''Early in year 2006 I found and saw the French dicipline of parkour with David Belle for the first time ever. Since that It have taught me a lot about myself and how to think and grow. How big the power of movements is, and what you can achieve only by using your body. I aim to keep training, to learn and to teach.''
- E.A
..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.
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.