In Too Deep

Like anything in life it’s not always beneficial focusing on one thing for too long; it’s the start of growing a narrow mind and ignoring everything else around you; environment, friends, hobbies, awareness and even yourself. The key in these and many other situations is balance. This isn’t meaning to say do everything in an equal time or never try too hard on something because most people have an ambition in life where they will need to take more time, dedication and passion towards achieving it than other things in their life.

Sometimes you may be trying to reach a certain goal over a long period of time. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and in some cases even years may be spent focusing on one goal you have set yourself upon. The more time goes by, the more you may lose your self-belief (which is such a thing to lose) that you can even achieve this goal. Sometimes you may even forget why you wanted to achieve it in the first place and all your mind is focused on is this one thing...

Most people would tell you to ‘never give up’ and ‘believe in yourself’. Which is right, you shouldn’t give up and confidence is definitely key in any ambition.

I’ve had so many mental blocks in Parkour building up to jumps; the mind full of confusion and doubt, the eyes focusing on the same spot for so long and everything around you feels as if it’s on the other side of an invisible wall. Your mind is in the usual building up state of nothing mattering anymore. You have to do it, you must do it, you’re more than capable of doing it, you feel the burning emotions of scare and confidence combining in your heart... and while all of this questioning and confusion is going on in your mind, your physical state remains stationary, merely on standby. Your body is fine... waiting patiently; it’s just waiting for you mind to make that final decision.

Now most of the time I would walk back and forth motivating myself and all this energy will gust out of me after a huge mental debate and BAM! Next thing I know I’m looking down at my feet and doing the casual walk feeling so good about myself for doing this... jump (in this case). Ok, 2 more times to be sure the first wasn’t lucky... the build up to the 2nd jump is never as intensive as the 1st, the build up is still there but your mind is at much more ease. Simply because you know you’ve just done it and it’s real. It’s yours; you’ve got this 2 more times no problem. Sometimes your body won’t even wait for your mind to decide whether to go or not for the 2nd jump or one you’ve done many times because you’re bursting with so much confidence. Which feels good but you should never take the unworthy risk. You’ll have plenty of opportunities in life for your body to move before your mind, possibly in a good old adrenaline rush.

This is great, it’s the progression of Parkour, you’re getting better and you’re sure of it. You go home feeling so good about yourself and feel like you’ve unlocked a whole new door to the discipline.

However, sometimes you may go out to train and you might not feel as confident as you did the last day you came out. Everything seems big or you may feel like your mind isn’t totally with it. Then you come across a new jump you’ve never noticed before. You get a little scared into the usual build up (because you know you’re capable of; this is the reason you even get scared in the first place) and you’ve been through the whole natural process of building yourself up... only this time you just can’t seem to get your body there, like there’s not enough power within you to lift yourself off the ground. Or it may be something that’s putting you off at the time. Either way, you feel that it’s going to be a dangerous thing to attempt it on this day with the state your mind/body is in.

At these times you can get really mentally messed up with a jump, especially if it’s just a simple one where you KNOW could have easily done it on a day you feel 100%.
So you come back another day only this time feeling much physically and mentally better, everything seems fine and you think nothing more of it. Again, you’re faced with this jump you must continue. Now, sometimes you may do it with ease at this point and think “Wow! Why was I so worked up about that?”

The weird thing that happened to me a while ago was that I stepped back into that jump and it felt as if I had left it 2 minutes from the other day. You don’t even know why you can’t do it now, but you just can’t... it’s a mental block, as if your mind has saved all these mental feelings from the day you weren’t feeling right and is still pushing them against you. This happened to me quite a few times on the same jump, I just couldn’t do it. I kept trying to go back to it but without realizing, losing my self-belief.

In actual fact, it was more like I was training myself to be scared of the jump rather than doing the jump... I was in way too deep. In Parkour I’ve noticed that you should really try and avoid looking into something too much, it only adds negative thoughts into your head and puts you in more of a confusion state rather than a confident powerful person.

“You have to see into the heart of things, into the truth of things, not metaphorically either – but really see, like looking into metal and making it melt, see it for what it is with hard words and vicious insight.” – Bob Dylan

It’s now when you need to step back and unwind your fears, try other things out for a few days or even weeks, change spots and experience new things. This isn’t classed as giving up; you’re still training. It’s just another approach into achieving your goal.

A few weeks later with some time out of training altogether due to work, college and family I went back to this jump, sub-consciously forgetting the problems I had with it all those weeks ago. Sure I went through the shaky leg build up (baring in mind I was in worse physical condition than I was and it was almost pitch black... which really didn’t help for this specific jump) and in time I got it like a good’n... now 2 more times! I had stepped into a brand new fresh state of mind for this jump... a better one!

This whole build up had nothing to do with my physical ability. It was purely a mental block, like I said; your physical state is merely on standby waiting for your mind to make the final decision. When you fall in too deep with a goal such as that or anything in life, step back from it. Look around, experience new things... but don’t give up! It’s just another approach into achieving your goal. Have a go at a bit of everything; change of location, approach, movements etc. Variation can take you a lot further than all your energy focused on one specific thing.

Balance is the key.

“When your emotion is free of being bound up on fears, the body can flow with pure motivating energy.” – Bruce Thomas

- Sam