What it takes

Before we dive into today's brainwave, a few housekeeping items:

1) Our next Parkour 101 course (formerly known as Parkour Fundamentals) starts on Saturday, July 21st. This is the best way to introduce yourself to the big wide world of Parkour. You can find out more here!

2) We've been taking a hiatus from Parkour Office Hours due to some scheduling issues and a general need to rest and retool. We're off for one more week and then we'll be back at it on 7/24.  While the format will be largely the same we're hoping to spend more time answering viewer submitted questions... so submit some questions! If you have any question about Parkour training, related strength/conditioning, food/diet, or anything else, send it our way via email: info(at)fifth-ape(dot)com or you can use twitter hashtag "pkofficehours". Please contribute and encourage your friends to do so as well - otherwise I'll have to fill up the time by playing lots of Go on air!

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An interesting question was asked during our weekend classes. To paraphrase, "What is the single biggest determining factor for improving one's raw technique power?" (e.g. jump distance, catpass exit distance, wallpass height, etc.)

There isn't really a perfect answer. Obviously, practicing the particular technique will improve your power/distance, as well as your control, efficiency, etc. At the same time, dedicating some time to a serious strength program will yield some pretty spectacular results. (IMHO any kind of linear progression protocol will work wonders... I like Wendler 5-3-1 due to its idiot-proof simplicity) The advantage of strength training is that the fruits of your labor will apply to every technique across the board. Working supplemental power/ speed-strength drills also lends universal benefits - this is where I think kettlebell training really shines.

Ideally, all are a part of your training program. They're all important. But I think there's a better answer to the original question. Put simply, Experience is what will allow for the most progress.

Let's take the example of a catpass. If we are performing this catpass in the middle of a giant empty room with nice high ceiling and beautiful ambient lighting over a perfectly level 3ft. wall then I'd argue that the elements we discussed above would allow you to reach your maximum catpass-distance-potential.

But the real world is nothing like this hypothetical "perfect" obstacle. There's always a context and context is everything. Maybe the approach is more complicated. Maybe the exit requires a precision landing, or an immediate level transition. Maybe the obstacle itself is a little higher... or lower... or slanted.  And so on and so on. As you are reading this I bet you can think of a thousand different contextual variations that can make our little catpass more complex - and there are millions more you can't think of.

Once we start taking context into account, physical conditioning alone is not enough. You must be confident and comfortable enough to deal with all the added complexity. You must have the judgement to know what is possible for you and what is not. In short, you need Experience.

I love this quote:

"The experience of others adds to our knowledge, but not to our wisdom; that is dearer bought." ~Hosea Ballou

As a coach, I can give you knowledge of how to perform a particular technique. I'm a pretty good teacher so I can take a technique that took me 3 months to figure out and teach it to you in a day. That's great - that's the whole value proposition of coaching. However, I cannot give you the Experience that those 3 months of experimentation, trial, error (oh, the errors!) and ultimate success gave me. When it comes to developing experience, there are no shortcuts. You have to get it for yourself.

This makes things interesting for those of us in the nascent profession of Parkour Coaching. Most of us are products of the first wave of Parkour in the USA and as such we are largely self-taught. This means our knowledge and experience increased in lock-step with the other. Aspiring traceurs these days have some great opportunities to take classes and receive coaching. Their knowledge increases quickly, but their experience and judgement can lag behind - which can be dangerous. As a teacher, sometimes the best I can do is share guidelines and best practices and hope it sinks in.

What to do? Remember that experience cannot be given, it must be earned. So go out and get some! Experiment with movement in a wide variety of locations. Try something new, but keep the complexity low - focus on applying fundamental skills. Then maybe start to improvise some contextual challenges. Rather than thinking "where can I go practice my catpass?" take a look around you and come up with some sort of locomotive game/challenge that forces you to use your environment in interesting ways. An old classic is "get from here to there without touching the ground - because the ground is LAVA" Make some time for your own practice outside of any coaching/class context and develop some self-coaching ability.

Experience feeds judgement which feeds confidence. Confidence allows you to look at catpass opportunity, context and all, and say, "Yes, I can do that." (Or, "No, not today." and still feel good about it) It is both the easiest and the hardest element to acquire. Ultimately, it will keep you safe and help you grow as a traceur and as a human being.

Get better. Not destroyed.

Clif Harski just linked to this great article by these folks, who I have never met but think I would like. It's a great message that we all need to take to heart.

I've had a few people come out for our free trial classes, vanish for two weeks, then come back excitedly telling me about how they couldn't walk for three days afterwards and were sore for another week. They tell me this with enormous smiles on their faces and are then genuinely confused when I express concern.

Make no mistake, when it comes to physical activity pushing yourself in new ways will usually make you exhausted and sore at first. But being exhausted and sore shouldn't be your goal for every single training session. This is doubly important for any type of skill based discipline, like martial arts, parkour, etc. In grappling, this is the "time on the mat" principle: consistency is key for improvement. The more regular and frequent your training, the better you get. Far better to train moderately for 5 days than to go all out on one day and spend the next 4 days in bed recovering. I know because I've tried both.

As the article points out, we've been conditioned by the fitness industry to measure the worth of a program by how much we hurt during/after. I think this is the same phenomenon that makes us prefer body soaps that tingle because we can "feel them working." Let's say it plainly: grinding yourself into the dirt for every single workout does not make you tough. It makes you vulnerable. To injury, illness, indoctrination, etc. You don't want that.

Sometimes it's good to train really hard and be wrecked for a day. Overreaching will drive adaptation. But most days you should finish your training feeling good, not bad. The next day you should still feel good. Listen to your body and act accordingly. By means of for instance, today my right knee is bothering me a little - I'm not sure why and I'm not worried about it. But guess who is not going to be doing any jumping today.

You don't want the hardest, most extreme fitness program. You want the one that fits your goals. I don't market Fifth Ape as a belly buster/fat loss system because it's not. I also don't market it as the world's most intense workout, because that's relative. I'm much more interested in feedback like "That was fascinating!" or "I didn't know I could do that!" That's cool. That's people getting curious about how their bodies move.

My own hands

Sean just tweeted this and it's too great to not share with all of you. This is particularly well timed for me as I've been spending a bit of time climbing trees this week. Enjoy: