You’ll notice it right away when you wake up one particularly cold morning. You’ve got things to do and places to be, but your comfort zone, which in this case extends just to the edges of your warm fuzzy blanket, is sucking you in. In this cozy little pocket of snuggly security, you’re safe and content. But if you stay in bed all day, you can’t accomplish much of anything. It may be difficult to counteract the attractive forces of this comfort zone, but most of the time you steel yourself for the cold and the challenges of the day, and you break free.

Your comfort zone is not always as easily definable as the physical area of a warm, cozy bed. It is wherever you feel safe, wherever you know what to expect. Part of your comfort zone might be the routine you use to get ready for the day, for example, or the friends you sit with at every meal. Part of it could even be as abstract as the things you choose to think about or believe. Staying in a comfort zone makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, because in the wild, if you didn’t get chased by predators or run out of food or get injured yesterday, you probably shouldn’t change things up today. If the goal is survival, a comfort zone is a fantastic place to be.

But what if you want to do more than just survive?

If you want to learn, if you want to grow, if you want to challenge yourself to be in some way better today than you were yesterday, try breaking out of your comfort zone. Do something you’ve never done before. Do something that makes you nervous. Do something you’re not even sure you’re capable of. When I first got to UMass, parkour was all of these things to me. I didn’t play sports or do any kind of conditioning. I was afraid of being looked down on, afraid that others would wonder why I was there when I was so obviously “unathletic,” and afraid of making a fool of myself in front of so many other people. All I had was a desire to improve myself, and while that didn’t seem like much at the time, it turns out that’s all I really needed. Outside my comfort zone, I discovered a whole world of possibility which I had thus far excluded myself from. I could list endless benefits I’ve gained from parkour, but the point is I did something I was completely uncomfortable with, and it helped me grow.

For those of us who are traceurs and traceuses, we’ve all purposefully removed ourselves from our comfort zones in certain ways. The safe, routine way of getting around is simply walking. Pretty much everyone is used to it. But if you stick to this comfort zone, you miss out on a lot of other ways of moving, all the other paths you could take, and all the lessons you could learn along the way. So when you’ve chosen to stray from the comfort zone of walking and move in other ways, you’ve already gotten outside your comfort zone. However, one thing I’ve noticed in myself lately, and that we mentioned quickly in our discussion last Wednesday, is that once you start gaining confidence in certain moves in parkour, it can be tempting to stick to what you know. Gaining confidence is a wonderful thing, but if you only go for the moves you are confident about, you’ve created a new comfort zone for yourself. Playing it safe and staying in your comfort zone can hold you back whether you’ve never tried parkour before or you’ve been doing it for years.

I’ll use myself as an example again. I love turn vaults. I could do turn vaults all  day(although I’d probably get pretty tired!). I am far from perfecting them, but I’d say they’ve become a part of my comfort zone. If I’m practicing turn vaults because I am trying to improve my landing or fine tune the movement in some way, great. But if I’m practicing turn vaults because I’m avoiding something I’ve never tried or something I’m not as confident with, I’m removing myself from the situation in which I have the most potential to learn.

So I guess what I’d like you all to consider is this: don’t get so comfortable with monkeys that you never go for the kong. And once you have a solid kong, start thinking about the double. If you get the double, there’s always the triple. There are an endless amount of adventures available to us, limited only by what we can conceive of and what we’re willing to try.

What are you willing to try?

-Amy

Recently Scott, Javier, Kevin and a couple others were featured in a blog post, check out what Electronic Blogging Endeavors has to say about UMPK!

Or, read the article before the final edit in its parts: Electronic Blogging Endeavors’ Parkour Week Part’s I-IV.

In other news, T-shirts and sweatshirts have arrived!

Also, there’s a jam this weekend see details on facebook.

Finally, there is some tech news: our website now works on mobile phones and we have added facebook, twitter and calender options to our Campus Pulse Page.

Parkour starts earlier! We are now meeting from 6:00-7:30pm Monday through Thursday, meet at the front entrance to the Fine Arts Center! All skill levels are always welcome, so come train.

Also, here’s a little taste of our fall training, slowly remembering to bring my camera to practices…

School’s in session and this year’s parkour club looks better then ever. With so many new members things are starting out with a bang. I hope everyone stayed in shape this summer ’cause this year we hit the ground running…

Through talking with a vast amount of people about the possibility of joining UMPK, or even just doing Parkour on their own time, I’ve become aware of a huge section that tells me “I’m not athletic enough to do that”, or, “I could never do that”. I generally reply with “Well, Parkour is an individual discipline. It isn’t about being able to do specific moves like flips or leaping tall buildings with a single bound; it’s about doing whatever you can do RIGHT NOW.” Parkour is about the difficulty of a technique as it relates to YOU: not to me, or David Belle, or anybody else. So, the “that” that is being referred to in saying “I’m not athletic enough to do that” is not pre-determined, it’s defined by what you’re capable of and determined by you. For some, landing a smooth roll will push their limits and help them grow as much as doing a twisting front-flip over a rooftop gap would help another grow. It’s all relative.

While I was talking to two classmates in my Human Physiology class about Parkour they brought up an interesting point that really gets at the heart of why people feel that Parkour is out of their league. One of the two, who has known me for a few years, replied to my query about her reservations by saying “You can do it because you’re athletic, me, not so much”. As I started to explain that athleticism is learned, my other classmate brought up the idea of being “naturally athletic”. At first I didn’t quite know how to respond because it seems weird to say that there aren’t any “natural athletes” in the world – but after some thinking I realized that that’s actually the truth: there aren’t any!

When it comes down to it, your body is simply a tool for your Mind to wield. Therefore, the ways to improve your capabilities are to 1) Improve your tool, and 2) Get better at using the tool. To make your tool more useful you have to improve it through physical training to make it stronger, more powerful, flexible, resilient, etc. Of the two aforementioned ways to improve, this is the straightforward one that nearly everybody understands because everybody knows the effect of having the right tool for the job.

The second method, to get better at using the tool, is all too often overlooked and misunderstood – yet it is where the greatest improvements are reaped. To improve your abilities for using your body you have to improve your coordination. Bruce Lee defined coordination as: “the quality which enables the individual to integrate all the powers and capacities of the whole organism into the effective doing of an act”(Tao of Jeet Kune Do). This is where most people claim there is a disparity between the “natural athlete” and the “unathletic”. However, the disparity here is due to the “natural athlete” thinking about their movement differently than the “unathletic”. Since muscles have no contractile power without the Mind to direct them, it then follows that you have to understand, and train, your Mind to effectively train how you coordinate the use of your muscles

To go back to Bruce Lee: “Training for skill (coordination) is purely a matter of forming proper connections to the nervous system through practice… A badly executed move is the result of impulses sent to the wrong muscles by the nervous system, or sent a fraction of a second too soon or too late, or sent in improper sequence or in poorly apportioned intensity”. So when you practice, pay attention to the signals your Mind is sending your body. Pay attention to your emotions. Then figure out a way to change the way you’re thinking to overcome the obstacles within your own Mind.

You can do it.

As always, find your way.

-Scooter

Dear Interested Zoomassers,

Hello ladies and gentlemen, you signed our sheet asking for information and here is that information. First, I’ll start off with our meeting times. We meet Monday through Thursday, at the Fine Arts Center (FAC) from 7:00-8:30pm. Also, we hold weekend jams on Saturdays from 2:00-5:00pm. A jam is an informal session in which people from all around the area come to hang out and train whatever they want.

If you want a taste of practice without actually going to one, check out Get Active! Link: Facebook Event

My next point has to do with skill levels, if you’re afraid you won’t fit in, your fears are irrational. We teach beginners, advanced and high level parkour/freerunning practitioners. We tend to split up some group activies by skill level, so no one should feel bored or over-challenged. If you have either of these problems at practice, please feel free to speak to an instructor. Also, anyone can come, if you’re a student, an adult, we don’t really care. Just sign a health waiver and be ready to go. The only requirement for a UMass student to be come an official member is to sign up with us on Campus Pulse; here is the address: http://umassamherst.collegiatelink.net/organization/parkour

If you’re not training hard already, its definitely time to get on that… but don’t fret, scooter and trav are coming up with a muscle busting workout that will make you a movement machine.

In addition to some ass-kickin’ workouts we’ve got some multimedia for you to check out, a video, a flickr album and a photoblog!’

Here’s our video from the awesome Mother’s Day Jam:

Check out the flickr album from The Daily Collegian

Finally, head over to this ill photo blog to get a look at some hot action!

Hope exams are going well! Also, we will still be practicing this week despite our intense work loads… so feel free to take a study break (and doesn’t exercise make it easier to learn? I could have sworn that I heard that somewhere).

Come take a break a join us at the 1PM Sunday Jam!

So, what’s the news?

Elections! We are holding them Tuesday May 2nd at 7:10PM. Positions available are President, Vice President, Treasurer, Equipment Manager and PR Manager.  Nominees (yes, you can self-nominate) will give a speech concerning why they think they deserve the position and what they will be able to bring to the club. Who’s excited?

In other news, Scoot and Qaz went to Boston yesterday to meet up with people from other college groups in the area, thanks to BCPK for hosting that, I’m sure there will be some sort of digital media posted about this in the hear future.

For those who are looking for some end of the semester eye candy, I put together a little video of some random clips that were lying around. check it outtt

What’s good community? Happy holiday! I just wanted to update everyone on the goings on for the rest of the semester. Now that it is warm out, we’re going to be outside as much as possible (if there isn’t rain falling on everything). Also, elections are coming up soon… so everyone should think about running and who they want leading us next year. And please please please everyone should talk to one of the officers about getting on a workout regimen, we’ll design one just for you… all you need to do is ask! Possibility of a performance coming up soon too, so get pumped.

Finally, I’ll leave you with the video of the trip hex, marc and me took over spring break!

It seems obvious that practicing basic skills will pay off for any practitioner of parkour, freerunning, etc. but often even advanced practitioners have not mastered the basics of movement before trying more complex tricks. Many of these people never seem to develop the ability to flow between movements and objects and end up simply doing a series of disconnected tricks. This is fine; however, I personally strive to move beyond just “fine”.

Alright, so the point of this blog post is to teach you something about movement. The first skill that you will want to acquire is a high quality landing. Check this out: American Parkour Landing Tutorial. So mainly, you’re going to want to have good leg positioning and absorption as to avoid any injury. And please, don’t think that since you’ve watched a video on landing and rolling that you can jump off of a roof without injuring yourself… these skills should be practiced close to the ground. Once the skill and leg strength are present, then one can progress to higher jumps.

So, you’ve got a basic idea of how to land now, but you want to take it to some thing more structurally interesting… well I have a great video for you:

Remember, you now have an idea of how to land and fall safely, but you should also practice your roll! And DO NOT roll along the spine, roll across okay?

That’s it for today, learn your landings and ALWAYS land as silently as possible.

- travesty intl.