Charles’ Parkour Training Blog

©Koehl Ehlers 2009

As per the realm of a traceur, I am frequently approached by random street folk who are intrigued as to what the hell I’m doing. Usually they just want to ask what or why and move on their way. However, most will stick around, watch a little more, and inevitably ask the follow up question: “How do you not get scared?!”

Here’s my secret:

I have always felt fear when practicing parkour.

I’m coming up on three years in the discipline, and I have always felt or experienced fear doing the things that I do. For me, this feeling is something that can only be countered by endless hours of repetition; solidifying more and more my confidence in the technique. However, sometimes repetition doesn’t work. Rail precisions, no matter what distance, have always instilled hair-raising fear. Same with anything done on metal or on uneven ground. Recently I’ve been wondering more as to why this is, and some interesting things came to my head.

Here are three things I’ve come to realize that are beneficial in tackling the mental demons that keep us from achieving our true potential. They are not in any particular order, just the order that I decided to write them.

First, knowledge is empowering. With knowledge comes confidence. A backtuck used to be the thing I feared most. In my early years, whenever I would attempt to work myself up to a backtuck, I would focus on the technique a little, but mostly on the high potential to land on my head. Think about what you are doing and what needs to happen. A backtuck is second nature to me at this point in the game because the knowledge of how a backtuck works mitigates any feeling of fear. The physics of the technique is perfectly logical and sound and worrying is no longer a rational option. Learn the technique, but also learn why the technique works.

Along the same lines, with strength comes confidence. Knowing you can control your own body instills a certain peace of mind that even if something goes wrong, you will be alright. Strength allows a cushion for beginners to mess up a technique but still keep their joints and their body safe.

Second, don’t waste your beginner years. The beginning years of parkour are vital to further success and safety. The more time you spend with the mind set that you are a beginner, the more potential you have for success later in the game. Solving a quadratic equation once does not mean that you are prepared to handle calculus. You need to practice new problems and be presented with new quadratics consistently to completely understand how to go about a solution. In parkour, performing a kong once on one obstacle does not mean you are ready to progress to bigger and better things. Being able to perform a kong was never the goal. The goal was adaptability and application: being able to apply a kong to any number of variable obstacles. The lack of this basic understanding is what contributes to injuries later on.

Lastly, learn from your bails. Failure is by far one of the best tools we can use to achieve success. Failure in a technique provides you with intimate information as to what factors of success you still lack. Because of this, failure should be something that is accepted and respected. In this same way, the more you encounter failure, the more you become comfortable with it. In a sense, you become a better failure; you can mentally prepare for failure when a new technique goes wrong, plan escape routes on the fly, or become more adept at controlling the panic reaction that a bail might induce.

For me, fear is a constant occurrence but something I’m becoming better at understanding and utilizing in my training. In these past few months, I believe I have come to identify the stem of this problem, which I will address in Part II of this article.