The Desire to Teach

The first night of the Labor Day weekend event 2010 I had gone with Stephane Vigroux to train. After a run through OSU campus and some conditioning drills he told us we were going to do “fear drills.” He wanted us to split up and find something that was just beyond what we were comfortable with. He didn’t want us to do it yet just find something.

 After, some deliberation I found a rail with an 8 or 9 foot drop on the far side. We came back together and Stephane gave us more instruction. As a group we would go to each persons challenge. That person would get into position and the have three seconds to execute the maneuver. Then they would repeat this three times. I somehow ended up going last, after seeing these more advanced guys doing big flashy things I was beginning to think my little turn vault was inadequate, but they have always scared me.

I approached the bar and immediately locked up in my head. My goal was to execute the movement without a step on the rail. The lack of control that comes from purely vaulting the object, with no step, still surprise me to this day. I made the attempt but did a step vault. I told Stephane that this was not my goal, he told me something that I will never forget. I’m paraphrasing, it was a long time ago, but he told me to step away from the bar, don’t even look at it. Close your eyes, picture in your mind doing the vault. Then turn to the rail, open your eyes and do it. And I did it, three, not beautiful, but stepless turn vaults none the less. When I was done Stephane pulled me aside for a second as we were going to stretch down and he told me that when he had stared training, turn vaults scared him too. That was perhaps the biggest confidence boost I can imagine, being told by someone who you idolize that they once were in your shoes.

The moment I knew I wanted to teach Parkour was in the first week after that event. A friend of mine had been away for a while and had just started back at Horizons. He had been working on palm spins for a while but had never done them on a flat wall. I can’t do a palm spin at all, but I could see the same look of fear taking over his mind. So I told him “turn around, don’t even look at the wall, close your eyes, picture yourself doing this palm spin, then turn back take a deep breath and do it.” and he did it, I told him to do it two more times to be sure he had this palm spin, which he did beautifully. Helping my friend overcome that little bit of fear made me know that teaching Parkour is something I want to do for the rest of my life. The things I have learned in the last year or so of training have changed my life and I want nothing more than to spread that to anyone I can.