Post class thoughts

Published September 15, 2015  ·  All posts on Sep 15  ·  

This entry is part 5 of 37 in the series Study inspired by Pakour & Art du Déplacement by V. Thibault

As I expected, I pretty much forgot about this project once I was on my way to class. So this is just my looking back at my experiences in class through the lens of this first section of the book. (I’m betting this is what’s going to happen another 89 times.)

I’m not going to pick apart every moment from class; I’ll just go over a few that come immediately to mind:

Balancing at height – We started practicing purposely bailing off a low rail and worked up to some climb-over tasks in a playground. Eventually we worked up to a “find something that’s high enough to be moderately uncomfortable” level of individual balancing. I headed for a 7-foot high long bar (like where swings would hang. sorta.) and struggled my way up onto the bar — that was a challenge in and of itself. So I definitely went straight at something that was challenging — falling from standing on a 7-foot bar is not trivial. I down-graded though after falling, because climbing up multiple times wasn’t worth the little bit of balancing I was managing.

Balancing on a rail – We were working with partners. We ended up mostly taking turns challenging each other. Try this, try this variation, etc making it increasingly difficult. At one point, I quietly headed off to the side for a rail to work on a sequence of variations. (Off to the side so as not to be a distracting, apparent-show-off.) So again here, definitely operating in the mind set where “the obstacle is the path”.

QM exercise – We ended with a laps challenge. For me, 3 laps of QM around a small-ish basketball court, followed by a running lap around the school. I pushed this really hard and it was here that I think the mind set really paid off . . .

In a discussion with Tracy after class, I came up with the idea that I seem to be using this mind set as a “razor”; An immediate yes/no testing tool. Your mind is busy with a stream of thoughts as you grind you way through hard work. In hindsight, I realize I was fast-processing everything with this combination of the mindset and a dash of stoicism. “Caution, quad nearly cramping,” is something I can affect; pause and unload that leg, or stretch it, or slow down. “Ow, stone in my hand,” shake it off when next I lift that hand. “I want to quit,” what? no, that’s not going to move me forward towards my goal. “How is [other student] still going so fast,” ignore that I cannot affect that. So it seems to have been just this long (long LONG) series of thoughts. Sometimes I’m certain I wasn’t finished with one thought before another preempted it; Which is fine, the really important stuff will preempt silly thoughts about a cool drink of water.

So it was nice to come away believing that I’m already applying this mind set in a big way.

Light bulb

But wait a second, here’s a new [for me] thought: This mind set also means there’s a difference between “stopping” and “quiting”, even though outwardly they look identical to an observer. I can STOP for the RIGHT reason, or QUIT for the WRONG reason. Stop before an actual cramp, verus quit because I’m demoralized. That’s another facet of using this mind set as a “razor”.

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§1 – The growth mindset

Published September 13, 2015  ·  All posts on Sep 13  ·  

This entry is part 4 of 37 in the series Study inspired by Pakour & Art du Déplacement by V. Thibault

“I can’t.” versus “not yet.”

Right out of the gate in the first section… hitting the ground running. This mindset is something that I already find critical. Critical in the sense that I attribute my success –– what success I can be said to have achieved –– to two things: This mindset, and sheer willpower/determination. (spoiler: the later is covered elsewhere in the book.) But I’d already made my own connection to the Stoics’ philosophy, and that’s a very apropos piece of bedrock.

aside: as this is the very beginning of this experiment, I’m going to be making this up as I go along. First bit of framework: I’m not going to quote/include any of Thibault’s book. Pull-quoting is time consuming to do well, and by the time I’m done, I’d have way more of his book “excerpted” here than I’d feel comfortable with. That means, if you really want to follow along, you simply must get a copy of the book yourself and read the original material. It’s easy, and you can thank me later.

I’m looking at this material in the context of: OK. I’ve read it. I understand, but what’s the action item? …or how do I use this as a catalyst?

Lehigh Valley Parkour has a few oddball traditions. One of them is a strong aversion to the word “can’t”. Community members will avoid saying it at all costs. The penalty for using the word is an immediate 5 pushups. Mostly, it’s an honor thing… we take the word “immediately” seriously; mid-run, in a car, in a restaurant, right now. Immediately. On the spot. Why?

Because when you change your words, you change your thinking. “I can’t get up that wall.” becomes, “I am not yet able to scale that wall.” Which is pretty weak sauce, and is still pretty negative. But, we quickly get sick of saying “not yet able”, and start getting creative… “I’d have to be able to jump higher to scale that.” …or run faster, or be stronger, or whatever.

BOOM

I banned a word and I’ve flipped my thinking around.

Next up: let’s take the idea to class.

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How these posts are organized

Published September 13, 2015  ·  All posts on Sep 13

This entry is part 3 of 37 in the series Study inspired by Pakour & Art du Déplacement by V. Thibault

I’m not going to quote/include any of Thibault’s book. Pull-quoting is time consuming to do well, and by the time I’m done, I’d have way more of his book “excerpted” here than I’d feel comfortable with. That means, if you really want to follow along, you simply must get a copy of the book yourself and read the original material. It’s easy, and you can thank me later.

As I begin each subsequent section in Thibault’s book, there will be a post titled to match the section. This way you can skim the listing of post titles and see the sections corresponding to the book. These “new section” posts have titles starting with the section character (§).

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Parkour & Art du Déplacement

Published September 13, 2015  ·  All posts on Sep 13  ·  

This entry is part 2 of 37 in the series Study inspired by Pakour & Art du Déplacement by V. Thibault

https://www.librarything.com/work/17885382

On September 4th, Vincent Thibault’s latest book, Parkour & Art du Déplacement: Lessons in Practical Wisdom came out on Kindle. (A print version is eminent.)

I was in Québec at the time, and it felt like an early birthday present. I took most of the day off to sit in a beautiful park, on a spectacular day. I devoured the entire book in one sitting. With every page, I became more convinced that I was going to be spending a lot of quality time with this book.

This book brings a fresh approach to understanding and exploring Parkour/Art du Déplacement/Free Running. No pictures, no explanations of techniques. Instead, it provides 90 distinct thoughts and ideas giving you the option of exploring your Parkour/ADD in your own way. You can read the entire book, or dive into one particular idea at a time. If you read it overall as one piece it will give you a great introduction to the Spirit and Philosophy of Parkour/ADD; If you want to “dive deep”, you can pick each of the ideas apart separately and explore them through your own thinking, exploration and communications with others.

The book includes both English and French written by the author — this is an exceptional feature of the book. Rather than being translated, Thibault is able to convey the ideas naturally in both languages. Native speakers of English or French will benefit equally.

Finally, this is the first book (that I’m aware of) which literally bridges the two most important languages encountered in the context of Parkour/ADD. If you are working on one of them as a second language, you can flip between the two language versions of the material and be assured you are getting a nuanced, and accurate, translation of the concepts.

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Not something I’ve tried before

Published September 13, 2015  ·  All posts on Sep 13  ·  

This entry is part 1 of 37 in the series Study inspired by Pakour & Art du Déplacement by V. Thibault

If this goes as planned, this series will be a very long sequence of posts that chronicle my diving into a particular book. The book contains 90 short sections; It’s a large, open-ended collection of ideas and vignettes on Parkour.

My plan is to study one section each week by reading it on a Sunday — Sunday mornings are when I most often have down time for reading and reflection. Then over the course of the following week, I’ll trying to keep the “idea” topmost in my “parkour thoughts”; Talk to others about it, read other related materials from my personal library, think about it in terms of physically moving, etc. Along the way during the week, I’ll try to write small (likely very small!) bits covering my explorations.

It will be interesting to see how far I get.

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Indescribable

Published September 13, 2015  ·  All posts on Sep 13  ·  

This entry is part 31 of 72 in the series My Journey

I spent Saturday in Philadelphia training with a relatively small group of people.

Honestly, I was pretty beaten up, broken down, and tired before we even started. Brutally honestly, I need a break; I have simply been doing way too much for way too many weeks in a row for these old bones. So right out of the gate on Saturday, I could tell I was going to be dragging my a** all day.

And then the entire day unfolded in so many ways I could never have imagined.

I’d have to write a small book to tell all the stories; The people, the names, beautiful smiles, sketchy Philadelphia parks, smiling strangers, wall runs, jumps, cats-to-climb-ups, people who have grown and changed so TREMENDOUSLY since I’ve last seen them, old friends, new friends, people with broken hearts who are an inspiration in the way they continue to crush challenges, people ahead of me laughing and playing and urging me on by simply “being”, people behind me yelping approval that I can’t comprehend, and dinner and milkshakes and conversations and shared thoughts with people I expect I will never forget.

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Money

Published September 9, 2015  ·  All posts on Sep 9  ·  

Some people are so poor, all they have is money.

~ unknown

slip:4a122.

I have awesome friends

Published September 8, 2015  ·  All posts on Sep 8  ·  

This entry is part 30 of 72 in the series My Journey

Eric and Anabella left me a bday gift bag on my desk… this is several levels of awesome: A *large* shirt. The meme is perfect. It’s really good rum. And, inconceivably, it’s the same rum I selected from a huge Rum list at the Jerk Chicken place where everyone had dinner in Toronto after the event.

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The hardest part?

Published September 6, 2015  ·  All posts on Sep 6

…is saying goodbye after the final dinner to head back to pack. So many new friends! But I know I’ll see them again. Can’t wait to get home!

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Pictures of food

Published September 4, 2015  ·  All posts on Sep 4  ·  

Look I’m really sorry for posting dorky food-photos… but I walked a mile to this vegan restaurant. OMG this is one of yummiest things I’ve ever eaten. It looked awesome and tasted better. It’s a riff off of Pad Thai. It was so good, I’m going to sit here for AN HOUR until their lasagna comes out of the oven!!

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