What Parkour Has Taught Me About Being A Musician & Life, Part 1
How to Move
I am proud to say “I am a musician and I do Parkour.” Why? because I didn’t think it was possible it was possible to do both. In my mind, musicians, especially the classical kind are delicate and fragile and injure easily. But you know what? They don’t!
In fact, Parkour has enhanced my life as a musician. It has instructed me in movement, shown me how to take advantage of and be part of a support network, and led me to do things I NEVER dreamed of. (You can check out the in-person and online opportunities to learn with PKGen Boston)
The first lesson I found in this practice is that Parkour is all about movement precision, in other words, movement quality. (WOW, that is what I teach day in and day out.) Skill building is learning to fine-tune jumps, vaults, climbs, all movement. Often things start out clunky. As we practice, we learn to fine-tune the movements, be more efficient in our execution.
Balance is a great place to see this because it is integral to movement. We start standing or balancing on 1 foot doing warm-ups, then move to balancing on the toes, to balancing on a flat rail, then to a round rail.
There was a time where 1-foot was my challenge. Now I am at the rounded rail level.
In the beginning, I was just grateful to balance for a second. I have graduated to taking a few steps on a round rail several feet off of the ground. Experience accumulates, but I do go back to 1 footed balance and flat rails to continue to fine-tune my skill.
Can you substitute learning music for balancing? For me taking the learning process to a totally new place illuminated the power of looking at learning from a somewhat naive place, a place I hadn’t been before.
Be curious…
Check out “Parkour: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners” from sports-fitness-advisor.com with some ideas.
Want to join me to learn? Learning opportunities abound for musicians and people from all walks of life.
Tuesday 5/4 3pm - Map The Whole Spine! Musician’s Drop-In
Friday 5/7 11am - Get Up Off the Ground (mindfully & efficiently)