I need a new hobby. I thought back to the last time in my life I felt truly satisfied, and I figured out that it was when I was playing Magic back in the glory days of high school. Sorry college, no disrespect, but I loved me my Magic days. Here’s how it went: I went to school in the day, worked out afterwards, hung out with my girlfriend, and spent all weekend playing Magic with my friends. Pretty much all the components of balance, and one more.
Let me explain what I mean. I didn’t just play Magic. I was obsessed. All my friends played Magic. We played together, in groups, in pairs. I used to research decks and strategies and bluffs and secret sideboard tech for hours every day. I built, tested, reengineered, took apart, and rebuilt my baby decks. I played in real life. I played online. I played over the god-damn phone. And I was good. I took my creations to tournaments. First the local Friday Night Magics. Dominated those. Then the Junior Super Series. Top 4’d one of those. Then the PTQs. In my last season, I Top 8’d 6 PTQs. That’s unheard of. I was 8th in LA county, 23rd in the state. I think I was 16. It was a good time in my life. It showed me what I could do. The best part was, it was effortless. All this work felt like play. Then, the real world hit and I started preparing for college. That became my goal. I explored it, found its essence, knuckled down hard and worked. College is no joke, and I feel I made the most of it. I liked it. But I wasn’t obsessed with it. I want to be obsessed with something again. And the first thing on my list to try is Parkour…
(watch the jump at 0:16- like, holy shit!)
Parkour, also called freerunning, is those guys and gals you see leaping across buildings, backflipping from the ground, and running up walls. Formally, it’s the art of getting from A to B as quickly as possible, using obstacles to your advantage. Informally, it’s a metaphor for my life. Sound interesting? 😉 Just kidding. But seriously, I really like that aspect of it – I do feel that in my life I see everything as an opportunity, every failure as a chance to improve, every setback as a chance to excel. Where are the niches, the opportunities? What can be exploited? Where can I turn the situation to my advantage? Freerunning is simply taking that to the physical plane.
So basically, it’s totally badass, and it has the nice side effect of getting me back in shape :). I feel like I’ll be good at it. Today was my first day, and I figured out how to leap a fence about 4 feet high, and how to leap through a swingset at my local park. I feel like I’ve already making progress, especially in mindset. You have to not think about falling, or when you’re going to leap, or where you’re going to brace yourself, when you’re going to do a jump, or else you stop your movement before you’re over the obstacle. I ran straight to the fence and hopped right up on it a few times before I told myself, “Okay, just run at it, put your hands on the fence, and throw yourself over. Don’t worry about anything else, just throw yourself at the fence.” And then I hopped right over! I didn’t even know I could throw my legs that high.
Pretty cool. I’ll be chronicling my adventures with Parkour here. Let me know if you want to hang out and practice with me. In the meantime, here are some more cool videos of things I (hope to) be able to do soon…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jquXcwooV6A&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX44t3-62_U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPqpGqEmK9M&feature=related
Also, here’s a great article on the philosophy of Parkour and how to learn it.
Time to learn how backflip off a wall!
Frank
The Blog of Frank Kotsianas 