ɕ
Epimedium →
Two types of food →
Once you have your goals firmly in your head, think of a food, any food.
Now ask yourself “Will this food move me closer to my goals or farther away from my goals?”. If you believe it will help you move closer to your goal, then eat it.
If you believe it will actually move you away from your goals, then don’t eat it, or at least eat it moderately and in very small portions.
~ Brad Pilon from, The Two Types of Food – Brad Pilon’s ‘Eat Blog Eat’
slip:4ubawe7.
ɕ
Work with curiosity →
Finally, going forward, let’s practice tossing out our expectations of how we’re going to do today (and in life in general), and instead adopt an attitude of curiosity. We don’t know how we’re going to do at work, or in our relationships, or with our personal habits. We can’t know. So let’s find out: what will today be like? How will it go?
~ Leo Babauta from, A Guide to Dealing with Frustration & Disappointment in Yourself – Zen Habits Website
slip:4uzedi2.
Another something that jumped out at me as part of my regular, ongoing reading. Leo talks a lot about “mindfulness” and related practices. If you’re digging Vincent’s section 1, I think you’ll like this too.
ɕ
Post class thoughts →
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”.
ɕ
How far one can go →
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
~ T. S. Eliot
slip:4a149.
Proteins and Nutrition →
Latest additions to the library. Much grey matter exercise ahead!
ɕ
§1 – The growth mindset →
“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.
ɕ
How these posts are organized →
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 (§).
ɕ
Parkour & Art du Déplacement →
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.
ɕ
Not something I’ve tried before →
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.
ɕ