Lessons from the President's Challenge

This spring I took "the President's challenge", an initiative to push people to exercise and log their workouts. I was curious: how does my practice of Parkour fit into that idea, and how fast and far can I go?

Turns out I found a few more things than I hoped. First, logging my workouts made me realize I don't work out much at all. On a regular week, I only train about 3-5h, with a maximum of about maybe 10h. That's not much time, and so my progress was much slower than I expected because the most important factor logged was time rather than intensity of effort (a few had 'vigorous' ratings, but nowhere could you log a 'brutal' workout).

The second interesting point is that the most important single part of my exercising is biking to and from Union Station every day (almost 40% of my activity), because Parkour couldn't be logged (with reason) under a single category. Other interesting stats: children games took 10%, climbing 10%, gymnastics 15%, calisthenics 10%, and then lots of other things came in, which is a pleasing reminder that Parkour is just a lot of different activities. Interestingly, there was little running and jumping involved, though.

So, what I learned was that: 1. regular, light exercise has a more direct impact; 2. efficient training doesn't require much time, but intensity and focus.

Méthode naturelle

So, I have been looking a lot at the "Natural Method", a somewhat radical physical education philosophy that permeates a lot of what Parkour is all about. It all comes from one man, Georges Hébert, a pioneer in French physical education around the beginning of the 2oth century. He trained military fighters, sailors, school children and olympic athletes, wrote theoretical and practical books and essays about physical education and had an exceptional understanding of physical activity in general.

I stumbled upon one of his early books on google books and spent most of my spring, summer and fall translating it into English, with tremendous help from Gregg of Hawaii PK. There is a ton of great information in there for traceurs and other athletes as well as anyone interested in basic fitness. It's about a hundred years old, and yet most of it is still extremely relevant and applicable to modern sports and fitness. Yes, there are pictures of men with funny mustaches. And massive muscles too, so don't laugh too much unless you can measure up to their fitness scale.

Mr. Hébert, chapeau bas and thank you.