What I Learned: Moving to Scotland

Kel Glaister: What I learned training parkour in Scotland 

Kel is a brilliant parkour practitioner and coach who founded Melbourne in Motion. A few months ago, Kel republished our Spider-Man Parkour blog on the Melbourne in Motion site, which was very cool. Kel offered to write us a blog as an exchanged so we jumped at the chance. If you like what they’ve written, go seek her and Melbourne in Motion out on social media (or in person if you’re in Australia!) and give some love. On Instagram, Kel can be found at @kelglaister and Melbourne in Motion can be found at @melbinmotion

Kel, doing what Kel does best, hanging off of grimy urban infrastructure and smiling.

I’m currently living in Melbourne, Australia, where I grew up. But I was lucky enough to live, train and coach parkour in Glasgow for several years. I miss it every day and still think of it as home. I know that my ability to travel and live in a new country was a tremendous privilege. Both because I had access to the financial and other resources required, and because there wasn’t a damn pandemic happening at the time. Maybe it’s a bit gauche to be writing a blog right now about how important travel has been to me and my parkour training, but there are ways to get the same effect without running away to the other side of the world.

So, here are a few things I learnt training parkour in Scotland (aside from how to stick a precision in the wet):

It’s all relative

Leaning into a cliche here, but I’ll start a blog post about living in Glasgow with a bit about the rubbish weather. I first moved to Scotland in a pretty harsh winter; and I had never seen ice on a footpath before. Training that winter, I felt like a baby giraffe most of the time, while everyone else seemed to just know what to do. 

Then I had to come back to Melbourne during summer for a visit and to sort out visa stuff. I thought I was dying, it was so hot. (Spoilers - It wasn’t that hot.)

I’d always known intellectually that what I (and others) could and couldn’t do was relative to circumstances. I don’t think I ever truly understood that until somewhere between the 10th and 50th time falling on my arse on an icy path. 

Comparing yourself to others is maybe the easiest way to feel crappy and unmotivated. Training parkour in Scotland helped me to measure myself against me instead. 

Communities are DIY 

I had several, overlapping roles in the Glasgow and Scottish parkour communities. A regular student at classes, an organiser (particularly with the women’s communities), a coach, eventually roles in governance at the national level. 

How’d I get there? Mostly, by hanging around. 

Remember, decisions are made by those that show up. If you want to be involved (and you don’t have to, it’s a lot of work), ask around. Ask how to become a coach, or how to join a committee.If you’re in Scotland, send an email to Parkour Outreach, I’m sure they have loads of advice. Make your own jams or events or projects. Start discussions that interest you. Hang around, be annoying. It worked for me. 

The difference can be different

I’ve been involved with communities and projects focused on women and gender minorities in several cities now. And I recognise now, that when I first came to Scotland, I expected (unconsciously) that those communities would have more in common than they did. An example that comes to mind is groups that focus on marginalised people: some may welcome allies, others might ask them to stay away.

When marginalised people make their communities (formally or informally), they are always intersecting with culture and happenstance in fascinating ways. There’s no one true way to make space for yourself. 

If you’re a visitor or new to a city, be curious about new communities you meet. It’s better to learn new things than to assume everyone should be doing things your way. 

There is no freedom without support. 

Here’s a story. I broke my leg skateboarding in Kelvinbridge park. It was the simplest little mistake, but, oops! Bone snapped. And you know what happened? My friend took me to the hospital, the NHS fixed me right up, and I went on my merry way (on crutches.) Probably with less stress and paperwork than if I had done here in Melbourne; even though I was an immigrant. 

I know this blog has a mostly Scottish audience, so I won’t flex on people without universal healthcare too hard here. I just want to use it as an example of the systems of support and care we all need, as a prerequisite for freedom. 

I’d say one of the main things that draws many of us to parkour is the freedom it offers; no rules, no timetables, no set paths. But that can sometimes slip gears into an individualistic mindset. The truth is, none of us will ever experience the freedom of movement we so love without the care and support of others. Your coaches and instructors. Your training buddies. Your family. And yeah, even society (and health services.) 

So what did I learn from this story? It made me (all the more) aware that some people do not have the support behind them to ever really feel free. What would have happened if I had chosen to study in New York instead of Glasgow? Would that simple broken bone have meant thousands of dollars of debt? I was able to attempt to learn to skate in my thirties in a foreign country, in part, because I knew I had social support around me if things went wrong. But it’s all a lot more quotidian than that. Some folks do not have the privilege of free movement because police and law enforcement do not support their rights in the same way they do mine, a white woman. Some people do not have the emotional safety and support they need to develop risk intelligence and confidence in their bodies. Some people’s physical literacy was not supported growing up. This is a whole blog post by itself, but my point is, if you’re a coach or leader, and someone tells you that something is impossible or scary for them, even if you think it should be easy, maybe consider what supports they are missing to access that freedom. 

And now??

Very few of us are able to travel as much or as often as we’d like. But, there are cheap, free and accessible ways to gain some of the benefits. For one, you don’t have to travel far. Take a train or bus to the next city and you’ll learn something. 

Social media, while admittedly is generally evil, can be a great way to see how other people move, and think about or teach movement. But you have to be intentional to really open up the horizons: Are you following people who don’t look like you? Are you watching videos by, and valuing the movement of, people of different genders, or ages, or disabilities? Are you following parkour leaders and practitioners from all continents? (I’m working on making videos in Antarctica. I’ll race you there :D)   I was so excited to be able to access parkour and movement classes online, during the height of the pandemic, and many still exist as recorded videos. There are discord servers (jump in on Parkour Earth!) to have in-depth discussions and share experiences. 

I’m currently in a city with more COVID cases per day than ever, and travelling again still seems like a distant impossibility (although I know it’s better in Europe at the moment.). But, while the pandemic has had precious few silver linings, one is that I feel more connected to the global parkour community than ever before.

Approaching Solo Parkour Training

Community is such an important aspect of Parkour, so why on earth would you opt to train on your own?

Personally I have found it very helpful in quite a number of ways. The first is when I am getting back into movement after an enforced break, as I’ve written about in another post. However that’s not the only time. For many years before the pandemic stopped classes and jams I’d been travelling extensively for work, preventing me from training regularly. 

Business travel sounds glamorous, but it is all too easy to fall into a pattern of early mornings, long days in enclosed offices, late restaurant dinners, sleep in a nice hotel, repeat. No fresh air and an ever growing waistline. It becomes unhealthy no matter how luxurious it all is. And boring and lonely if you are not travelling with colleagues. 

Finding even small challenges around the office or hotel meant that I could channel some basic movements. I’ve jumped around hotel car parks, walked along office fences and vaulted over walls on beaches with pacific waves crashing in the background. The best was discovering a fitness trail a short trot away from a hotel where I drilled skin-the-cats and spinning on bars until I was completely comfortable with them. Because I was there on my own I was able to take as long and as many attempts as I needed without holding others back. 

And that’s important for me. It takes me a long time to learn physical sequences and I worry that it will annoy others. I’m sure I’m wrong, but it’s still a concern. Being naturally distracted it is helpful for me to have the ability to just do the same move over and over and over again until it sinks into muscle memory. The freedom to be boring. The freedom from being considerate of others, no matter how much I realise that they would be supportive and forgiving. Removing that concern helps me focus on the minutiae of the move, something which is neither natural nor easy for me. 

There are disadvantages of course, beyond the lack of the companionship that makes training with others so valuable. The most obvious is the lack of supervision - there is no one there to help improve technique. That’s why solo training works best at drilling something that you sort of know but need to perfect. It also helps to video yourself and review the video to see how well you are doing. You can share it with friends for feedback or compare it with YouTube videos. I used this approach to improve - I won’t say perfect - my Parkour rolls during lockdown. While I was initially happy to just land and roll without hurting myself I knew that the rolls were terrible and blind repetition was not helping. Recording my ignominious squintness enabled me to correct it. Mainly. Still progress to be made, but that’s the joy of Parkour.

Always have a small tripod and an adapter for a phone with you. That way you can set up a clear steady shot capturing the required field of view. I found watching myself after a couple of attempts really helped tune my movement. There are also automatic tracking devices but I found that they aren’t yet fast enough to track runs and jumps although they can help with slower moves. Nothing’s as good as a patient person holding the camera, but that’s not always possible.

A hazard is the potential for injury without anybody to help. For this reason I am always careful to set myself a realistic target and stick to it. It is satisfying to meet the target, but by pacing the activity it minimises the risk of injury. It really is not a great idea to train on your own in a place where you might fall badly and not be discovered. 

Another risk is simply doing too much. It’s natural to stop and chat, to compare moves, to watch the others when there are others to watch. When training on your own you need to pace yourself, remember to breathe, take drinks, and rest. It is all too easy to get stuck in a loop trying to achieve something and get worse instead of better. A short break and it becomes easier again.

I have three other rules that I always follow. The first is forcing myself to do a complete warm up, as reinforced by the Sweat the Small Stuff interviews. The second is to carry a first aid kit, something which I’ve done since a literally bloody shinjury. The third is I try and find private places away from others. I don’t like the idea of disturbing residents and I find myself all too willing to argue futilely with security people, but the real motivator is to not have people asking what I’m doing or the inevitable shouts of “hardcore Parkour.” That even happened repeatedly when I was drilling wall runs on a beach on holiday! 

While I am really looking forward to getting back to classes and continuing my one-to-one training sessions I know that I will still take time for solo training going forward. Classes will show me what I need to do, but the solo time will allow me to work it until it flows. Best of both worlds.

How do you feel about solo training? Like it? Hate it? Any tips? Let us know!

Getting Moving Again

Restarting Parkour after a break

I was going to write this anyway, but the First Minister’s announcements earlier this week allowing outdoor classes to proceed in Scotland makes restarting Parkour practice immediately relevant. It’s also worth noting that I am not a trained coach, but this is what I have found works when getting moving again.

There are plenty of reasons why you might not be able to keep training Parkour. Injury is the most obvious, but heavy work schedules, academic deadlines, travel, mental health challenges and even really bad weather are all good reasons. Obviously the pandemic is also a valid reason for not being out jumping. Whatever the reason, there will be periods in everyone’s lives when it’s not possible to get out and move. 

I think we all get into a rhythm of training and keeping in that groove is much easier than starting it. I’m not talking about overcoming the nervousness of joining a first class; that’s a topic for another post. My own pattern had grown over the last four years from one class to several a week, frequently interrupted by business travel. Alas it is just as easy to adopt a pattern of collapsing in front of endless YouTube videos and batch eating chocolate.

So how do we break back to active relaxation from sedentary? 

You are likely to need some mental trigger, but the key is hearing that trigger. Whether you listen to your body or your partner, it’s likely that there are changes for the worse from before the break. This awareness will grow to the point where its deafening roar will drown out the siren song of sloth. That’s the trigger point where it becomes easier to get started than to ignore the need. 

Having been through this process several times, I know how I do it. I start by running. I’m not a good runner and don’t enjoy it. I also get easily distracted and find I’ve stopped to look at something more interesting than pounding along. However not only is it an excellent gauge of your base fitness, it requires nothing more than putting on trainers and going out the door. A gentle jog to get moving doesn’t even really need a warm up, although you should definitely do one. I like to get my creaking old knees and ankles warm before engaging in what is always a jog-walk. But the strange thing is that despite any physical pain, it feels good. I like to set small targets for myself such as “run to the end of road” and I occasionally shout “all the way in” at myself, a phrase I learnt from my first personal trainer. 

It may be easier to run with others, I don’t know as I’ve not tried it. Those first couple of short runs of getting moving again are slow and my frequent stops would be disruptive for others while a constant cadence would probably be damaging. I find it easier to encourage myself by thinking that I have started on the journey back to fitness. I also find running more of a challenge against which to push. I’ve never felt the need to push when cycling, for example, but everyone will have a different hill to climb. Perhaps literally.

Once I figure I can actually run on and off for a meagre couple of kms I start bringing in some jumping and vaults. Small jumps as both my muscles and nerves have grown slack, but small jumps lead to longer ones and more confidence. Same with walls. Whatever level you were at, take a step back and do the easy stuff first. It will make you feel good both mentally and physically. I drill the basics on my own until they sink into muscle memory. I like doing this on my own at first as I’m free to do as many simple things in the same place as I need without limiting other people’s training.

A few weeks into the first lockdown I emerged from the house to the deserted world outside after working continuously at my desk. I adopted the above plan and was one of the first people back out training. I am fortunate to live beside a number of lovely places to train which were at the time devoid of others. After a few weeks and as restrictions eased I was comfortable enough with my own level to train with another person. And when finally classes came back on, I was ready.

At the beginning of 2020 I was looking at what I might be able to achieve, Parkour wise, in the year. I was thinking about four targets: plausible, straight Parkour rolls from higher jumps, higher wall runs, longer jumps and the big one was definitely cracking kongs. With my restart time I’ve already managed two of those: relatively straight rolls and slow but effective wall climbs above my height. Jump distance has, however shrunk and that’s definitely a target along with weight loss to achieve it. And yes, I’m hoping again that I might manage authentic kongs this year. How neither of these goals would be achievable if I had not been already out drilling the basics. 

We’d love to know how you get moving again after a break, for whatever reason.