The sun was out yesterday and so was I - I'm still struggling a little with the humidity, but otherwise I felt really good.
Working with the NCParkour group has reminded me that movement cannot be limited to a few set techniques over a specific group of obstacles and I have therefore been making more of an effort to find new places and try new things. You can see some of my first attempts at rail precisions here. While I am glad my shins are still intact, I clearly have a lot of work to do on them - see how tense I am jumping into them?
Also, it may not look it, but the dyno up to the railing at 1:45 is pretty challenging and I've been working on it for a few weeks - there isn't any purchase for your feet, so it's a brutal test of explosiveness for the upper body.
We've been deluged by rain for the past few days and we're set for another couple days of precipitation, so when the sun came out a few hours ago I took the opportunity to strap on my shoes and get outside.
The past two weeks have been a nice change of pace. UNC has let out for the summer and there are significantly fewer people on campus - which means I have my run of the place and can be more open with my PK training. I was in one of the main courtyards working on a precision jump when a young woman approached me.
"Hi," she said.
"Hello," I replied.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to jump from this ledge down onto the edge of that planter."
"May I ask why?"
"Um... to see if I can."
"Is it, like, for Track or something?"
"No, just for me."
At this point she wished me luck, backed away slowly, and left.
She was very nice and polite and seemed genuinely interested. I've had a few other people tell me, with varying degrees of politeness, that if I wanted to "jump around" I should go to a gym. I was particularly amused today when I bailed on a lache attempt and dropped onto the ground in front of a very proper looking lady who employed the toddler-logic of "if I can't see him, he can't see me" and hurried away, neck cranked awkwardly, looking determinedly in the opposite direction, before I could say "excuse me."
When did Play become something that was deviant? Something that required explanation? There's no arguing its importance - anyone who has bothered to look into Play has come away as a strong advocate. I'll skip writing a lot of text and let you listen to Stuart Brown at TED:
As he says, not too bad.
We need to play - and I'd argue that a big chunk of that play should be physical. Once you try to contain it or put it in a box, play ceases to be play. Movement becomes "exercise." What should be open exploration becomes "working out." And who loves to work out? Not me. Not a lot of people, judging by public health trends in this country and the prodigious membership drop rates of big-box gyms.
To those who argue that adult life is too full of responsibility for play, I would ask what value they place on creativity. I'm sure most would say it's nice, but won't necessarily put food on the table. I'd then ask how they valued innovation. Business regards innovation as literally priceless - they increasingly need it to survive, but have no idea how to calculate its value. Well, creativity and innovation are alternate names for Play - the exploration of the possible. I firmly believe that everything is trainable, including innovation. Give yourself time to explore the possible, challenge your body and your brain with new tasks and obstacles, and you will reap tremendous rewards.
If that means being deviant, then so be it. To paraphrase Dean Ornish, do you really want to be considered normal in a society where "'normal' health care is cutting someone's heart out of his chest to monkey with it, but 'radical' health care is telling him to change his diet and move more?"
If you’re a big fan of Crossfit I am going to warn you up front that you may not like this post.
Based on some of my recent training experiences I am in the process of rethinking my definition of intensity – and consequently Crossfit has been unseated as the “most intense” exercise modality.
Intensity is central to Crossfit – after all, Crossfit is “constantly varied functional movement performed at high intensity.” In this case, intensity = power. This is why Crossfit WODs are designed to maximize average power output (remember that power is force * distance / time) and standard Crossfit programming involves moving large loads long distances quickly. This is a perfectly fine definition and there is no denying the efficacy of this approach.
But I think it is incomplete. This started as a brainwave I was having while falling asleep on Sunday night, after a weekend of parkour training. On Saturday I traveled to Raleigh where I trained with some of the NCParkour guys. At one location we were led into a pit with 10ft. brick walls on all sides. A narrow staircase led out, but we were forbidden from using it. The only way out was to wallrun. Normally a 10ft. wallrun is no great challenge, but there was a step before the wall that was throwing my timing off. 10 minutes later, I was the only one left in the pit and was nursing a bleeding hand. The others were yelling encouragement from the top, but I was down to my last chance – if I didn’t make it they were going to climb back down and haul me out. (the stairs were still not an option) So there I was, bleeding, and thinking “this is it.” I sprinted towards the wall, stepped, jumped, hit the wall perfectly and was up and over the top. I’d made it. My average power output during those 10 minutes was, by Crossfit standards, pretty poor. But I’d argue that those 10 minutes were very intense.
Or take the flow drill we did – a very technical sequence of jumps, rail balances, vaults, and landings. The wattage requirements were not very large, but once again I’d argue that it was an incredibly intense experience. Or a catleap I did on Sunday that was an easy horizontal distance, but was fairly high up – dealing with vertigo definitely added to the intensity!
The difference is that these all involved the mind and/or the nervous system rather than the musculoskeletal system. There is a saying that parkour is 90% mental – once you convince yourself that you can do something you find that your body can handle the challenge easily. Training and cultivating mental intensity has long been a goal of many old forms of training – think most martial arts, yoga, and meditation disciplines – but is largely absent from our modern forms of physical education. The mind and the body are a unified whole that cannot be separated, and we risk much by ignoring proper mental training.
Of course, there is no way to effectively calculate “mental intensity” to provide measurable repeatable data. Crossfit excels at doing this for power output and correlating increases in power to increased wellness. I’m not sure what the scientific unit is for Getting Over Fear… however, I think we can apply the long-held principle of progression and overload. Push yourself mentally a little bit further every day and I think you will make great progress. These mental obstacles do not need to be dangerous to be effective – a big challenge I’m working on right now is rolling through confined spaces. Messing up means a bruised instep at the worst, but it is more mentally taxing than you may imagine. Try out some mental training and let me know what you think.
Colin Pistell 
