Testing parkour

Hi, I've been practicing parkour for about 4 years now, not posting much though. I want to say something about parkour training. From my own experience and from the evidence of videos & discussions on here it seems that something is lacking from many people’s training.

Often in sports phases of training can be broken into 1. Learning 2.Drilling 3.Testing. For example in football if you want to train crosses you learn the right way to do it, drill it statically and moving and then try it in a match. Or in boxing learn the right way to jab, train it on bags and against pads then try it in sparring. This seems like a sensible way to learn anything.

What about parkour? For example saut de bras, you learn the proper form, drill it, then what? What is the testing phase in parkour? According to most people parkour is for reach and escape so it should be tested in an escape or reach situation. A footballer isn’t good if he has perfect form on his crosses, a boxer isn’t good if he has really good bag work, they’re judged on performance. Same with parkour, judge yourself based on actual performance.

What I am saying is; test the things you drill in realistic situations. To get better in chases, have people chase you (traceurs or not) and see if you can do the things you train or are they actually useful. To get better at reaching, run from one place to another by any route as fast as possible and time it. Measure your performance and try to improve it.

All the things you train are testable. Drills can only get you so far, in the end performance matters. Would you rather assume what you do will work or do you want to know what you are really capable of? In my opinion this part of training is the most important but seems neglected by everyone.

Objections
1. Too dangerous.
I am not saying trying life or death rooftop chases. As with any training know your limits and respect them, it is not the time to try something new or risky.

2. It’s fake, I train for real situations.
Do you think if you can’t do something in a relatively low pressure situation you’ll be able to do it in an emergency? Training in a similar but lower pressure situation will prepare you better for an emergency. (compare to sparring in martial arts, practice matches in football training etc.)

3. I need to drill to get my technique perfect.
I am not saying abandon drills completely. I am saying they are a means of training. The aim isn’t perfect looking techniques, that’s gymnastics, the aim is speed over obstacles. Better to be able to apply an imperfect technique than never to have done a perfect one under pressure.

I hope what I’m saying is clear and that people can see why this is important.

(Similar to http://blane-parkour.blogspot.com/2007/06/descent.html)

I think you're right in that parkour movements need to be tested in an actual movement situation. The only thing I want to add to it is on the issue of timing your movement. Although this is a useful way of comparing movement options at the very beginning when you are still getting to understand various different types of movement, trying to beat your time is simply a redundant motivation to improve. Trying to beat your time is not a necessary thought when you are already trying to improve. If you are not already trying to improve, you should concentrate on working out why that is, instead of trying to use 'achieving a better time' as 'backup' motivation. Don't get fixated on times or distances or any petty achievements. Try and improve as always, and then see how effective your training has been.

Anyway, I think it's also worth mentioning that an emergency can often act to focus the mind and make you more likely to perform at a higher level. Even with the best willpower and mental discipline, it is difficult to replicate the additional focus and determination that also comes with an emergency.

And how can you test how effective your training has been? Timing yourself over a course seems like a good way. It is also concrete and doesn't rely on any subjective feelings. Timing is a performance metric not a motivation.



What if a sprinter decided never to run the 100m before a race since the adrenaline on the day will be enough? What if a boxer never sparred with anyone until the day of his fight? Do you really think an emergency will focus your mind? If anything it will do the opposite. Say your house is burning down and you want to run back and save your cat. You will hardly be focussed totally on hand and foot placement, you will be panicking and thinking about your cat.

In an emergency you descend to the level of your training you do not 'rise to the occasion'. Yes, it is impossible to simulate the emotions and adrenaline rush of a real emergency situation but it is better to have done parkour under pressure 1000 times before. Think of it like a jump, you wouldn't attempt the manpower gap unless you had done thousands of smaller jumps first right? So how will you handle the huge pressure of a real emergency if you can't handle the smaller pressure of running against a clock, or against your friend?

running agains a friend for competition won't give you pressure, it'll keep your focus on him rather than on the obstacle and you will get reckless..... that's not the way.
But I do agree that it is hard to box a match for the first time without sparring first, but that's not the way, measuring your time on a watch would be much efficienter then..

Hojo, I wasn't suggesting that timing your movements is a motivation in itself, or a bad thing. I was saying that when you are becoming fixated on timing things, and starting to orientate your training towards improving your times and other trivial matters, rather than improving your capabilities as a whole, that's when it becomes a motivation and a negative thing.

I agree that having prior experience of pressured situations is useful in dealing with such situations again in the future, however it is impossible to replicate an emergency situation. Races against other people or against the clock is not going to give you an accurate impression of what an emergency involves, and thinking that it does is going to make you more likely to panic and perform less effectively in my opinion.
Someone who feels pressured about trivial things like beating their mates or knocking a second off their best time over a particular course is going to start to think of these things as important, and so something that is truly important will be completely off their scale and therefore beyond their ability to understand. When they get to an emergency situation their whole perspective will have to be changed to cope. Every time something bad happens we see people saying that it really put things into perspective, but we ignore them. We go on with our false perspective of the world until we are forced to change, or until we realise our mistake and correct it.

If you feel pressured by racing against your friend then to me, that is an indicator that your brain has been trained to feel pressure in those sorts of circumstances. You have consciously or unconsciously attached importance to those situations, and therefore you feel pressured. If you hadn't given it any importance, you wouldn't feel pressured. Someone who doesn't attach any importance to petty achievements isn't going to feel pressured at all, and this is the state that parkour practitioners are working towards. I do not feel pressured when chasing of being chased as part of a game because I recognise the completely trivial nature of the situation, there is no need to perform because the result has no importance. It is essential to be able to do this if you want to have control over your own actions.

Not only is trying to simulate the pressure of a real emergency futile, but it is also detrimental to developing the calmness of thought and practicality of application that is esssential in parkour (and, ultimately, what is going to see you through an emergency).

Comparisons with competitive sprinters are false, because they are training for trivial situations with artificial pressure and so using artificial pressure to train is relevant experience.

If your training involves truly learning how to deal with fear with movement and danger, rather than training until you do not experience fear with a movement, then your training is already applicable to emergency situations. From my experience in training with various groups this sort of training is rare at the moment, but I think that is because this sort of training requires a high level of mental awareness and discipline, and it takes a long time to develop this. Maybe only a few people recognise the importance of it, also.

Being in an emergency situation does focus my mind, and it focuses the minds of many people. That's what attracts so many people to potentially dangerous activities such as skiing or rock climbing (or even parkour in some cases), the fact that they are forced to put everything else out of their minds in order to stay safe. It helps them put their lives into perspective, by remembering that all of their every day worries about meeting sales targets, or finishing a piece of work on time, are really very trivial things compared to what truly matters.

I agree and I disagree. I think training against a friend can be a good thing but only if both know what they're doing. Anyone who has trained for a long time can recognize what he's capable of and understands not to take risks even if it is a race. You can also choose a relatively safe enviroment to race in to minimise risks. I also think it's a pretty convenient way of putting a bit of pressure on you but then again it's for everyone to decide if that sort of training feels important.

For beginners? Not the best idea since there's the increased chance of injury and it'll be harder to actually learn from what you're doing if you rush it.

Dave, I think we're arguing about two seperate issues. The main thing I wanted to say in the first post was not to rely on subjective feelings or anything else as an indicator of your progress but to test yourself realistically. You say not to get fixated on trivial matters and that is exactly my point. Too often people get caught up in making their precisions longer, or learning one particular technique when the goal of parkour is fast efficient movement overall. So if your jump is a little longer you have just got better at jumping but if you can apply it then you have progressed in parkour. How do you measure such progress? Well I suggested timed courses or chases since these are reasonably easy to do and they are objective.

I am also saying that doing this, running against a clock or someone chasing you, will help you train for possible emergency situations, you're saying (correct me if I'm wrong) that it is impossible to replicate exactly a real emergency in training so that doing this will not help very much and will train you to be pressured more easily.

Well in my experience the more experience you have with something the less likley you are to be worried by it. Being chased by a friend and by a maniac with a knife will be totally different emotionally but what you do will be almost identical; run fast, keep him from touching you, get somewhere safe. Of course you won't feel anything close to the stress when training with a friend but having experience of running from someone who is intent on catching you is only going to make it easier if you have to do it for real.

You say comparison with sprinters is false, so what about martial artists, or firemen, or soldiers? They train for emergencies, their training is like this, similar to a real situation they might face but done in a controlled environment. Does their training make them feel more pressure in an emergency? If you were a soldier storming a building would you prefer to have done something similar in training or would you rather wait for the real thing? This is the same, if you had to run from someone who wanted to kill you, wouldn't you like to have trained for it? To build confidence, like anything else you have to train it.

This post has been edited by Hojo: Jun 11 2008, 05:39 PM

I agree and disagree with all of you.

Training against the clock:
It is useless because you do the same path over and over and you just learn the fastest way of doing this same path.
It is useful because you can learn what works and what doesn't in an actual speed run.

Being Chased:
It is useful because you learn to react and adapt quickly to your surroundings in an "emergency" (quick-reacting) situation.
It is useless because...well, i don't see any reason why it would be useless.

So basically, i think the best way to test your own progression is to go for runs with your buddies once in a while and to not stop. just to run, to do the obstacles as quick as possible and to keep going. That way, you can measure how quick you adapt to your surroundings and that is what it is really about. there is no need to train in emergency situation if you train like this.

Well in my opinion, i think playing tag with friends is a good way to test. because then you are doing what parkour is for, escaping or pursuing. It's a fun way to see if what you are doing is effective and it puts a bit of pressure on you because you don't want to be it. I know it isn't even close to the amount of adrenaline and pressure in a real life scenario, but its better than nothing right? This is just my opinion.

Hojo, I agree with you that timing yourself and practicing chases are useful, I just don't agree that they are a useful simulation of pressure, because neither are pressured situations. When you are training yourself to deal in practicalities as we are, the only situations that are pressured are emergency situations themselves. That is the definition of an emergency situation.

Practicing being chased/chasing and timing yourself are both useful to your training. The former teaches you the general principles of running after/away from someone and the need to be able to move for more than a few seconds, and the second gives you an objective way of trying to measure improvement (although speed is rarely the sole consideration). However, it is a mistake to think of them as pressured situations, because they are not. If you wrongly think of them as pressured situations, you will have a bad understanding of pressure which will cause you problems when you encounter real pressure.

I agree that experience with something makes you less likely to be worried by it, but my point is that these training methods do not give you any experience of pressure. If you do experience pressure in these situations, then that indicates that you have a more fundamental problem with recognising practicalities. At best, training chases and timing yourself, when you experience them as pressured situations, will be giving very minor help with pressure and greatly hindering your ability to gain perspective on life. This is not a good trade in parkour terms.

In my experience, martial artists, firemen and soldiers, and anyone else who trains practical skills, all agree that it is very different facing your first real fight, fire or battle, from practicing it. No matter how good the practice, the situation is still controlled and your safety is not at risk. Practices carried out by groups intending to use their skills later in emergency situations are all done with explicit reminders that it will feel different doing it for real. They practice them because practice gives you many things aside from experience of pressure.
The one difference between those activities and parkour, is that only parkour practitioners are trying to improve themselves as a whole. The other activities just concentrate on improving skills for one particular area. They accept (some more reluctantly than others) that people will feel pressured even in trivial simulations and try and make use of that.
The parkour view of improvement used to be true of many martial arts, but the martial arts we come into contact with now don't concern themselves with changes to the individual as much as they deal with trying to make the best use of what is there already. They have now been diluted by modern society to accept certain limits, whereas parkour is not and does not accept limits (although some people practice something similar which does).