''The Six Basics to improve''

THE SIX BASICS – METHOD TO IMPROVE

I was thinking about my own training and as well others training. I noticed that what many people train, especially beginners, are vaults. Vaults is what we often se on websites like youtube and It’s like it tells you ‘’than more vaults you do, the better are you.’’ There are no doubts that you improve in parkour by doing vaults. When you’re facing an obstacle you often have to be able to do them. Those vaults. I’ve practised vault pretty much this summer, but now, in the end of it, I came to think that there are many areas that has to be refined to be able to learn control to those vaults and I don’t think it is a safe way and the most effective way to learn them is to simply practise them. Now for a start, at least.

When I started with parkour I simply did a list of vaults that I wanted to learn. I learned them, and I did them slobby. All because I didn’t have any knowledge about parkour in that time, the dark years when information like this was hard to find. Yes, I improved. But it had consequences. I was doing them like crazy, spending sometimes one hour doing the speed vault over and over again because I wanted to improve and refine it. I did refine it, but I didn’t refine myself physical. I got hurt because of ht impact that your legs will experience when you’re doing vaults. People new to the parkour scene often do high drops, and some don’t because they know that it damage your body extremely much, so instead they do vaults. I personally think that It is not good. I am speaking of my personal experience now.

There is no doubt that vaults, always depending on wich one you do, always bring an enormous impact on your legs and knees. Especially on hard surfaces as asphalt. You might not notice this in the beginning but you will probably do it later. Keep in mind that it all depends on your physical experience from earlier training. So, what I did this week was that I actually stoped doing vaults. – Sure, my damage to my legs are gone, but I don’t wan’t to travel the same way again so I came up with a ''new'' method of training. I am sure, that someone or somebody follows this method to before I came up with it, but for me, for myself, It’s new. So, If this method is found anywhere else, well, It is.

This is the method I call ''The Six Basics'' wich is a method to prepare yourself for vaults, but also other thing in parkour. It’s about preparing yourself to be able to move.

This is the basics:

1 .Strength
2. Endurance
3. Balance
4. Coordination
5. Flexibility
6. Explosive


Your body are very opened to be damaged the first two-three years when you train wich means that you have to improve very carefully and slowly when you start training. You must always think about what you do and how you move. Vaults, for example, is good because you have to use less energy while crossing an obstacle plus that the impact on your legs and knees are much smaller* when you cross this obstacle, since you move with much more forwards motion. If you just jump over a trashcan for example, you would come more vertical wich basically means more impact on your legs and knees. It depends on the surface too. But if you use for example a speed vaults, or a lazy, you come more horizontal wich means less impact on your legs. The vault that do most impact on your legs if you’re just counting in the basic ones, is the Kong vault. This is because you move in a more horizontal way, but in the speed vault, you’re moving much more vertical.

I think vaults is the most unnecessary thing in parkour. Vaults comes with the time, when your body are prepared and ready for it. What I am going to use is another method of improving in vaults and improving your whole body.



Let us say that you’re about to do a kong vault. I am going to list the Six Basics that you need to improve your kong in a longer, but much more safe way. It will affect your whole training, to, not only the vaults.

When you do kong…


1. COORDINATION

When you’re running against the obstacle ready to do your kong It’s important that you know where you put down your feet’s and when you should do the movement. When you have done the move, you will have to land safety too. Good coordination will help you to land much more precise.


2. Explosive, fast moves like doing a fast push-up onto a wall, or jumping a long precision jump is one of the common basics that is great. This one will really help you to do a high and/or a long kong vault.



3. BALANCE

You balance will help you not to fall and to gain more control when you are doing the Kong vault. It will help you hold your balance when putting your hands on the rail (lets say rail..) and It will help you to hold yourself up in the air. If you do loose your control, it will help you to get it back again.

4. Flexibility

With good flexibility you will feel much more smoother while you do the move and you will have it much more easier to put up your legs so they don’t touch the rail. We don’t want to move like a cement statue, we want to move like a soft rubber statue.


5.ENDURANCE

With good endurance, you’ll be able to do the kong many times without getting so tired.



6.STRENGTH

The most important thing if you want to avoid injuries. Your strength, you muscles, will protect your body while you land and take the whole impact.

So, as you see those areas, what I call ‘’The Six Basics’’ is very important to train. That’s why I am not going to do so much more vaulting, instead, I will go and try this method. Does it work? Well, do you get good balance while walking on rails? Yes. Do you get strength and endurance when you’re walking in monkey walk? Yes. So, basically and logically it works. What I’ve seen so far is that my flexibility that comes from good warm-ups and stretching helped me with vaulting. I was able to use my legs much more easily. Of course, this method is not just to improve and prepare for vaults – It’s about preparing your whole body for any kind of obstacle!


Please leave a trace.

Thanks for reading.

// E.A

Physical and mental process goes to fast

The physical and mental process in parkour goes to fast along traceurs around the world. The ones that seems to have most problem with this, is as you can probably guess, beginners. The human body is as everyone know not used to those kind of movements and physical and mental challenges we face in parkour. Often beginners attention falls to high drops and vaults. Someone see a video on Youtube and say . But when you have trained for a while you understand that parkour is more than a simple video on youtube. You cannot describe what parkour is in a simple video, It's to complicated as parkour is a physicall and aswell a mental dicipline. You can train parkour, live parkour, think parkour, and the more you train than more it effect your personal lifestyle. It's like learning a language and you doesn't understand it before you learn to talk it. It's a kind of a physicall language. It's realistic and naturall.

So, what beginners see on the internet is a bit what we have become during our training - we have become someone who can move through diffrent kinds of enviorments and adapt ourself to it. Their attention falls at high drops and vaults. Those ''Ive been training for three months''-guys often, partically on youtube, train like crazy. Parkour is not for people that want to do crazy things and randomly jumping around. It is in our instincts that we wan't to achieve as much as possible in the shortest period of time. But it doesn't work like that in parkour. Or at least, it shouldn't. Everything we do effect our body negative or possitive. How to define a high drop? Well, everything that is over your own lenght is high, wich means that you should use a roll. It means that it have a enrmously hard preasure on your legs. However, It all depends for how long you have been practising parkour and how you have been training. If you wan't to achieve as much as possible you will not stand tall in parkour. You body will, sooner or later, collaps.

My concern is not only that people are huring themself by doing videos like this on youtube, and training like this, but that they have an effect on other people. Many times I see people on youtube that have been training only for months doing huge drops, and then It all comes me, with my two years of training wich is basicly nothing. What I see is other people doing things that I cannot do, things that I don't have the proper training for. Well, in tecniqal I can do it, but I don't. You feel leftbehind. You feel irretated, especially when you think about your hard work that made it possible to reach your current level. But It's not my wrong and It's not anyone else wrong either, accept for those people that are actually doing this. They're not preperared for what they are doing but they do it anyway often just to tell their friends or fellow traceurs (traceurs?! Ehm)what they did that particular day. They're living for the day. Those people stress other traceurs that improve steady and slow and they're having an very bad affect on other random people around the world. What I am really worried about is videos with those none-traceurs get respected on youtube and often get a high score like 4/5. They're fooling everyone else, and they're fooling themself. Those people think they improve. They basiclly do that do, for the day. There are no shortcuts in parkour.

But in the years they will not be able to train anymore They won't stand tall because they've overtrained and damaged their bodies to much. They only ones that will stand there, doing those adraline-high drops, swining from tree to tree without getting injuries is the traceurs that took the time to build their bodies, and the ones that was listening to their bodies and finally can controll what they wished to controll.

You cannot compare your mental opportunities with your physical abilities.

Bear in mind that we often can do it mentally, but not physically.

This is just a taste of what you can find on youtube.
Unfortunately, It's to respected.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsvnqp7fs4s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3r8WPtO_WU

I forgot to add..

..the yesterdays training. The weather was great when we started to worm-up pretty bad, I took about one hour and then we started to walk to a spot called ''Träsnidarn''. However, we stoped near a tree and did some practise right there on the spot. About twenty minutes later the rain started to fall. Not so much, so we decided to stay put under the tree and wait until it was gone. Unfortunately, It wen't worse. We ran to another cover under a roof but It was to late. We were all wet. Then I though: Why stop training because of the rain? Parkour is about adapting yourself to the enviorment wich means that even if It's rain outside, and even if everything is slipery, and even if you cannot train as you wanted, you should fit yourself to the situation. It's you VS your enviorment or you VS yourself. We did, so we started to jogg along the streets to warm-up agian.

That was actually what we did the whole day - warming upp. But It's training to. After we had run for a while we started to do monkeywalk and some push-ups. It was raining cat'n dogs! The water was moving in high speed through the streets, and it was about one decimeter deep. So, it covered our whole shoes while we was running.

It was meant that we was going to eat with eachother after the training but because of the heavy rain we all understood that it was time to go home. It would have been bad eating outside while it rain. However, It was a great day with happy faces even if your training didn't really was as we though it was gonna' be. Oh, one more thing; When we split up the rain stoped.

Parkour 2008

For maybe a week ago I created a parkourmovie on about 50 seconds. To short. Away to short. I haven't shot and uploaded any parkourvideos at all since 2006, and It felt kinda dumb to upload I 50sec video after two years, so I actually removed It from youtube and replaced it with another one.

For me It's nostalgic. It was wonderfull training at the same place where it all begun once agian. 
The video got a slow pace in the beginning wich is strictly to show new traceurs physicaltraining, precision jumps, coordinationtraining and balance. I think It's important to show that. More people do it nowdays and I'm glad to that. There are to many intense parkourvideos. It's not the reality, the reality is the preperation and then the performance.
 

''The Hidden Architecture'' was a great name I think because of many other beginners attention to the cities around the world. The forst feels forgotten and hidden. We should all remember that your performance as good as your preparation. To be able to move naturally you have to let it take the time It take. To many people out there focus on vaults - wich probably are the most unimportant thing in parkour. Stamina, strenght, endurance, flexibility, coordination and balance
is important if you wan't to improve steady, safe and fast. Don't let anyone stress you!

I didn't even think about being able to move like this when I visited exactly this spot, two years ago. I could't understand the architecture. It felt numb and unimportant. Now, I can see obstacles almost everywhere. The architecture is important to learn, because when you learn it you'll be able to understand it, and when you understand It you can naturally learn to move in it.



Cities are good to train in, that's my thought, but the forest are better I think. Why? Because the architecture there is unpredictable. It's not built by us. It's build by the nature Itself. It's naturall. Branches can break, stones can move and roll, moss can make you slip and fall. It's alot harder to find good spots, It's often a challange to even be able to run in there. To move in there. You have to be very carefull, thoughfull and alive. It's hard, and It makes you improve alot. In cities, things that aren't made naturallt by the nature don't break that is because It's got a quiality wich every humanbeing wan't on it. You can run steady on the ground because there are no random rocks, fallen branches, moss, bushes and other things in your way. So, It's basiclly harder to train in the woods but as David said - Greatness comes from difficulty.

Parkour is calm and I wan't to show that in the beginning in this video. First, the preperation, long and slow, and then the performance, fast. I was first about to name it to ''Performance and preperation or ''Preperation & Performance'' but I left that out. It takes years to improve. I couldn't move like that before, I can now - and I can do it safe. I don't have to think about the tecnique when I run, I just look and one obstacle, go over or under it - then I look for another. It felt so naturally. Parkour feels so naturall and real. I got arms and legs,  and I use them.

However, here's the video.