughout the day at a low enough intensity so that you don't get burned out. Training throughout the day gives you a high volume without fatigue so you're 'greasing the neurological groove', treading the neurological pathway over and over again. I was able to go for longer a lot quicker I think than I would if had a very strict program where I did 3 sets of whatever at a very specific time of day.
     So it works great for performance and building strength but the real brilliance with this way of training is that it prevents you from compartmentalizing your movement into that special time block 3 times a week. I've been stuck there myself where I felt good enough to do something but was waiting so that I could stick to my structured game plan. One can still make progress this way but, personally, it made me a bit psychologically weird about training. Anytime that you feel like you can't do something when you want to movement-wise, barring injury, there's something wrong with your way of thinking. We're not competitive athletes, we don't have to get bogged down with advanced russian periodization protocols, we're not robots. We change our training with the seasons and the environment we place ourselves in.
    Even though I don't believe in super structured training at the moment sometimes we might prepare for certain trips in locations that we can't be in all the time which is why it's important to understand all the exercise science stuff. The point is not to let it rule you or prevent you from moving more than you should.
    

Parkour Podcast. EP 1. A Conversation with Victor LoForte

    
     Victor LoForte is a good friend and has been training parkour for about 9 years without any major injuries. After all this time he's still going strong. In our conversation we covered:

• How he got started
• How his training has changed over time
• The variety and depth of training possible with some of the most basic parkour movements
• The importance of exploring the environment over just making videos and doing short runs.
• How to plug into your environment
• How running can be a diagnostic tool
• The importance of running, swimming, climbing in our parkour practice
• How the modern way of living has become disconnected from our human history.

Podcasting

I like to talk about training and the thought processes involved with what we do. I've had some of the most thought provoking conversations with others that have changed my life and way of thinking. I think it's about time someone provide an intelligent and inspiring format for this so stay tuned. I'll post some here and on youtube at first. I'm going to be interviewing people in my local area. We have a thriving community but nobody really knows much about it. I hope to inspire other communities to start up a podcast and reveal their training variations so we can all grow together.

Training Log 02/06/15

Lately I've been training with my new kettlebell, learning new stuff daily. The turkish getup and some cleans from the bottom of the swing. It's really fun and much different from my usual training. I'm not used to manipulating large heavy objects around. I'm also looking forward to some of the potential conditioning benefits. i want to see how it carries over to my running. Other than that, it's standard parkour fare, climbups, precisions, wallruns, bar stuff. Trying to regain some of my tumbling skills. The frontflip on flat ground has eluded me for years now. I can do it well every once in a while, but not consistently. Having been inspired by Pavel lately, I'm doing more of a grease the groove kind of approach where I train skills/strength frequently but throughout the day. I long for longer unbroken sessions though. The weekend calls to me. My record for chinups with my 45 lb kettlebell is 3 so far. That's up from 1 in just a few days. Talk about neurological strength. My goal is 10 or more so I'm hopeful.

Parkour Holes: run, swim, climb

     So the terms "movement" and "movers" have taken the stage lately and people have really started to cross over into other disciplines to become more complete movers. My thoughts on this phenomenon are mixed only because from my perspective that's what parkour already is. People talk about movement and it seems so obvious to me that navigation of your environment is the most basic expression of this. My journey started with running and basic breakfalls. Over the years I layered on new skills that helped me to navigate most obstacles in the urban and natural environment. Most of my training would not look much like any of the parkour videos coming out today, nor would they be as exciting and dynamic. Perhaps that's another big reason I haven't filmed in awhile. Given what I've said, people should still be able to train any way that they want, these are just the holes from my perspective. And maybe it will inspire some pk practitioners who are just tired of mindlessly doing cast backflips off of stuff.

Holes:

• Running. When I first started years ago, it was understood in the pk community that running was the basis of everything we did. People recommended being able to run a mile or two before beginning parkour. Now there are all sorts of resources on form and training that people can read about. It has become a trend to only sprint to get the most power and leg strength but people often miss the beauty of going on a long run and taking the time to enjoy/interact with your environment in a unique way. Trail running is the best because one often has to vault, change directions and interact with nature. Running long distances also increases the scope of one's training, taking it beyond short furious jackie chan bursts. Also the better your cardiovascular endurance, the longer you can train. We all know those guys who come out to a jam, lay out their biggest tricks, then finish the day early because they're too tired. Don't be that guy, endure.
• Swimming. Another basic thing that gets completely ignored. Yes swimming is parkour. No, swimming is not just the freestyle stroke or back stroke or butterfly or whatever. There are so many ways to train your body and mind in the water beyond the traditional methods designed for a sports competition. Just like gymnastics, swimming has been taken apart, analyzed, reduced, and compartmentalized into something that no longer looks and feels natural. If we look to monkeys for our cues on dry land movement, we should look to seals for our underwater explorations. Literally dive down below the surface of a lake and swim as far down as you can. Grab a giant rock and sprint across the bottom, now swim the 30-40 feet back up without panicking. One has to learn apnea ( breath holding), ear equalization, overcome fear of the unknown, deal with cold water, learn different swimming techniques for acsending and descending. The difficulties can be layered on with depth, distance, and variety. If you have never swam a mile in feiyues, then you haven't used your feiyues. We don't just want to be competent in the water, we want to be comfortable, at home. Think about how comfortable your favorite urban training spot is to you. You know a billion routes to navigate the area, you are capable there. Now imagine having that with water. If your only experience with water is throwing back fulls off a diving board into a chlorinated pool, get some friends who are interested, read about freediving, go to the nearest lake, river, or swimming pool and start slow. Pay attention to the basics. Learn how to float indefinitely. Learn how to tread water for an hour without stopping. Get your breath holds past 2:00 minutes. Swimming is a brilliant complement to all of the impact in parkour. Most of all just explore swimming in a non traditional way. I've already witnessed and learned 2 or 3 swimming movements that just don't exist anywhere else and are super useful. Come up with something new. Innovate in this area.
• Climbing. Bouldering, buildering and tree climbing to be exact. I think some of us older folks still do this. When you get tired of kong pres and muscle ups, solving a buildering route can open up your training repertoire. You'll find yourself in awkward positions that you never thought you'd be using to get across, over, through etc. You'll find an actual use for a one arm pull up as unilateral strength is key in climbing. Rock climbing has become a pretty established discipline and buildering is a natural offshoot but don't forget about the trees. Trees can offer some of the most diverse climbing challenges out there. And how often do you get to climb sixty or seventy feet without anyone bothering you or telling you "you're not supposed to be up there." Or worse, "trees aren't for climbing." Then what the fuck are they for?!
• Exploration of the natural environment. I know this is highly location dependent but if you live anywhere near nature, find it and explore it. Everything we do in parkour can be found in nature in much more variety and complexity. If you go into nature, you have to do parkour to get everywhere. One of the best things about being in nature is you can pick a direction and go for miles without stopping, without worrying about being hit by a car, or told to leave for trespassing. There's much more to being out in nature than the training opportunities but if you've never practiced outside of the urban environment that's enough of a reason to get out there. There is no uniformity in nature so mountains, lakes, rivers, forests or even the beach near the ocean(if you're lucky) all offer their own unique challenges. Weather is another aspect, the variations are endless.

• Endurance. This does not mean I think one should neglect strength training at all. I've been harping on endurance throughout this whole post so far but I want to talk about it in terms of one's conditioning and skill training. It's not enough to do the short powerful burst runs. When you do a parkour run that is longer than 50 feet, you're in the realm of cardiovascular and muscular endurance. Once you have the strength for a particular skill, get it down to the point where you can do it again and again without fatigue, anywhere from 10 reps and up. The reps can be determined by what you think you'll need wherever you're training. In the areas that I like to train in, there are boulders the size of houses strewn along a river for long stretches so it takes a lot of climbing up and dropping down over and over again. So I have to prepare for it by doing higher rep conditioning. Some say you can just go train in those places to gain that level of endurance  but if you're like me, you're working and can't always just get outside to train in your favorite spots. If you're more acrobatically inclined, building your endurance can open up some possibilities. I remember one time playing a game of "stick" with some super strong gymnasts. Though they could do higher level skills, I would challenge them by doing the most basic flips but over and over again in sequence until finally sticking the landing. The gymnasts would be too tired to do a front tuck to roundoff to 5 back-handsprings with two consecutive back tucks at the end. I can't imagine why. 

Holes that have been filled already.
The parkour community has done a good job of talking about safety, weight training, calisthenics, and refining our most basic techniques. Levels for climb ups have been one the best fixes we've seen so far. I think that as we continue to grow our art, we'll find more holes to cover up. There are more than I have mentioned so far but this post is getting too long.

Finding balance.

Phew it's been awhile. So some updates.
I moved somewhere else that was equally as far away and my wife got another job so she often takes the car so I still bike to work, a 24 mile round trip. Some days I get the car so that's nice.I got a kettlebell recently, and have finally started running again on a regular basis.

Some things I've learned in the last 5 months or so:

Endurance, both cardiovascular and muscular are important to anyone who wants to do parkour outside of a gym, which I wish was everybody. Once you learn a basic skill, drill it to the point where you could do it 20-30 times consecutively without dying. I've often focused only on short fast routes contained within whatever space I find myself in but when i go out in seemingly endless nature, the limits of a route are determined by my ability to keep going.

There is such a thing as being strong enough, and I haven't yet reached that point yet. This fits in with the endurance idea, there is an end goal, maintenance level of strength that need not be surpassed because my technical challenges will not require it. A surplus of strength is good but I've become obsessed which has put me off balance.

Stretching is way more important than I thought. especially for what I do with tricking, tumbling, and stupid cycling. I ride a bike quite a lot and it has seriously messed up my hip flexors to the point where I've realized I have to spend a ridiculous amount of time getting them back to  a healthy length. I've been reading kit lauglin's work along with other people's stretching routines. I'm starting to see it as a more of a lifestyle requirement than merely a thing you do for rehab. We should strive to be cat like with out flexibility and strength.

Kettlebells are incredibly fun. Parkour alone leaves out a lot of object manipulation which can be addictive. This is why I've always loved hacky sack and juggling. It's nice to do strength training in an ever changing way. There are many techniques to progressively load the body with the kettlebell just as there is with pure bodyweight training.

Everything is a skill and should be practiced as such. I have a pretty routine day so I get my training on a regular basis. That said, I still practice everything somewhat equally, so I  will try and stretch just as often as I run, tumble, or strength train but it is spread out throughout the day. This tends to make life less stressful and rote. I don't wait to train something if I feel like doing it now. This makes it hard to measure my volume, but I'm getting quite instinctive about it so I can tell if I'm neglecting handstand work or climbing, just by feel.

I need to write more. I have ideas all the time for writing but my busy work schedule and training time put a damper on my ambitions. I've learned so much more in the last few months that I need to share. More is coming.