Spirit training

[Eliot]

Wow, looking on from that post almost three years later, I can see that this whole idea of spirit training has stayed with me, I think it's probably some of the most rewarding training I've ever done. Like riding my bike down into a valley 20 - 30 km's or so with all my gear on my back, training the rest of the day at a river, not sleeping at all in the night, greeted with hypothermea in the morning, then riding the bike back OUT of the valley (20 - 30km's all uphill!) not having the strength to ride home when I was about 1km away, and ended up leaning on my bike, and stumbling home...That was freaking awesome.

But I think this has really shaped my view on Parkour, and what it's about, the survivalist nature behind it is really what drives me I think.

[Awesome_Andy]

Glad this thread is revived.

when i was doing selection for the commadoes we had to do as we were told for 48 hours, no food, no sleep, we had to stay menatlly alert and do physical tasks during that whole time.

What happen!? I want to hear the rest of this story, how did you cope?

[Eliot]

when i was doing selection for the commadoes we had to do as we were told for 48 hours, no food, no sleep, we had to stay menatlly alert and do physical tasks during that whole time.

What happen!? I want to hear the rest of this story, how did you cope?

Bump, if it isn't too personal?

[Tanked]

Chippas mad story aside, I'm pretty sure this is what Danny Ilabaca was getting at when he said the whole "choose not to fall" thing. At that point where you don't just think, you KNOW you're going to give up, you just push with mad spirit powers and choose to succeed.

[Eliot]

I think he was talking about something a bit different. What I was talking about (and I think everyone else) was more about being able to push and endure through mental will power despite how cold/hungry/tired/etc. you are. Not being able to react and trust your technique/body to know what to do as Danny was talking about.

That was my interepretation of it all anyway.

[Tanked]

Right. When he said that for some reason I just had a mental picture of someone shimmying or doing something that isn't just an instant reaction, more a stamina thing. Anywho, carry on.

[Phill.ck]

  Does anyone think spirit training is a great way to test a persons resolve? If somebody wants something bad, putting them through spirit training can tell us how badly that person wants it.

[Bun-bun]

danny is not talking about the same thing as i am.
'choosing not to fall' is tripe for the majority. people can overcome their fears, know they can do a particular thing and STILL fuck it up badly.

will follow up on the other story later on. this topic is particularly relevant to the other topic about parkour being a training method for warriors. they are interconnected

[Pava]

Great thread.

[Bun-bun]

i coped by just taking it one thing at a time.

i knew exactly what i wanted to achieve, i wanted to pass selection to get into commandos. to do that i had to pass the selection.

usually there were plenty of other people struggling so i was never last or in any great trouble. some things were hard but you just need to outlast what the present discomfort was to get to the next thing.

you need to know WHY you are choosing to enter into these discomforts to adequately provide you with the correct and necessary MOTIVATION to persevere through them.

many people aren't really aware of why they really want to do parkour and therefore struggle to keep training it or increase their strength and conditioning because they do not have the necessary goals ad external motivation to motivate them to follow through on doing the hard and or boring.stuff

[Hainesy]

I have found that I have been able to do a lot of things in parkour because I know why I want to train parkour, and it has helped me to keep training (and gets me through some hard S&C).

[Cink]

hi, im joaquin from buenos aires, i think your comunity is very usefull! and i want to give my point of view
about the spirit training, i can say that it envolves every aspect in Parkour. David Belle once said, that if someone trains one day with his father, probably he/she will no longer want to do the training again. He said that if you really train parkour you will bleed, you will cry, and you'll be exahust. If you want to "go easy", then parkour isn't for you.

when i started training, for example, my progressive training was slow. But parkour made me go beyond my limits.
Parkour gets you really motivated because you know WHY you are training. IT's not like doing fitness in the gym, probably you dont' know how it can be useful for you.
But here you know that, you want to break down every mental and phisycall block.

Like chippa said with running, sometimes you think you've got to stop, your legs want to stop and you are breathless, but if you try harder, you can go on.
The same with push-ups or any excersice...or balance even, sometimes it's just a mental thing and you only need to convince yourself that YOU CAN GO ON.

thas what i think, sory if my english isn't perfect! hope you understand me.

[Eliot]

Hey yeah your exactly right, your body is capable of so much more than your mind thinks it is.

I always remember, Chippa, when I was running with you and Rhys and the beyond basics class, one of the less-fit kids was struggling and thought he was stuffed and you said to him something along the lines of "don't give up until your legs can't hold you anymore."
I repeat that to myself everytime I run now.

[Bun-bun]

Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process. - -- Phillips Brooks

[JimiJinx]

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. -- US president Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in Paris, France on April 23, 1910.