I had an excellent day of training a few days ago at the Thursday UW jam. There is an area where I used to some balance challenges next to a hallway somewhere over on south campus. I had always glanced over to the hallway looking for possibilities but I always figured it was rather bland and there wasn’t much there.

I was wrong again

When jamming there Thursday, Alex started experimenting over there, and we ended up training close to an hour straight on some of the most challenging and fun climbing and parkour lines I have ever done. What I once thought was impossible is actually really easy with the right move, and once you get into the hallway we came up with some great challenges. For instance the whole area is a sequence of difficult stemming transitions, and we came up with the idea that you had to flick a light switch off at the end of the hallway. After getting that one, we found another switch, and decided to work until we could get both. After a great deal of crazy experimentation, we got both, and decided to up the challenge so that you could only turn off the switches with your hands (previously we just tapped them with our feet while stemming).

Through a series of simple experimentations and challenges we ended up with a balance line to a lieback transition, to a stem move, to a superman stem challenge, back down the hallway staying off of the floor (more stemming), to some tricky superman (extended) transitions. Hard to describe but a hell of a lot of fun! <- means it was it really hard

Creativity and Exploration

One of the greatest things I’ve found about parkour is that the possiblities truly are endless. There are areas I have trained at almost every day, for two years, that I still find new and interesting challenges hidden in to this day. Forcing your mind to learn new patterns of movement every day is an amazing way to keep yourself sharp, physically as well as mentally.

I have noticed in myself as well as in others, though, that this ability to explore old familiar areas and still find new challenges isn’t always there. A lot of traceurs tend to look at an area seeking things that they already know how to do (I’ve been guilty of this myself many times), and just want to try bigger versions of. When in this frame of mind you can hear people describe slanted railings or strange obstacles as “not good” for parkour, when in reality they can foster some of the most incredibly difficult challenges with a little creativity applied. Just training bigger and bigger vaults will get you nowhere with parkour, the devil is in the details. If you want to actually be able to “use” parkour one day, it most likely won’t be you choosing which obstacles you face, you need complete mastery over any possible environment. This means experimenting and learning something new every day, to truly train for adaptability.

Teaching Creativity?

This has led to a new teaching idea for the Puget Sound Community School’s parkour class starting soon. Rather than taking the time to travel to new locations that are “good for parkour,” I’d like to foster creativity in the kids and stay at a single area for the whole class. Exhausting that area’s possiblities to the point of ridiculousness. Everyone will be encouraged to come up with their own challenges, and steps will be made to complete each challenge every class day. Sharing their personal challenges with others and helping them to achieve those challenges will hopefully inspire more teamwork and problem solving.

This is how to make leaders and good instructors I believe (but don’t tell them that). I found myself last year not spending that much time teaching actual techniques, most of my time instead was spent coming up with new challenges for the students and helping them overcome those crazy things. I’m not all that sure how I’m going to pitch this class or even run it, but PSCS has a way of making it all come together as long as there is passion behind it.