Crossfit and Parkour Day

"Who wants to do a workout with me tomorrow?"

I posted that on facebook sometime around midnight. I got a few replies, but the one that caught my eye was Jack Cotter inviting me to Crossfit Montana to try it out at 8:30AM. The workout today was a shared load...which means you have a partner and you can split it up however you want to. But, you cannot both be working at the same time. I was partnered with a girl named Genvieve. She didn't want to do rope climb or pushups and I wasn't too keep on pounding the pavement for a run. So I did all 10 rope climbs and 100 pushups. The rest of the workout we split 50/50. I stayed for a while after and some of the guys helped me with my muscle-ups.

Right after that, I drove to Golds for a bit more:

1) Prowler push down--> 5 pushups and explosive transition into prowler push back (10 reps)

2) Dueling ropes for 30 seconds (3 sets)

3) 100 sledgehammer hits on the tire

Then, I took Sonic for his promised Blue Mountain walk. I just got back from the Mismo Jam Missoula Parkour Group puts on. It was fun...just made me really nostalgic for Zombiefit. I encourage you all to check out that site. There are workouts of the day posted and plenty of fitness and diet tips. I enjoy watching them grow and gain national/international attention.

A large part of parkour is the community. It is not a competitive sport; rather, everyone is there to help each other improve. I met some really cool new people at the jam though. Worked mostly on backflips off a wall, wall spins, and precisions.

During this Mismo Jam, Michael and I thought about planning a Journey to the End of the Night Missoula. THIS is what I did in Chicago: http://chicag0.org/ The shortest way to describe it is, its a cross between capture the flag, tag, and a scavenger hunt lasting from about 4pm until midnight or later taking place across the whole city! You have a map, checkpoints, and chasers out to get you. I was with my parkour buddies so we traversed fences crawled through trenches and took the craziest route! Most memorable was walking behind Wolf in a trench by the junkyard full of crushed cars and this huge claw crusher machine.

Me: "Uh...Jesse? This might not be such a good idea."
Wolf: "Why"
Me: "Well..you know what comes with junkyards....Junkyard dogs."

I was preparing myself to get eaten alive, yes. But somehow we made it to the next checkpoint where some people were giving out candy under a bridge. And to get the stamp on our map, we had to answer a 70s trivia question. All three of us looked at each other and laughed as we failed miserably. We're not fossils!

So I'll keep you posted on how our plans go. It was so fun, its worth the trip home to Chicago for 2011 Journey to the End of the Night!
http://www.chicag0.org/journey/Journ2010final.html

Just...Play

Today I went to Blue Mountain with my dog. I don't bring a phone or watch. I prefer it to be timeless. I ran, climbed, did pullups, pushups, squats... An instinctively random workout. I just simply took the time to go outside and play.

One of the biggest things lacking in American culture is play; doing something unscripted, unregulated, solely because it's entertaining.

I see a lot of people going to the gyms trying to attain a certain "look" (be in surfer, model, bodybuilder, MMA fighter, etc).

It's about the appearance. The illusion. Bodybuilders spend all their time pumping and building large, pretty muscles to create the façade of strength and masculinity with actual physical capability being only a secondary consideration at best.

I say, rather than trying to attain the appearance of one of these things, become them. Stop trying to gain the upper back development of a climber and go climbing. Forget about your workout routine that is supposed to give you the lean, ripped physique of a surfer and go surfing.

MMA fighters are possibly the greatest example of all-around athleticism. Thousands of people go to gyms and perform "MMA workouts" in hopes of developing the physical appearance of a fighter. Stop it. Go join an MMA gym and train in Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Live a life with some substance. With some actual experiences.

These are real worlds. Real rocks, real water, real physical struggle.

Here, you will actually fall. You will feel the the cold sting of snow on your skin when you slip sprinting up a hill, the bark of trees may cut your hands, you will feel what it is like for another person to submit you, to have control of your body to such an extent that without your tapping a signal of submission, he or she could break your arm or choke you to death.

This is what life feels like!

So get lost.

Lose yourself. As critical as I have long touted the process of meeting your challenges head on and embracing the many stresses of life, I will again emphasize the dire need for that lofty, abstract concept I so often personally struggle with—balance. “All or nothing” has long been the name of my game, but to be honest, no matter how high the stakes and no matter how intense the tension, I have always found that I need to be outdoors or do something unusual and out of the ordinary (i.e. parkour) to restore this balance.

“Down there we know, the streets we know, but up here? Nobody’s been here.”
-David Belle