End of the Year: An Update in Video Form

My jumpings over the last couple of months. I’m starting to actually not be as scared of bigger jumps, which is nice. I hope you enjoy these clips that I have stuck together for your viewing pleasure.

Train safe,
Jess

Winter Progression

I feel happy with how my training is going at the moment. I can feel bigger jumps starting to feel possible in my head and I’m starting to try more ambitious movements more and more often.

I have spotted a number of rails pres in Leicester that I would like to do but they may have to wait until after the Christmas break now. I have always liked doing rail pres but up until about two weeks ago I hadn’t plucked up the courage to start doing bigger jumps. My confidence in my own ability is growing which will help with my overall progression as it is usually my lack of confidence that holds me back. Now I’m frequently looking at jumps and actually thinking ‘I can do that’ or ‘That can definitely go on the list’, which is a nice feeling for me to have.

Over Christmas I will be going back home, so training will become more challenging in the sense that there are fewer places to train. There’s an area of council buildings a couple of villages along that actually has quite a few decent spots in it, so that’s useful and there are a few places in the nearest town. I always find something to do.

Train safe,
Jess

Divisions in the Community

On the whole, the Parkour/Freerunning community functions like a happy, healthy creature, content for different parts of the body to go about their different ways of doing things. But sometimes a video comes out or someone expresses a loud opinion and discussion, debate and sometimes full blown arguments enter into the usually tranquil life of the traceur.

The latest discussion I’ve seen grace my social media channels was a relatively small debate started by Chris Rowat on Facebook. He was basically berating Jesse La Flair and Corey DeMeyers new webseries ‘Off the Edge’. He stated that it encompassed everything he hates about the Parkour/Freerunning community. While many people agree with his opinion many others continue to express uncertainty about the potential impact of what Jesse and Corey are doing.

They are both members of the Tempest Freerunning team in America and from what I gather they have a ‘go big or go home’ attitude and seem to be fairly driven by their media presence. They both take part in the Red Bull Art of Motion competition each year and this new webseries is about their recent world tour.

Personally, I think the way they train is fairly self destructive and overall has a negative impact on the young impressionable practitioners they have the most influence over. Luckily it mainly seems to be young American practitioners who listen to them. In the UK the work of PKGen has built up a solid teaching platform for useful long term training and in Europe people still seem to be focused on the heart of the discipline. I appreciate different ways of training. I have never been one to say that Flips hold no place in Parkour training because I believe they have uses for improving spatial and aerial awareness as well as foot placement, but I also believe that training should always be balanced.

The divisions in the communitiy are not a bad thing as long as those different divisions are happy to talk about their training methods with each other and hopefully learn from each other. This go big or go home attitude however, bothers me.

Train safe,
Jess

The Norwich Trip

I am returned from Norwich and I can safely say that we had a very successful weekend of training and much was achieved. Greg, the boyfriend, made progress with putting movements together and at one of the spots he was able to do a massive precision jump that had very little risk of going wrong. He was pretty pleased with that because he hasn’t found a spot in a while where he’s been able to go full power on a running jump without fear of injury if it went wrong.

I made progress with jumps at height and a I did a rail jump at height that I was especially pleased with. I put together a couple of routes that I’m happy with and did one of the biggest precision jumps I’ve done to date.

On the Sunday we went climbing and as a result of all that my arms and legs are still pretty sore. I’m going to have to take it easy at strength training this evening.

Train safe,
Jess