Reflections on breaking a jump

Last night, I broke The Hospital Arm Jump.

I then proceeded to post it on facebook: "Hospital arm jump = broken" which Julia read as "Hospital. Arm broken." Hilarity ensued.

For the non-traceurs out there, "breaking" an obstacle means you successfully pass it for the first time. It's a big deal, especially if the obstacle has been a part of one's Break List (like a bucket list but for obstacles). The Hospital Arm Jump has been on my break list for quite a long time.

Breaking a jump ranks pretty high up on the "things that make you feel good" list. I could write for hours and not fully capture what it feels like. Maybe a more skilled poet could pull it off... I dunno. I'll do my best:

All jumps begin with a "looking" phase - you size up the obstacle... get a sense of it. Sometimes this phase lasts a fraction of a second and sometimes it lasts years, but looking is critical. It's not a passive thing - far from it. Looking is a wrestling match against yourself. The demons of your fears and doubts scrabble to take over - they try to convince you that not only is this move you're about to do hard, it's impossible. And dumb. You should probably step back, go home, and sit down quietly somewhere.

(This is not to be confused with the quick and absolute knowledge that a particular obstacle is beyond you. That should be listened to - keep training and come back in a month. Or a year. Gravity will still be working the same when you're ready.)

We all have our way of dealing with this struggle. I take slow deep breaths and stomp my feet. Everyone has their little routine. We try to visualize success. I try to not just know I can make it, but that I already have made it. Very Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

There is nothing more maddening then staring at a jump for 2 hours and then finally losing this struggle. It can crush you for weeks. But it absolutely happens to everyone. If it happens to you, forgive yourself quickly, then get back to work. All setbacks are temporary unless you choose to make them permanent.

The magic moment we all wait for is when we switch from "looking" to "feeling." Feeling means you've overcome your doubts and, even if it's just for a moment, you know in the very core of your being that you can break the jump. "Feeling" is Missile Lock. All you need to do at that point is pull the trigger, and you'd better do it quickly before the opportunity is gone.

How to describe the actual jump? For me, it's a diamond calm - rigidly formed in my mind and held in place by force of will. The movement is always over so quickly. So quickly. It's a blur.

Exhale.

Then the jublilation. I imagine this is different for everyone, but for me it's a fierce sort of feeling. It starts in my chest and quickly spreads out to my limbs. And then everything feels warm and relaxed and supremely good.

Of course, you still have to make the jump 4 more times for it to count. But those 4 jumps are suddenly easy. And fun.

I have absolutely no studies to back up this claim, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that this process is probably profoundly good for your health. Try to do something new every time you go out. It doesn't have to be big (it absolutely shouldn't be in the beginning) - just new.

Let me know how you feel when you break a jump? Similar? Different?

***

If you missed it, our first Parkour Office Hours was yesterday afternoon (archived here). I had a blast doing it - thanks to everyone who joined in live! We got some good technical feedback and I've been experimenting with a few tweaks. I'll be going live again tonight around 8:15-8:30PM EST to test out some stuff.  I would be thrilled if you could tune in and let me know how everything is looking and sounding. We won't be on for too long. You can tune in on our dedicated Live page or directly from our Justin.tv channel.  Please leave feedback - we want this to be a valuable resource for everyone.

The great bread experiment

Did I ever tell you guys the story of how I invented the paleo diet? No? Well, have a seat and let ol' Colin here tell you a thing or two about the past. Wayyyy back in 2005 to be precise.

This was before Web 2.0 and social media had taken off.  No Facebook, No Youtube - you know, the Dark Ages. I had been working on ways to improve my fitness and grappling game, while working a full time office job for the first time in my life. I was already a big believer in self-experimentation, having come off a 2 year vegetarian experiment with a new appreciation of meat and what has become a lifelong aversion to soy products. I had recently been playing with this new idea of "functional fitness" after my very standard weight training routine had ceased to provide performance gains. I was mixing jump roping with swimming, yoga, and some barbell work. There was this new thing called Crossfit that seemed pretty interesting.

So, there I was, thinking about how I could tweak my diet to perform better. I began to reflect on my childhood struggles with allergies and decided that maybe I should try to eat less wheat and less dairy. I'd also just read Ishmael and had seen some documentary about Native American life. It got me thinking about our days prior to agriculture and what we ate. Less wheat and dairy to be sure, and much less focus on avoiding fat... quite the opposite in fact. I bought my first jar of coconut oil and stopped eating pasta every night.

Needless to say, I started feeling great. I thought I was the smartest guy in the world. I went on the internet to see if anyone else was as clever as I was and, of course, immediately found the Weston A. Price foundation and a little book by Loren Cordain called "The Paleo Diet." Guess I wasn't so smart after all...

(The Permian diet is all mine though. My greatest achievment, and possibly the greatest achievement in all of Science, Medicine, and Gastronomy)

***

The Paleo Diet and I have always had a very casual relationship. As anyone who has ever seen me demolish a blueberry pie or a pint of haagen daaz knows, I'm not too concerned with "cheating." But, for the most part, I've been happily eating paleo for a good 6 years now. It's been extremely interesting to watch the community grow and develop. Interesting and at times a little (lot) maddening. There is now so much noise and contradictory information that it's getting hard to make sense of it all. A month or so ago, I was pretty sick of the whole community and decided it was time for another experiment. This time, the experiment would be "What would happen if I totally stopped caring about the paleo diet?"

This was fueled in large part by the fact that Julia had started a bread baking experiment and there was all this fresh, homemade bread everywhere. Here is the first thing I learned from the experiment: Homemade bread is F&%king delicious.

It's been about a month now and I'm ready to deliver some reports. How do I feel? Almost exactly the same. The only real difference is I'm a little bit more gassy on the nights I single handedly eat an entire loaf of bread. My athletic performance has neither suffered nor gone into overdrive. As for my weight... I have no idea. I don't own a scale. My weight has never really interested me. Whenever the subject comes up I tell people I weigh 1 Standard Colin. (A Standard Colin is whatever my current weight is, in kilograms) My sleep is the same, my skin looks the same... um... yeah... nothing's really changed at all.

***

I think the big lesson here is there are a ton of "diets" that will work, but the big underlying factor is how you relate to your food. I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you stress out about your diet, it will fail, no matter how diligent you are. If you relax and enjoy your relationship with food, from growing/foraging/shopping to cooking to eating, you will thrive... as long as what you're eating is actually food and not an edible foodlike substance.

Now, who wants a grilled cheese sandwich? I'm real good at them.

We'll do it live!

There is all kinds of exciting stuff going on in the Fifth Ape lab these days. Yesterday, shortly before devouring a Valentine's day dinner of cow heart with Julia, we finalized technical settings for what will soon be a brand new way to experience the mayhem of Fifth Ape:

Live Television.

Well... not really television. Webcasting - TV on the internet. The live part is completely true though. See, originally I was thinking about starting a podcast, but everyone has a podcast these days. Also, when I asked Ira Glass to host it he was all, "Colin, I'd totally love to, you know I would because we're like this, but I'm just way too busy with this whole 'being Ira Glass' thing... maybe later?"*

*Ira Glass actually only talks to me in my dreams.

Besides, if I recorded a podcast, then I'd have to edit it, and that sounds like a lot of work. A live show suits my lazy/seat-of-the-pants personality.

Here's the concept: we're going to start holding "office hours."  For an hour or two each week - probably Tuesdays and/or Thursdays, probably around lunch time (eastern time) - I'll sign on and be here to talk about Parkour, paleo/primal lifestyle, training, strength & conditioning, etc. It'll be an opportunity for all of you to ask questions and I'll do my best to answer them. I'll try to have a subject or two to talk about every week, focused mostly on parkour/movement training, but I reserve the right to get all philosophical at some point. I'm also really hoping we can go mobile and do some live shows outside on UNC's incredible campus, using UNC's incredible wifi.

Yes, you will get to watch us train live. What's the over-under on how many episodes it will take for me to eat it in front you all?

Is this exciting and cool? Will you watch? Please do! Otherwise I'll feel really silly sitting there for an hour with nothing to do.

You can tune in on our brand new Live! page or straight from our Justin.tv channel. You can participate/ask questions from the dedicated chat box or via twitter - we're going to use the hashtag #pkofficehours

We'll be finalizing the schedule in the next few days but I'm foreseeing some fluidity and  impromptu sessions. The best way to stay informed is to follow us on twitter and facebook. If you can't tune in live, the shows will be archived and you can watch them at your leisure later on.

I really hope this will be fun and worthwhile for everyone. We're excited to see how it goes - if you have any questions, comments, deep thoughts, etc. please leave a comment.

Now let's sit back and enjoy the King of Doing It Live: (bad language ahoy!)