This Is How I Play: Introduction

This post is an introduction to a blog series I will be publishing over the next month called “This Is How I Play.” The inspiration for this comes from a book I'm reading, Exuberant Animal, by Frank Forencich. In one of his articles he claims that we “study and test, research and measure, drilling our knowledge down to the deepest levels, and then we wonder why people find exercise so dull and unattractive. We strip human movement down to the sterile elements of anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics and then complain that no one wants to participate.”

I don't agree with this quote 100%, especially for high level athletes, but I think that a lot of fitness programs (especially for school-aged children) should pay a lot of attention. If games were emphasized as the primary method of physical activity, it will not only be more effective but also will be a lot more enjoyable. And that's really the secret to a successful fitness program. If exercise can be made fun, then people will WANT to come back and participate again; they will enjoy and look forward to it.

I'm not talking about sports however – there's a huge difference between sports and games. Sports are fantastic – for athletes. But if you aren't an athlete, you probably aren't going to have many opportunities to play sport-games. Even when you do play a pickup game, there is often equipment, a large number of people, or a specific location necessary for that sport. In order for the game to be played all of these conditions must be met, and that is often very difficult to plan and organize. Then there's the potentially humiliating experience of picking teams and, once the game starts, not being passed to or truly included.

The kind of games I'm talking about are more free-form and creative. Things that really engage the imagination, and don't necessarily have a lot of rules. During this series, I'm going to be giving examples of a lot of different games. Some are games developed by the parkour community, some are games I've developed, and others are just random games that I've come across in my travels. For most of the games, I have also listed one or two variants or combinations, a way to develop a whole new game simply by changing the rules or mixing it with another game.

Creativity and imagination is fundamental to what makes us human, but many kids aren't given the opportunities to exercise their brains and their body together. Encourage your kids to create their own games to play, or you can use these games, or make up your own variations of these games to play! Most of these games can be played without any equipment and can be played by anyone, five to fifty five, skinny or heavy, male or female.

What I learned at NYPK

I wrote this on the train leaving hardcoretraceur's house at 4:45 in the morning the Monday after NYPK. Some of these are inside jokes/references, others are more universal:

What I learned at NYPK
-Why hardcoretraceur is so hardcore. Or at least stupid. (The shoulder/dragging thing)
-Why 3-day jams are both a horrible, and fantastic, idea.
-No matter how perfectly things are planned, and how many redundancies are in place, things will still get screwed up. Tough luck. Figure it out and keep on moving.
-Accidents and pain happen: It is how one responds to these that matters.
-'Nam was "crappy." (Crazy vet on the light rail)
-"Don't get high, go do something." (Crazy vet again)
-There is something to be learned from _everyone_, regardless of skill, politics, or path.
-Be strong to be useful.
-Running with the pack is better than staying with the flock.
-Make no excuses not to train to your limit.
-In order to break the apple, you must first break yourself.
-Pyro's shoulder looks like Ravioli. It isn't supposed to, however.
-What you put in is what you get out.
-When discussing which is worse, slavery or the Holocaust, check for cameras.
-With a positive mind, one can have an iron will.
-There is always something you can train.
-Anyone who suffers from friends who don't support their love for parkour, but train anyway, deserves some serious respect.
-Drama, while it should have been left at High School, often isn't.
-Try to leave Drama in high school anyway.
-Stop talking and move.
-And my last quote, which I've decided is my new personal motto: Once you hit rock bottom, start chiselling.

The place of "Go Big or Go Home" in Parkour.

In short, there is no place for the extreme sports "Go Big or Go Home" attitude in Parkour.

When I started "parkour," (i put that in quotes because of the following) I really didn't know what it was all about. I just saw the techniques, I saw the videos, and I went out and did some really stupid stuff that could have seriously injured me. For a little while (and really, a VERY little while) the group I train with were all about "Go big or go home."

I realized, pretty quickly (thankfully), that this was not what parkour was about. It isn't "Go big or go home." It isn't the X-Games. It's not about "jumping off of s%@*." I was damn lucky I didn't break both my legs. As it is, I bashed my hip on a screwed up precision (though that wasn't a "go big" thing, it was just sandy and I didn't check my surfaces (ANOTHER lesson learned)), and to this day a year and a half later, it still gets sore if I lay on it for too long.

Don't trust me on this. Don't blindly take my word for truth, or lies. Read. Read the articles stickied on the .Net forums. Read the articles on APK. Read the articles on NYPK, Colorado PK, any of the other matured community sites (meaning not www.ihartpkandjumpingoffastuff.com). Read and THINK about it, ponder it, meditate on it - whatever on it - until you realize WHY parkour is not about "go big or go home."

I think too quickly seasoned traceurs tell new people that big drops aren't what it's all about, but they don't give any reasons (other than the obvious health/safety reasons which a lot of people apparently don't care about.)

In a thread I was reading recently, a new guy was saying he was drilling 10 foot drops - great. Now you know you can do it if you have to. What's the point in doing something THAT risky over and over and over again until you get hurt?

A traceur named Hardcoretraceur, whom I really respect, said something at the NYPK07 jam: Someone pointed to a roof and said "Could you jump from that?"
He replied "Yes, but I don't want to."
Hardcoretraceur believes, and I agree with him, that the best way to train for drops is to do drops. Which means while squats and pistols and whatever else helps condition the legs, nothing conditions them for drops like doing drops. But he, and I, want to be doing parkour when we're 30. 40. 50. We value our knees, so we stay ground-level. There's no reason to practice jumping off of buildings. If you ever need to, if you train hard enough with low drops, you'll probably be able to make a few big drops without a problem. But if you train a ton of high drops, the damage you're doing is going to prevent you from doing ANYTHING pretty quickly.

So please, anyone who is still of the "Go big or go home" attitude: Don't change because I tell you to. Or because M2 tells you to, or Sebastian, or eZ, or David Belle. But do LISTEN to us. Take our advice. The advice of people who have been in your position. And then do your own reading, your own thinking, and keep searching until you find the path to the same conclusion we found.