As it’s my first blog and I never introduced myself to members on the site other than those that I have met personally I feel an introduction is in order;
My name is Jeffrey, I was born on May 14th 1992, all of which is available on my profile. I am 6” 3’ at the moment, and weigh in the region of 80 kg (All muscle
). I swim for Limerick Swimming Club’s A squad, 10 hours a week, and of course, I am a traceur. I have just completed my Leaving Cert and I’ll be going into UL this September to study Computer Aided Engineering and Design.Cocky much you may say?
Self-assured and confident I say, and I do it intentionally. Why? In this world we live in, people continuously place doubt in our mind, always lead us to believe that we won’t acheive what we wish to achieve. If you don’t believe in your own potential you are nothing. If you don’t see potential in your self then you are blind. The impossible is nothing. [See my bio for the rest of this]
Another reason I am so confident is because it annoys people. I don’t do it in a malevolent way, no, not at all! I do it partially to inspire people to rise to the challenge and rise above the opression of the limitations of their worlds. To make people want to beat me, to inspire competition, to help people become all that they can be. However, I can become very competitive, and this is my swimming mentality clicking into play (As our coach told us, we have to be willing to “cut the competitions’ throat rather than let them win”). When this happens boundaries are pushed.
Parkour was first introduced to me on YouTube in the September of 2006 by someone who was to become one of my best friends. I was attending the British International School of Innovative Learning and Education in Lodz, Poland at the time, and at first sight I was speechless. Giulio (The guy who showed me the video) laughed at my expression of disbelief. Then he told me that he did it! Unbelievable!!
Of course, off we ran outside to do parkour- no warm-up, no previous knowledge (On my behalf at least), and no idea about the risks. I learnt to vault and precision, from youtube, on my own. I had become a traceur.
I have come a long way since then, and looking back at it now, I think that it is what all beginners do to start off. Now I have changed my training and attitude drastically towards parkour and towards life because of parkour. I tried things back then that I wasn’t physically capable of doing. I felt no pain, “There’s nothing wrong with doing it”, I thought.
Now I won’t try anything until I am certain I am physically capable of doing. Obviously this is a paradoxical outlook when juxtaposed with the “No limits, No boundaries” view of parkour, but I continue to improve and push my own boundaries each time I train.
I have my own views on how parkour should be taught. Part of me says that it simply shouldn’t be taught. I think that, because I learnt everything myself, everyone is capable of doing it. I browsed through this site under a different user account that has long since been deleted by my request. Although it was an impossibility for me to attend jams ( I was still in Poland) I read through countless numbers of threads, many of which were old. I posted very little, asked even fewer questions, but learnt a lot. I think that everyone is capable of doing the same thing (Except the registering twice thing... I believe that’s frowned upon here).
If parkour must be taught, I think it should be someone who is competent and well able to handle questions, correct “mistakes” and perhaps adjust techniques depending on the person in question. I once saw someone teaching a group of total beginners at a Limerick Jam how to land “properly”. I had been training properly about 2 years at that stage and although I said nothing, I was outraged at how someone could teach such bad techinques to total beginners. I felt it wasn’t fair on them.
This is why I believe it shouldn’t be taught. A bad teacher can simply ruin the pupil.
Parkour classes are officially going to take place for the first time in UL this September, and although I have been attending to the unofficial classes before until I was booted because of being underage (
), I am looking forward to it. There will be at least 4/5 experienced traceurs there, and between the lot of us we’re bound to have some good ideas The only thing I’m unsure of is the whole “Learning in a Gym” environment, but I assume that this is for insurance purposes!! But there’s still the concrete to take to outside...At the moment I am in France, in a place called “Narbonne-Plage”, a beautiful little town right beside le Mediterané, with amazing mountains and trails and places to train so close too. In fact, while I’m on the topic, I was thinking of bringing a max of 7-10 people here to train next year. If you have read this far, congratz- leave a profile comment if you’re interested!
I arrived here on the 24th of June- 2 days after my final exam, and I’ll be back in Ireland on the 9th of August, made some incredible friends, but they left last Monday. I joined the gym for want of something to do, so I go there every day, but I’m resting today!
Yesterday I went training. Oh Lord. I went for about 45 mins. 36C heat is not so fun while training. Sweat rolling down the crack of my ass like Niagra... After that failure I went to the gym and pumped the guns, core and legs for about 2 hours.
Ok, I feel that this has been a bit drawn out for you, the reader, so I’ll cut it here!
I always hated when people said at the end of their blogs “Thanks for reading”, but now I understand its meaning.
Thank you for reading, and do leave a reply/comment!!
Pac