The sea

I have returned from a long weekend of beach camping on North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Julia had mentioned she wanted to go a few months ago so we sat down and looked at the calendar. Cape Lookout seemed promising. One long weekend in July seemed to work for both of us so we decided on it.

...but that weekend brought thunderstorms and strong currents to Cape Lookout. No ferries were running and neither one of us was particularly keen to get stuck out on a big sandbar in the middle of the Atlantic during a lightning storm. We cancelled the trip and lamented over the fact that we wouldn't get to go before Julia moved away and started graduate school.

Then, as often happens in life, schedules unexpectedly changed and another opportunity opened up for this weekend. I scrambled to make arrangements (big thanks to Sean, who was asked on Thursday "Sean, can you do everything for the next few days?" and immediately replied "Sure.") and on Friday we were stepping off a tiny ferry onto a remote strip of beach that would be our home for the next few days.

Cape Lookout National Seashore is a national park now, but it used to be an important part of the nation's lighthouse system. You can read more about it here. Other than the lighthouse and a small Ranger station the whole island is undeveloped. There are two sides - the sheltered cove side is a patchwork of calm salt marshes, filled with herons, small fish, mud, and a hell of a lot of biting insects. On the ocean side, rolling dunes give way to a broad beach and the endless roar of the Atlantic Ocean.

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When given a choice between mountains and ocean I usually choose mountains, but there's something about the sea that speaks deeply to me. When I was a young kid I answered the ubiquitous "what do you want to be when you grow up" question with "A scuba diver!" (which later evolved into "A marine biologist!") I loved going to big aquariums and loved maritime culture and history. (hanging in my house right now is an old brass ship's clock) I've spent a fair amount of time on boats and ships and even have a few tales to tell about storms, near shipwrecks, actual shipwrecks, sharks, big fish, and an unexpected swim with a manatee. There's nothing like breathing sea air and watching the endless patterns of the waves. It always feels like coming home.

That home feeling hits especially hard when I'm swimming in the ocean. There is some primordial magic power in the sea. It's where we all come from after all. Floating on the water, diving under waves, body surfing, even just standing in the shallows and letting the waves crash around me is a uniquely calming experience.

Not surprisingly, it's also a playful one. With the obligations of the outside world left on the mainland, we embraced purposelessness and did as we pleased. I wrestled the ocean and lost. Julia built sandcastles. We took long walks and marveled when a retreating wave revealed hundreds of coquinas glinting in the sun like little jewels - until they all flipped onto their ends and reburied themselves under the sand - gone in an instant.

We were excellent opportunists and scroungers. We found a rusted half empty lighter near our campsite and got it working, then gathered enough driftwood to build a fire on each night. We had to build the fires below the high tide line and the wind was very strong - which made lighting the fire extremely difficult. Julia managed to do it though (extremely impressive) and so we finished our nights sitting by a warm fire, watching the moon rise and the stars come out. On the second night, we were joined by a surprisingly curious ghost crab who sat with us for a good 10 minutes before scuttling off into the night.

It wasn't all joy. There was very little shelter and the sun was merciless. We took precautions and all things considered we made it out relatively unscathed, but there was one scary moment when we both realized we were feeling a bit thick headed and confused. We tottered into the shade of a few scraggly pine trees, sat down and sipped water for an hour. When the sun sank a little lower in the sky we cooled off in the ocean, but were left with some pounding headaches. Everything we brought, including ourselves were soon covered in layers of sand and salt which made for some abrasive sleeping. The second night brought some rain, and while our rainfly kept us dry it also cut off nearly all the ventilation in our little backpacking tent. Given the remoteness of the island, we had to carry in all of our food and water - and lugging 6 gallons of water over the shifting sand dunes was not easy. Add in biting insects, marauding raccoons, and the fact that we forgot the toilet paper and it's clear that this was not the world's most comfortable trip.

I wouldn't have changed a thing - an experience without challenges is not worth having. The hardships provide contrast for the good moments, making them that much sweeter. At the end of the weekend each successive rediscovery of modern comfort seemed like magic. The car seats were cushioned and OH GOD THE AIR CONDITIONING. The first big meal we had in days (Chipotle burritos) was a royal feast. The house was a cool bastion against the elements. The first shower was like divine rebirth and slipping into a soft bed with clean sheets and a real pillow (and no sand) was the height of luxury. The whole experience made me realize how lucky I am to lead such a comfortable life and how easily we all take our modern wealth for granted.

But, it mostly reminded me of how important it is to get away from all the craziness of our modern lives - to slow down and simplify. I was grateful for each drink of water, each bite of food, for the warm fire, loving companionship and especially for the sound of the sea - that whisper of ancient memory.

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.

Reflections on the MovNat certification, Part II

If you haven’t already, go check out Part I of this article on MovNat’s website. 

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You back? Great - read on!

So, the content of the certification was, I thought, really good. This was only the 2nd time the MovNat team had run a cert, so there were some inevitable pacing issues, but overall I was impressed by the level of polish that all elements of the certification had. As I alluded to in part I, I hope that future certs spend less time on teaching physical skills and more time on actual coaching skills - with the understanding that everyone there already has a pretty good vocabulary of movement skills. I heard the suggestion that the Physical Competency test be conducted in the very beginning of the cert just to ensure that everyone there is ready for next steps - I think that’s a great idea.

I’m not going to talk about many details of the curriculum itself - I’ll leave that to the MovNat team - but I really appreciated the emphasis on movement quality and efficiency. This can be a tricky concept to get across to clients. Many of my students, especially the adults, have been conditioned by the standard fitness industry to do as much work as possible. Getting them to accomplish a task with as little work as possible often strikes them as bizarre, but it is absolutely vital that they learn this lesson early. Efficiency is compromised at the expense of safety. It's also a fun paradigm shift: rather than trying to burn as many calories as possible in the 30 minutes we allocate for movement every other day, we instead have our physicality so deeply integrated into our lives that we need to be as skillful as possible to accomplish all the feats of athletisism that the day requires. Imagine a culture where we can't not move - pretty neat, right?

I also appreciated the frequent reminders to not, as Erwan said, put movement in a box. I’ve written frequently about the dangers of relying too much on a fixed system. I’ve worried that as MovNat rolls out more and more trainers we’d start to see more rigidity and dogma creep into the community. The MovNat team addressed this head on and I appreciated their message: The skills covered in the cert are by no means all of MovNat, let alone all of movement. Don’t be dogmatic in your thinking. Push to develop your own skills and don’t be afraid to try new things. In short, don’t put movement in a box. It’s now up to us as representatives of the culture to take responsibility for those values.

Not that I have any influence on or clout with the MovNat community, but if I had to leave my fellow newly minted MovNat trainers with any advice it would be this: take the solid foundation you’ve been given and build on it. Even the best foundation in the world is useless if you don’t build something on top of it. Keep expanding your movement skills - don’t just practice the same exact jump, or crawl, or climb, in the same exact place. This doesn’t mean you have to do big, flashy, dangerous things and start jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Just stay curious, experiment, and keep learning. Erwan spoke very eloquently on the importance of being an inspirational figure. I think the only way to really make that happen is through a commitment to self improvement and self evolution.

As a quick example, here's me messing around the other day. My fellow MovNat trainers will be able to pick out the roots of techniques we covered during the cert, but all mushed together and combined in different ways.

I want to thank Vic, Brian, Kellen, and especially Erwan for putting together such a great certification. I think they pulled off a very difficult task. While I don't think this is a certification for everyone, (because nothing is for everyone) if you are a fitness professional who is interested in developing skillful athletic clients then you should look into becoming a MovNat trainer. To my fellow MovNat trainers: I'll say it one more time - keep practicing and improving. Not just your physical skills, but your coaching skills as well. We've got a big job ahead of us and we need to be equal to the task.