Jumping & Stair Torture: Training at the Park

Week 74: Training at Parc de Bercy

I'm absolutely loving my training routine here. One of the main parkour spots (as far as I can tell from online stalking) is at Bercy Park which is an easy 20ish minute walk from my apartment. I love the walk too because I get to stroll along the river and across one of the many beautiful bridges to get there. This week, I made it out there three times, including a 2.5 hour session yesterday morning.

I try to go pretty early in the morning 1) to avoid the heat and 2) to avoid the people. Although, as far as I can tell parkour is pretty normal here. In DC, people always stopped to stare or ask me what on earth I was doing. Or my favorite, please don't hurt yourself! Thanks, dear stranger. Here they yell Bon Courage! as they walk by and if people stop to watch or glance over as they walk by, it's more like they're watching a street artist doing what they love, not because they think I'm crazy.

Anyways, I had an awesome training session yesterday morning. I started with a little stair torture at one of the entrances to the park. There's one set of stairs there that has three flights with little platforms in between. So I went right grapevine, left grapevine, forwards on the way up and then backwards, right, left, on the way back down. After a few rounds of stair runs, I was feeling ready for my next challenge. Forwards QM down three flights (not terrible) and backwards QM up three flights of stairs (yes, terrible).

Feeling tired but warm, I headed over to the basketball court to work on balance along the fence and some vaults back and forth. I saw some older guys doing pull ups in a little corner of the court that I totally would have missed myself but now I have somewhere to work muscle-ups! Yay!

Next, I headed over to the parkour/skate park corner of the park. I worked on dive kongs for about 30 minutes on a concrete ping pong table. I couldn't quite get the distance--I kept tapping one foot at the end) so I'm putting that on my goal list. I felt my energy declining after this so I threw in a few balance squats, precision jumps in the fountain, and plank holds on the rails, and then I called it quits for the day.

I threw together a little video of my first few training sessions here in Paris... Nothing crazy, just my workout challenges & lots of jumping. I'm not that person with an expensive camera, hours of magical editing time/skills, and a long list of flips to show the world with dubstep in the background BUT I do want my non-parkour friends & family back home to see what I'm up to so... here you go! :)

Starting a New Routine

I'm finally starting to feel like I could live here. Not that I have a choice... I've already sort of committed but it's nice to know that feeling is there. I've had a few awesome early morning training sessions now and I'm really enjoying it here. The sun rises around 6am and even though I fight with my snooze button every time, my body usually wins when I feel how restless I am and how desperately I need to train to be my happy self. This morning was no different.

It was a perfect day. Sunny, warm, barely a cloud in the sky. I ran down to the quay to play. Across the street from my usual jumping spot there's a huge set of stairs perfect for torturing oneself via exercise. I did a couple of rounds of stair runs (forwards, backwards, grapevine left and right) and then decided I was done with cardio for the day. I'm such a baby when it comes to cardio. I'm working on it.

Next, I ran over the bridge and forgot I was there to workout as I gazed out at the colors of the early morning sun playing on the water. I turned around and saw some metal beams connecting the two foot bridges over the water. They were just begging to be climbed on, but there were too many people around at that point for me to quite pull it off, and I'm still trying to navigate what I'm allowed to play on in Paris without getting arrested. At least in the U.S. I could talk my way out of the crazy things I was doing when I trained. My French isn't quite good enough to argue with policemen so I'm trying to play it safe.

Sadly, I walked away from my metal bridge beams and jogged down to some steps to work on precisions and broad/box jumps. I did a little grip work on a nearby wall too. I would love to see the faces of the people walking by as I just hung there facing the wall doing absolutely nothing (my fingers were doing all the work). Maybe they thought I was meditating.

Tired from my cliffhanger practice, I ran along a little wall back to my original spot. Thanks to Bastille Day, this spot now looked like the aftermath of a pirate's party. It's like people just ran around smashing bottles on each other's heads while chain-smoking. I've never seen so much broken glass. It made for quite the obstacle course though... talk about motivation to stick your landing.

I did some cool 180 jumps and mostly focused on conditioning that didn't require me to move too much in the pirate's cove. I also did some cool strides/jumps on these nearby nautical stumps (I have no idea what these are actually called or used for). I was having way too much fun playing this morning and I almost forgot I had to leave for class (I intentionally ignored the clock on my phone). Realizing how late I was, I ran home and threw on some jeans and a tshirt and headed to class. Hopefully I'll get a longer training session soon but I'm loving these early morning workouts by the river. It's the best way to start your day.

Traveling Ninja: First Week in France

As some of you know, I recently moved to France for six months. Conveniently and by pure coincidence... I chose to study abroad in the birthplace of parkour. I haven't done nearly enough exploring since I got here but then again, I have six months so I'm not too worried about it.

I spent last weekend in Provence with my family which meant an opportunity for natural training! We went for a run through the forest and came across an old abandoned house by the river. My cousins went to jump in the river and sit by the rocks but my first instinct (thank you, parkour goggles) was to explore the house and see what I could climb on.

I stayed close to the ground for my cousin's sake. They're not used to being around ninjas and I didn't want them to worry too much. But I got enough exploring in jumping around inside and climbing over a few old walls. After a little while I joined my cousins on the rocks and worked on some jumping and climbing. No, I can't just sit on the rocks and enjoy the sun.

Later in the week, I was getting restless in the city and decided to get up early one morning to explore a spot by the river.

My new playground :)

The spot was perfect, especially in the morning because there was almost no one around. It was beautiful by the river and there are tons of things to jump around on. I only had about 30 minutes to play because I had to go to class but hopefully I'll make it back ASAP to do some more exploring. I also know there's a huge park across the river from me that is great for training but I haven't made it out there yet. Hopefully soon. So many things to explore!