@Syes: Sorry to hear about the injury, man. Be sure you take the time to let it heal properly. It's much better to have it heal well and be able to build your strength back up than to train on it and risk permanent injury. (That's where I've been as well: rehabilitation.)

@Shaneige: The honor largely depends on the man and his past actions. I know Patrick to ba a man of his word. I read in the other thread about your overprotective parents. I know how that feels. All I can say is college/growing up/freedom is awesome in that respect.

@Patrick: You'll get better faster if you do the streches the doctor gave you. The ones she gave me were ridiculous in the amount of time they said, but she told me even doing a little bit would help. *nagnagnag*

Seems like most of us just want to work out and get along. That's cool.

[Edit: Guess this message is me saying I am willing and have been trying to lead in my own way. Lead by example, and if they don't follow, I'm probably doing it wrong. :D]

I am responsible for my own training and satisfaction. So should everyone else. No one *needs* to listen to me, but I hope someone will benefit from it. I hope others will share this attitude, but I cannot force it. I've tried, and been frustrated every time. Knowing me, I'll probably keep trying.

Some new people can totally do safety vaults, handstands, flips, etc. They already mostly know their safe limits. This is not about them, the can-PK folks.

To paraphrase Uncle Ben, "With great parkour comes great responsibility." I'm not great, but I am modestly good. With my very modest parkour and teaching ability, I feel an obligation to share what I know with the can't-PK folks. I see physically ungifted people, unfit people coming out to Houston's practice all the time. Some of them have gotten hurt, significantly or not. (Where significant = days or weeks of lost training time) This can't be prevented, but it can be minimized through safe progressions of training. Some of the can't-PK folks drive 20+ miles to practice, and I want to match their dedication with my own.

I can't teach or demonstrate many of the more aggressive and complex moves, but I sure hell have patience for and can break down broad jumps, climb-ups, landing, QMs, and etc. for people who, like me, began this sport / art with no or little body awareness. Reducing impact, joint damage and pain, learning to listen to the body after a sedentary lifetime of Super Mario Bros or WoW...

I realize my limits as a teacher, and anyone who I feel can stay reasonably safe is free to move on, to train however and with whomever they choose. But if they stumble or flub basic safety vaults, easy monkey vaults, or etc., I will pull them aside and try to steer them to exercises more suited to their current ability level. Of course, as an obnoxious type-A personality, I always try to push people beyond their comfort zones.

Because I want to help the can't-PK folks become can-PK folks.


Re: organization, my past work and community experiences have taught me that the concept of the spontaneous community upswell of support is a pretty idea, but almost never works out that way. I understand why other people on here may like or truly believe it can happen, but I don't believe it myself.

If (If!) I or we want to have more public events like the K-Swiss exhibition, to raise public awareness and positive opinion of our activity, someone has to take the reins. Not forever, not for everything. But at least per event. And when that person asks, begs, demands, or invites others to help and participate, you may like it or you may resent it. Remember that parkour is bigger than you, and bigger than me. As an example, if I start nagging people about who's going to be at an event, it's not b/c I want to make your life miserable, or I think you are a loser who will never score chicks. It's b/c the event people will not reserve our booth if I can't promise them at least 6 people will show up each day. If I only hear promises from 4 people, I would have to cancel by the reservation deadline -- which is usually a long time before the event day.

Similarly, I will not be offended if only 3 people RSVP. The event just won't happen. The lesson for me will be that the community obviously didn't want that event.

Who will bring water, cups? How will the SA crew get their awesome obstacles down to Houston? Etc.

Enough rambling. I'm going to go do my C A N ' T push-ups now.

Although, I did not want to comment on this thread anymore I would like to state that for the last three weeks on wednesday trainings we have had over 15 people there each time yes, even with it raining. I am not exactly sure how that is a detriation of the scene in Austin. Thursday nights were canelled for a small time and then started back up just recently, that might be the night you came. Monday trainings have been moved to Olympic Hills Gymnastics. We had about 10 there on Monday

Honestly, I only have only seen Parkour Grow in the last two months. Am I bias? Maybe, but we have more people coming out and we tried some pretty advanced things today at training and it was one of the best trainings our group has had since we lost privalegies. I commend all of those that are still coming out even though we dont have the facility like we use to

We would love to see you back on a wednesday.

Are we seriously still stuck on internal politics?
I hope that's simply a misconception on my part...

Glad to hear Austin has a present and growing community.

well im glad to say that as far as i can see we are getting more and more people into parkour and training safely