Safety has EVERYTHING to do with Fitness

Based on a forum post where someone stated that advanced practitioners were more likely to get hurt than beginners:

Safety is largely a skill/mental attitude. You can go about a difficult jump with safety in mind, using spotters, progression, and building up to it - or you can just go for it. Most of us choose to go the route of safety - but sometimes someone doesn't know how to be safe. It's an inherent skill to some extent, but must be actively developed or TAUGHT (which is something all three gyms (APEX, Primal, PKV) focus on.) To address later points, these gyms don't just say "Do X and Y and never do A and B." They teach with safety in mind, and through that teaching style students learn how to be safe on their own.

However, I do think Rafe is right about the quote "Safety has got nothing to do with fitness." being incorrect. On Saturday, I took either the worst, or the second worst, bail of my life (parkour, flipping, gymnastics, martial arts, slacklining, firespinning, waterskiiing, wakeboarding all included). The only reason I am probably not paralyzed right now is because of my strength, fitness, skill, and experience.

I wasn't doing anything dangerous, just a simple step up to crane with my off leg. I stepped, leapt, my foot landed on the top, but I had a little bit too much forward momentum and I pitched forward, head first, feet in the air, toward the concrete on the other side. It was about a 4 foot drop, and all I remember is a snapshot of the concrete about 2 feet from my face, and my right arm outstretched toward the ground.

Based on the map of my (extremely minor) injuries and scrapes, I contacted the ground with the blade of my right hand and braced with the palm of my left, lowered myself down into a roll. I hit my thigh on the corner of the wall, and I must have hit my knee at some point - probably during the roll.

I ended on my back, eyes closed, on the concrete. My right leg was extended, and my left knee was bent about 45 degrees. The person I was training with came over, and I calmly asked her to extend my knee and help me unzip my jacket so I could breathe. I walked away about 2 minutes later, and now about 36 hours later the only remaining pain/tightness/soreness is in my thigh, which is greatly diminished.

I was doing something easy and simple. This was something a beginner could probably do. I am sure, however, that this was not something a beginner could have walked away from so easily. I consider myself somewhat strong, but I still do things that are largely not risky. I take great care not to put myself in any unnecessary or excessive danger. This was a technique that was not excessively dangerous. But just like any technique, if the right thing goes wrong at the perfect time...

Physical strength is JUST AS IMPORTANT as mental strength. You can not say that a beginner is exposed to less danger because it simply isn't true. You can not say that because I am stronger, I have to take more risks. Because I was stronger, I am able to move my fingers to type this right now. Life is a long road and we must be strong in order to walk it to it's destination.

Last Night's Dream

So I had a dream last night, and I'd like to share it with the world.

It started off and we were at the Whole Foods near Jesse Danger's house (there is no Whole Foods near Jesse's house), and there were a bunch of parkour people hanging out. Someone comes up and tells me they got the car, and we go over. The car looked kind of like the Corvette LT-1, but about a billion times shinier and better. They handed me the keys and we got in. There was a stickshift, but I never needed to shift between gears. There were, however, about 12-15 different orientations it could be in (including some sort of turbo boost).

So we started driving down this highway. We were going pretty fast, I looked down and it was about 35mph. I thought "We can go faster than this." So then I hit the gas and we sped up to about 80-90mph. I hit the "turbo boost" somehow, and then we were going about 300mph. At one point we saw a turn coming up and I said to the guy in the passenger seat "Oh crap." I pulled the e-brake, executed a perfect skid around the corner, and then we kept going.

Finally, we drive into this cave. There is still road, but the walls are right up against the edge of the car. I hit the turbo boost and we're going about 400mph when the view switches to 3rd person of the car. Jet fighter wings fold out from the car, scraping and sparking against the walls. The whole car is on fire - but it's white fire. Then we hit this massive jump and glide for about a mile.

Next, it's me and my friend in this cave (no car), and we get to a door. "You have to write something insulting to get in" he says. So I inscribe with my feet on the ceiling "Write and die." We enter a living room style area. My friend Graham is there, along with the guy we were going to meet. The guy immediately jumps up and starts demanding who we are and how we got in here when Graham interrupts and says that we're with him.

The guy suddenly becomes friendly and welcoming, but in a very "mafia boss" kind of way. There are other people around who seem to be there for the same event as me. I mash some macaroni and cheese with chicken in it on the guys face (that's what was expected of me) and then the dream ends.

Someone woke me up in the morning and I immediately reply "I was having an office space dream." I'm not sure what that means, or if I was having a dream about office space afterward - but I'm glad I remembered this one instead.

Decentralizing Parkour Jam Planning using Twitter

One of the major problems with parkour communities right now is jam planning and coordination. Currently, Rochester uses Facebook to plan jams. Honestly I wish it hadn't turned out that way. The only way to announce your jam was to post on the discussion boards (which no one checks with any real frequency in ANY Facebook group) or to send out a message. Only administrators of the group can send out messages though, so unless I made everyone an administrator, only a few select people could effectively plan jams.

I recognized how detrimental this was to the community and I made a push to start using the American Parkour forums. As it stands, almost all typical parkour communities use forums to plan their jams, and it works pretty well. Forums allow anyone to post a jam, they facilitate easy discussion and planning of the jam, and it leaves a public record of past events. The problem is people had no incentive to check APK because any event we planned was blasted to them through Facebook. Additionally, it's difficult to reach critical mass on a forum (as defined by the amount of activity occurring to keep it interesting enough for people to keep coming back and generating more activity). So short of the leaders of the community abandoning Facebook entirely. I had to find a way to solve this problem in order for the community to be sustainable. How could we decentralize jam planning without destroying the community?

Then the idea. Twitter. It all fell into place, and the solution is SO much cooler than you think it is.

A quick rundown on Twitter lingo in case you aren't familiar. A Twitter update is called a tweet. You can do something called "retweeting" which is basically quoting someone. It's typically used as a way of saying "hey. This guy is pretty cool, you (your followers) should hear what he has to say." Then there are hashtags, which is Twitters keyword system. You can end a tweet with #08DebateTopics, and then whenever someone who was interested in 2008 election debate topics searched for that hashtag, tweets about energy policy, Iraq, and the economy would all come up.

So here is how my solution works:

• Step 1: start a hashtag, #parkourjam. If I want to go train, I write a tweet like "Tuesday. Five PM. In front of the library. #parkourjam"

• Step 2: Run a Twitter search for the hashtag, and then save the RSS feed for that search.

• Step 3: write a perl script to scrape that RSS feed and republish it. (this is necessary because Twitter uses nofollow links, which will screw up the next step.)

• Step 4: run your new RSS feed through Yahoo Pipes. Apply some clever filters and regular expressions to strip out the data you want, clean it up a bit, and the republish that as a new RSS feed.

• Step 5: run that RSS feed through twitterfeed.com. This will check for updates every 30 minutes, then will actually update a Twitter account with the new information.

So what we just did is essentially create a retweet bot. It will automatically search Twitter for new tweets using the #parkourjam hashtag, do a bunch of technical mumbo jumbo back-end magic, then republish any tweet it finds under its own account.

This is obviously useful because now everyone doesn't have to follow everyone else, people only have to follow a single bot.

Cool right? Yeah. But we're not done yet.

Twitter is super phone friendly. You can register your phone with your account, and then you can actually text updates to Twitter. So I can be on campus, find out class is canceled, then without having to go home I can tell people to meet me outside the library in ten minutes to train.

Sweet, right? Sure, but then everyone else still has to be at their computer to see my update. And this is when the project REALLY gets cool.

Remember when I said that Twitter is super phone friendly? Yeah. SUPER phone friendly. You can actually set Twitter up to send you a text message whenever specific people update their Twitter accounts.

Yeah. So suddenly, I can tell everyone who follows this retweet bot that I'm outside the library and I want to train. Where ever they are.

So if your Economics 101 professor is droning on and on about the laws of supply and demand and it's an amazing day outside... You know there is someone who wants to go train. Or if your home alone watching television, or if you dropped the kids off at a birthday party and have a few hours to kill. Suddenly the entire community is at your fingertips. Anyone can plan a jam- either days in advance or minutes in advance.

I feel like this is what Twitter is going to be used for more and more in the future. With a bit of creativity, out of the box thinking, and knowing what tools are out there and what they're capable of, you can decentralize planning while centralizing community.

5 Cool Things Zac Has Done

5. Fought housing to get our basements back:

Housing is more or less constantly trying to pull a fast one on RIT students. They often get away with it, but sometimes they just take things too far. Here's the story of how Housing tried to lock the basements of all the townhouses in my complex, and how I started a movement and stopped them by using social networking and a show of force.

4. 72 Hour Fast:
I grew up in an upper-middle class family with a fully stocked refrigerator. Sometimes we were out of peanut butter, but we were never out of food. So I decided to find out what it was like to go three days without eating. I did not alter my schedule at all, and I used Twitter to keep a constant log of how I was feeling.

3. Trip around the country:
I was faced with a choice. Should I look for a summer job, or should I blow a fair deal of my money and travel to 20 different cities across the country meeting new people, seeing new places, and training Parkour? No real contest. I took planes, trains, and busses and never spent a dime on housing by staying with parkour friends. Read the stories (be sure not to miss the Plane to San Francisco one), see the pictures, and watch the videos of my 8 week trip.

2. Rochester Parkour:
When I came to RIT as a freshmen, there were only two other people training in all of Rochester, and they were about 45 minutes away. Since I founded Rochester Parkour one year ago, we've had special Beginner Workshops with over 100 attendees, host training sessions with over 40 regulars, have had two television interviews and five newspaper articles, been featured by the Rochester Area Community Foundation nonprofit organization, negotiated to teach children's classes out of a gymnastics gym, and led free children's workshops for the Strong National Museum of Play.

1. Backflips!


And undoubtly the coolest thing I've done... Backflips! What most people don't know about backflips is that they're also semi-legal tender in some places. I've done backflips for raffle tickets, backflips for cheese, and backflips for cash!

I Fought Housing... and I Won

I am by no means spoiled. But when things don't go my way, sometimes it is necessary and proper to throw yourself on the ground, scream, flail, and thrash around for a bit. This is pretty much how I ensured that the basements of my townhouse complex remain unlocked...

I live in an on-campus townhouse complex called Colony (which falls somewhere between "the slums" and "low-income housing" on my scale of RIT Housing). Despite the distance from campus, disrepair, and the smelly, ant-and-bee-infested swamp I have for a backyard, I really enjoy living there. One of the major draws is the basement - the only RIT housing option with a basement. We have two rooms, a "family room" and a "utility room."

According to the RIT Housing website, the Family Room is 12 x 21, and the Utility Room is 13 x 21. There is a very thin, poorly constructed wall (with holes in it) between the two rooms, and a door connecting them.

I was back home in Maryland this summer, but my roommate Charles Moreland stayed in our townhouse. One day, he emailed me and was furious that "Housing was locking our basement."

...What? I didn't get this email. I had him forward me the email, which stated that "this necessary work is being done to address past occurrences with fire code violations and maintenance issues. These incidents include: inappropriate storage of combustible materials near the furnace and hot water tank, and the sump pump being clogged with debris (resulting in flooded basements)."

I assumed my email was waiting in a queue somewhere, and was bound to arrive sometime that night. Over 24 hours passed, and I still hadn't received an email. That's when I realized that Housing was trying to pull a fast one on any residents not actively living there over the summer.

And that's when I got angry. And to quote the Hulk, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

I thought for a moment, then came up with a plan.

Phase I) Write an email. I wrote an email that started off by thanking them for locking our basement. I told them that I was glad that they were going to lock off 273 square feet of our townhouse, but I was confused as to why they didn't mention the $704 I would save in rent that year! I continued this implication that they were lowering our rent for a while, and told them I planned on using the money to buy food and textbooks - things I wasn't able to afford both of last year.

I acknowledged I was being sarcastic, and then I pointed out that this yet one more problem in a long line of "miscommunication issues" that Housing was facing. I was part of a Housing Committee that Housing disbanded (because these were the kind of issues we were bringing up. You know, real ones.). I pointed out that they weren't updating their Housing Guidelines handbook, they weren't informing students of changes to policies (or weren't until it was too late), and that they inconsistently enforced other policies. It was also unacceptable that they kept this a secret from most of the people it would effect (school-year residents). I offered my contact information for further discussion, and I promised they would hear more complaints.

And then I sent it 15 people. Everyone from the Director of Housing to the President and Vice-President of Student Government to the Director of Student Affairs. One person could ignore it... but fifteen couldn't.

I got an email from the President of Student Government telling me he was "looking into the situation," and then I got a call from one of the higher-ups in Housing. We spoke on the phone for some time, and he insisted that this was the way it was, and there was nothing I could do.

So then I got serious.

Phase II - Spark a Social Wildfire. I knew they could ignore me and my opinions, so I needed to get the word out. Which, I believe, is why Facebook was invented. I wrote a Facebook note that briefly informed people what was happening, why it was happening, and what I was doing to stop it. Then I picked one of the people from my email list, and I told everyone to email that person one person and complain. I was trying to ensure that the complaints would be concentrated. I posted an alarmist status update ("Do you live in Colony? Housing is trying to lock your basement! Read my note to learn how to stop it!"), and then asked people to repost my status update and my note.

I also contacted several social activists on campus and we were beginning to plan a Walk on the Housing office.

It spread quickly, and while I have no idea how many emails my target received, it must have been enough. All Colony residents (ALL residents, summer and school-year) received an email a few days later that "after phone conversations with several students residing in the Colony Manor townhomes as well as reviewing feedback posted on Facebook and through email, I’ve decided on a compromise."

Phase III- Resolution. They came in and marked off an area around the furnace where we couldn't store anything, and they put a grate over the sump pump. This was a perfectly legitimate, appropriate, and valid response to the problem, whereas locking the entire room was punative and disproportionate to the problem.

So while some people get an email like that, say "Damn, that sucks" and shrug it off, other people get up and complain. When that doesn't work, but you know that your needs and goals and just and right, then it's time to throw yourself on the floor, scream, flail, and thrash wildly until you get your way.

Keeping Busy This Summer

We're now officially halfway through Summer, and I've been keeping busy. I've started, finished, and am working on quite a few different projects.

1. APK Affiliate Program
Toward the beginning of the summer, I came up with an idea to connect American Parkour more with other websites and communities. This eventually developed into the APK Affiliate Program. I've been leading the charge on this, and Im really happy with where this is going. At the time of this posting, we have four published Affiliates, two more waiting to be published, about 6 more in the works, and I'm getting more and more emails about it every day.

I think this is a great way for APK to boost the visibility of a lot of smaller, local sites and drive a lot more traffic to them. It's also a great way to get the people from those sites connected with, using, and contributing to APK and its resources, which will make APK a better community for everyone.

2. Marketing APK and Primal
I've always been very vocal about my ideas for APK (and I've had plenty), but this summer I was hired on as the official Marketing Manager for APK and Primal Fitness DC and Miami. I've been putting together plans and projects to help get the word about APK out there to new people, and to help grow awareness of Primal Fitness DC and help get Primal Fitness Miami started on the right track. This is an exciting opportunity for me to work even harder to grow and guide the organizations that have helped me so much.

3. Content Manager for APK
For almost a year now, I've been in charge of updating the front page of American Parkour on a daily basis. There is the occasional slow day, but for the most part there is something to post every single day. I have a couple different methods of gathering information: I use a series of Google Alerts to track breaking and developing stories. I check the forums for interesting videos, posts, articles, and information. People email me if they think they have something newsworthy.

I email everything to myself, then use a special Gmail label I set up to label it as a front page item. After I post it, I archive it. This system enables me to search my gmail for the string "label:frontpage in:inbox" and it will display all the stories I have yet to publish.

The role of content manager helps me really keep track of what's going on at a local, national, and international level and stay connected with people all over the world. These connections have enabled me to do a much better job with some of my other projects, like the APK Affiliate program.

4. Nunchucks
This is a bit of a side project. I decided I wanted to make a set of nunchucks, but really go all-out on them. I looked up a local woodworking club and went to one of their meetings. I sat and talked with some of the members for a few hours to learn more about basic woodworking. I went to Home Depot and grabbed a utility knife, then I went to a place in Annapolis called Exotic Woods. I was looking through their scrap pile and found 3 pieces of walnut wood. I cut one in half, and ended up with four rectangular pieces of wood.


The left pair have been sanded, the right pair gets sanded today.

I spent about 10 hours whittling (probably a good 4 hours for the first one, 3 for the second, 2 for the third and 1 for the fourth. I was getting better and better!) them into cylinders. I've spent about an hour sanding and that step is half done. Next, I'm going to use a tool my friend lent me. It's kind of like a soldering iron, but it's for burning designs/lettering into wood. I'm going to engrave four quotes, one on each chuck. I've decided on two of the quotes:

"Power Is Nothing Without Control"
"Etre fort pour être utile." (Translation: Be Strong to be Useful)

I haven't decided on the other two. Leave suggestions in the comments!

After I etch the quotes in, I'll stain it and then attach the chain. And then I'll have some awesome homemade nunchucks, and will have learned more about whittling, etching, and staining.

5. Local Parkour Training
Some locals and I have set up regular, twice a week sessions in the Severna Park, Maryland area. I have a lot of friends who were interested in training, but didn't really want to go off and figure it out on their own. When I came back from college we set these up, and we've had a good number of beginners show up (and stay!). I've done a ton of teaching in Rochester, but this group is a mix of experienced and inexperienced people, so finding a good balancing point of activities has been an interesting task.

I trained with the Bar-Barians a bit in NYC a few weeks ago, and it's solidified my opinion that strength and conditioning is paramount not only for safety, but will also in learning new techniques. See video below to learn about the Bar-Barians.



We were doing parkour with one of them, and he moved like he'd been training for three years. Turns out, this was his third parkour session. His incredible amount of strength made learning new techniques a piece of cake. Because of this, we've been doing mostly conditioning at our training sessions. I'm subscribing to the belief that if you focus almost solely on strength and conditioning for the first months of your training, you will progress much faster later on.

Those are some of the projects I've been working on this summer. While it was definitely frustrating not being hired this summer because I wasn't willing to work for free, I've definitely been keeping busy and staying productive.

Call for Help - Parkour Non-Profit Fundraiser

Some of my closest Parkour friends are from Seattle, Washington. Of the people there, Tyson Cecka has started a non-profit organization called "Parkour Visions."

"Parkour Visions seeks to improve the health and well-being of today's movement-starved and overworked population by revealing the world filled with rewarding mental and physical challenges that everyone can playfully use to improve themselves.

We are a nonprofit organization bringing the exciting new sport of parkour / freerunning into mainstream society in a safe and responsible way through our classes, outreach programs, educational resources, and partnerships.

We believe that fitness should not only be physically demanding, but should challenge us intellectually, put us in touch with our environment, and expand our understanding of ourselves. Through parkour we hope to help children and adults connect with their innate love of movement, get in touch with their surroundings, and experience the full potential of what their bodies have evolved to do."

They're currently fundraising to finance their outreach programs for at-risk children. If they make their goal of $4,000 by the end of June, it will earn them a permanent spot on the GlobalGiving.org, which will help fund their programs for a long time!

The description of the project:

"Here's the deal: I'm betting all of you have had problems before getting parkour recognized as a legitimate useful activity that's not just kids jumping off of buildings and goofing around ;) We're all in this challenge together to be recognized as a worthwhile discipline to the masses and that's why places like these forums and projects like Jump Westminster and Leave No Trace have extra importance.

In Seattle, Washington they've started up a whole not-for-profit organization to help address this and guide parkour into the mainstream. Their largest project yet is launching this month which involves teaching low-income and homeless young people parkour through a public school, four apartment complexes, and a teen crisis center (so far).

They have little money to back this up and are reaching out to the worldwide parkour community to give as much as $10 to the cause. If they can raise $4,000 by the end of this month they can reach the tipping point and fund these programs till the end of the year. That's only one corporate sponsor and a few hundred individual donors. The media coverage and lasting impacts of these programs could be huge and be a big boon for parkour in the US and globally.

Take a look and please help by donating $10 or at least spreading this around."

Please help out Parkour Visions - even a donation of $10 will go a long way to supporting the first Parkour non-profit in America!