2011! Here I Come

Wow! Been busy lately. Probably because school will start real soon and I’ll be in Form 5. Homagawd!  Shizzling major exam this year. But there’s practically nothing will stop me from practicing. The only moment where I think I’ll stop is when the exam is a month away. I would like to wish everyone Happy New Year and hope 2011 will be a better than this year for us.

cheers # azari #

1000 Challenges

1000 Muscle Ups? Most of the human living on planet Earth can’t do even one. And they’re going to do thousand, each person for 24 hours.  Wow! Parkour Generation dude must be crazy. They all have finished the session twenty-three hours later. Read the full story on Blane’s and Kiell’s blog on how they accomplished this ‘impossible’ challenge.

impossible is nothing# azari #

Parkour Curriculum

Making Parkour as a curriculum activities in school is not fairly easy. There’s always risk in Parkour, a huge risk that make people assume Parkour is an extreme sport. From my points of view, Parkour have no difference in term of risk compared to the other sports. Because we don’t do things that we aren’t sure. Parkour in fact is better than any other sports. It’s one of a kind. The only sports that is non-competitive. And how do we become better without ever competing? The answer is rather simple. Improve yourself. It’s the only physical activities that you can meet people training on the sidewalk, and train with them although you don’t know their name. But, you are the one who reflects Parkour to other people. If you doing it for something bad, people will assume that it is a bad thing. So, it’s up to you now!

If you want to make Parkour as your school curriculum, all you have to do is develop a training method that is safe enough for people who just want to get started with Parkour. The tricks and flips are not to be included in this method unless you are very experience with it and you know the risk involve with the student. The training method should covered the basic fundamentals of Parkour and its philosophy. Others such as warm up, stretches, and conditioning may also be part of the method. The key to teach people about Parkour is, giving a purpose/reason on what will Parkour be useful to one’s life. I know the fact, that Parkour have change literally thousands of life. Like learning the school subjects of Physics, Chemistry and so on. Learning Parkour is actually learning the subject called Life. If you don’t believe what I’ve said, then you can go ask any traceur.

So guys! If we really want it to happen, we have to work for it. Its not going to be easy. We have to face many challenge and obstacle before it become a reality. But at the end of the, it is worth it.

stay positive # azari #

 

 

Learning To Learn

Originally posted on www.thomadventures.blogspot.com

Learning to learn, what does this mean? When a new discipline or activity catches our attention, to the point that we decide to devote a tremendous amount of our time and energy to it, instead of focusing entirely on the content do we actually question ourselves enough, if at all, about learning (i.e. the process of absorbing and making ours new skills and knowledge)? What if learning was not just a question of time and effort, but a matter of clarity and vision as well? What if learning was a skill in itself? Wouldn’t there then be a way to optimise every ounce of effort we put in the aquirement of a new technique, and therefore acheive results faster without extra effort?

In any discipline or activity, there are always those who train hard for years only to acquire mediocre results, and those who seem to fly over every difficulties in their way, is it human nature, or just a different kind of perception that one could unlock ?

This is an attempt to explore these questions…

Being In The Moment: The Right Here Right Now Equilibrium.

The philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote : “May one examine their own thoughts, and they will find them all focused on the past or the future. We almost never think in the present, and when we do, it is only to shed light on what to do with the future”.

We live in the present, it is our only field of action, and it is only then that we can interconnect entirely body, mind, and environment to create a sense of pure awareness; but how often do we actually do this? What Pascal wrote has never been so true: most of us have grown up and are still immersed in a world of distractions: television, cell phones, advertising, work, social activities, internet, games… the list is endless.
From birth we become accustomed to the habit of being constantly distracted, it is for most of us a normal thing that we accept and agree with entirely, our rare moments of boredom are those that we find awkward and that we will strive to fill with more mind-absorbing activities.
How is this related to learning? I had a student who was a very slow learner and had grown to accept it as part of his nature: he would make the same mistakes many times before understanding the lesson, and he would sometimes learn only to drop back into those old mistakes again. I didn’t really know how to help him until I realised something essential: that even when training his mind was constantly drifting away in thought, absorbed in the past or future, inconspicuously slipping out of the “right here right now equilibrium”.

I understood that one’s learning is clearly improved by being in constant connection with one’s present sensations.

Sensations are feedback, they tell us if what we do is right or not, they show us what we should improve on and how to do it at the condition that we pay attention to them. Repetition alone is pointless if there isn’t constant attention to what is being done, just as it is being done. Learn in real-time, be awake and aware, feel and analyse what you are doing. Trying again doesn’t mean doing again; every attempt is a new opportunity to do better, based on the knowledge and experience of past tries.

So avoid any type of distraction when you are training, let your entire self be directed towards what you are doing and all your energy, all your qualities, all that you are made of will cease to be dispersed and wasted but, instead, will work for you towards one clear goal that you have chosen, like a whole army marching in unison towards one unique target.

I took the time to explain these things to the student, letting them slowly soak in over time, and he has since then made tremendous progress and is now one of the quickest learners I have ever taught to!

Constructive Criticism: The Positive Vision

Collecting feedback and endlessly integrating it in what you do is a major element of learning to learn, but doing so with absolute positiveness is the key principle that will create the alchemy. When we try and fail, we try harder, but if we fail again, most of us will tend to get upset or irritated, and our emotions conquer us and corrupt the positive learning mindset we were in. It is then very easy to slip into negative criticism and to start asking ouselves the wrong questions, such as “why am I so bad at this?”, or even “why can’t I ever get things right?”

The mind, in these cases, is bluntly stupid in the way it works, as it searches for a direct answer to these questions; for instance: “you’re bad at this because it’s not your thing”, or “you can never get things right because you’re not meant to be talented at this”. The answers it gives us are often conveyed on a subconscious level, and thus we unknowingly hypnotise ourselves into failure.

Therefore, one must ask themselves the right questions if one wishes to find the right answers: “How can I improve on this?”, “How can I avoid doing these mistakes?”, “What is holding me back from complete mastery?”

Condition your mind for positivity and you will get positive results. A positive vision is one that can picture a clear objective and a list of ways to reach it, regardless of what stands in the way. And any resistance in your progress, instead of being a source of frustration, will become a call for a new accomplishment, a treat of self-exploration. You won’t need to ignore your frustration, it won’t be there anymore, transformed into a new exciting feeling of challenge!

Training, as intense as it may get, is never but a game so don’t take it too seriously, even if you’re at it every day for hours, be relaxed about it, inner tension will cause outer stiffness, let it flow inside and it will flow outside. Lightness is key.

Discovering Rather Than Manufacturing: The Blossoming Flower Concept

“When I and my students think of strokes as being discovered rather than manufactured, they seem to learn the game much faster and without frustration.” Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis

I will humbly paraphrase this great book here.

As explained earlier, a major part of the process of learning is directly linked to how we visualise things. Manufacturing skills would imply that there is you + all that you’ve learned. Like costumes worn over each other, your skills are not connected to who you are, they are merely added to you in a very impersonal way. Progress, in this mindset, appears as having no end and worse, as being perishable…

Now, let’s talk about flowers… flowers don’t grow, they blossom: from the instant they exist as a tiny seed, they are already the future flower that they will turn into, just like a new-born baby is already in essence the future adult it will become.

They constantly express themselves as flowers and day by day, instant by instant, they become a little bit more their blossomed selves, what they were right from the start is now fully expressed and they are purely themselves.

If you visualise all your skills as being within you right from the start, on standby, waiting to be discovered and released, you will get rid of a lot of the pressure that athletes face with intense training because it means that you are simply learning to express yourself, zeroing in ever more on your true self. One could almost call it a process of enlightenment. In this case, nothing is really learnt, everything is simply revealed and therefore it is an undisociable part of you.

Progress is not an addition of bits of knowledge and skill like Lego pieces stacked on top of each other, it is only the elimination of what is keeping you from expressing your true self.

Conclusion: Expanding The Horizon

Throughout this article, I’ve never once mentioned parkour: the reason is that “learning to learn”, once acquired, is a skill that transcends any activity it may be applied to. One who understands it may use it in any field equally.

As a matter of fact, in order to explore a single discipline one is required to branch off continuously into other fields, as no knowledge is ever completely isolated.

A samurai once wrote about his art: “The practice cannot be confined to swordsmanship, if one limits it to that, they will not even know swordsmanship“. The same warrior added: “I have applied the lessons of my art to every other discipline I have encountered, therefore in any discipline I am my own master”. The road that leads to the mastery of one discipline will lead to the mastery of others; following one is close to following them all because, more than just the discipline, it is ourselves that we learn to explore and know through our practice. The discipline itself is never the end, but the means to a more noble, meaningful and everlasting end: our blossomed self.

be inspired # azari #

Hell Of A Training!

Today, me and the rest of Subang Jaya traceur went to Bukit Jalil to meet Samir. He’s on a holiday in Malaysia and decided to meet us for a training. It took us an hour and a half and arrived just before the training started. He started off his training with a ‘easy’ warm up (easy for him, hell for us). I’ve never ever warm up that hard before, and he said that the warm up he did with us is nothing compared to the warm up that he did with Parkour Generation. Maybe, they need to warm up hard because they’re living in a cold temperature of UK. But I’ve notice that he didn’t do any stretch at all! Just a warm up. Unlike Malaysian, we ALWAYS give a priority to stretch and sometimes we don’t do warm up at all. This differences only can be notice if there are people from another place come together and train with you. So, this is the only time where I can collect as many knowledge as possible from a foreign traceur. Samir have been a practitioner of parkour for more than 3 years and he is indeed an experienced traceur. I will practice everything that he taught me today to become a better traceur!

Samir was having fun with Parkour Malaysia Traceur

train smart # azari #

Streetosphere

Documentary series “Streetosphere” shows a group of people that expressing their art in the city streets. You’ll notice Wolf Renaissance is in this video doing this thing.

Yeah! Finally I know how to embed videos from Vimeo.

be inspired # azari #

Foucan’s

“Oh! We’re gonna do our group there because we better than you.This is what I don’t want to it happen.You has to be in community” – Sébastien Foucan

Iceland Parkour Training – Sébastien Foucan (YouTube, FreerunningTVDotCom)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuxMQBN_BIg&feature=share

Snow In My Place?

Hohoho ! There’s an extras on WordPress that allows me to have snow on my blog. WordPress is sooo…. cool! So guys, choose WordPress instead of Tumblr, Blogspot, or any other blog. (haha, jkjk.)

The reason that I make this post is to wish:

Merry Christmas To Everyone Who Celebrates It !

have a great one # azari #

Goals

Goals are dreams with deadlines.  ~Diana Scharf Hunt

We all have a dream! But how we’re going to pursue it depends on the person and how hard that he/she wants it. My Parkour goal is quite simple. Perfect handstand, more powerful Kong Vault and flawless roll. I’ve set the deadline on the annual jam, 20 days from now. To accomplish my goal, I need a new strategy. I need to practice those move every single day. The only obstacle now is TIME! Can those moves be perfect on time? Only time will tell. So, I have to try my best to make it perfect before the deadline.

train smart # azari #

Self Centred Focus

This inspirational articles was reblog from Qayyim’s post on the forum with the same tittle.

Over the past 5 years plus in the art of parkour, I would put progress requires several strong factors:

• Enthusiasm – without it, one would not have the drive to train, to condition and to progress. This is more of an internal factor.
• Support – this would be the external factor. Support from your family, friends and most of all the parkour community itself.
• Focus

I remembered during the first years of my parkour trainings, it’s hard to focus on the movements and trainings when in public. The burden cast upon us when bystanders watch, when they give out comments and when kids try to imitate our ‘stunts’. Some new practitioners also came to me over the years complaining about the same thing. That it’s hard to train when eyes are watching.

But as you further your parkour journey, you would understand that there is no other way to train but in public. This is because parkour itself is to adapt with the environment and surroundings. You can’t run from people prying on our ‘mischievous’ and out of the norm acts.

The problem arises when this feeling of ‘man, I’m being watched’ interrupts training and progress. You can’t always take the ‘let’s go somewhere else to train where there’s no one else’ principle and go from a good training place to an absolute rejected venue. The alternative is you could always adjust the time of your training to times when most people are not around, but how long can you maintain like that?

One solution to this is to have focus.

Cast away the feeling of people watching, just focus on the movement. Cease the feeling of wanting progress. Being focused to me is actually when you isolate the external factors to more stronger internal factors.

Let’s reason out why it’s hard to focus when training:

• Of course no. 1 is the problem of the topic itself: surrounding distractions.
• Low level of self confidence due to new environment
• Low level of self confidence due to new movement and lack of practice
• Too much consideration if things go wrong

As you can see, out of the four reasons, only one is an external factor. But without overcoming the first barrier (surrounding distractions: people watching, noices etc), one is less likely to overcome the second and following focus barricades.

How can we overcome this?

• Learn to isolate your feelings from bad impression poses from others. Know that what you’re doing (practicing parkour) is beneficial to yourself, is not against the law, has good intentions etc.
• Learn to push yourself for progress.
• Train and practice all the small basic moves. Master it until your body adapts to it like walking. Make it solid to build confidence.
• Calculate risks and plan how to overcome them. Don’t rush things, if you can’t do it today, there’s always tomorrow and next week. Or next year (referring to the annual jam to come on 26th Dec 2010).

Bruce lee was once quoted: “a successful warrior is an average man with laser-like focus.”

be inspired # azari #