In this blog series, we’re asking the same set of questions to freerunners and parkour practitioners with different experiences, from different places, grappling with different things, and seeing where we end up. The questions are around the theme of “small things'' and were inspired by some reflections after an almost-bad bail, which you can read more about here: https://www.parkouroutreach.com/new-blog/sweating-the-small-stuff-pt1
Nobody has answered the questions the same way so far, and that’s kind of the point. As an organisation who firmly believes we all have something to learn from each other, we wanted to create an opportunity to do that online. At jams, sometimes we’re inspired by movement similar to our own, sometimes by movement that’s a million miles away from our usual style. Have a go at asking yourself these questions - are any of your answers the same as the folk on this blog? What have their answers made you think about?
Thanks to everyone who has been interviewed, and to everyone reading. Above all, without our usual chances to meet at jams, events, classes or competitions, we hope these interviews might help you feel you’re not alone out there.
This week, our interviewees straddle the globe. Evie lives in Naarm/Melbourne in Australia, and Jem is a little closer to Parkour Outreach HQ in Scotland. We’d also like to shout out Kel Glaister at Melbourne in Motion for linking us up with Evie.
Evie clayton
A portrait shot of Evie. They’re inside, resting their face on one hand, while looking at the camera. Evie’s hair is bright green and curly on top and at the back, and shaved short at the sides. They’re wearing a dark grey jacket or hoodie with a khaki keffiyeh style scarf round their neck.
Evie started out their training journey during the second year of their chemistry degree. Having moved to the city and living alone, they were faced with the realisation that they were, in fact, the weakest person they knew. So Evie set out to get stronger, which, eventually, is how they found parkour and circus. After completing honours in synthetic chemistry, Evie focussed on circus training, specialising in aerial rope, and partner and group acrobatic at the National Institute of Circus Arts in Australia.
Unfortunately, a combination of exacerbating symptoms from their endometriosis, a botched surgery, along with systemic ableism in the institutions that should have supported them drove Evie to drop out before completing their BA of Circus Arts. Recently Evie has been able to return to training, after over a year of being physically—and mentally—unable to train at all due to the chronic pain and trauma associated with their experiences. Evie has a blog where they write loads more on circus and chronic illness if this interview leaves you wanting more. You can find the blog at following link: getwellcircus.com/journal/categories/evie
Jem Mk
A night time portrait shot of Jem looking straight at the camera, outside a shopfront. The sky’s black and Jem’s wearing a dark beanie, has small white plugs in his earlobes, a white shirt with graphic print on it and a light puffer jacket.
Jem is a freerunner and artist based out of Glasgow. He posts gorgeous portraits and parkour clips on @Jem_mk and has just started a dedicated account for his art over at @sitrus_sity that you should definitely check out.
Some of the answers in this blog contain swear words and mention tough things like ableism and bereavement. If that’s not for you today, no stress. Come back another day or check out some of the other blogs.
[INTERVIEW STARTS]
What’s the small thing you always do while out training, or should always do but forget?
Evie: Something I always do—I try to delineate “what is this training?” Is it “just moving” is it “better than nothing” is it “to get stronger”? Because there’s no point trying to reach “to get stronger” goals on a day when I only have “better than nothing” energy, and there’s no point trying to push my body on a day when it is unwilling. If I feel like shit, and still want to do something, that’s fine, but I want to make it clear in my mind that it’s a “better than nothing” training and celebrate making that achievement, rather than striving for “improvement” on a day where that is out of reach. Better to save my energy for the day when I can put in 100% effort, rather than breaking myself with a training session that any other day might be a 20% effort.
Jem: I know you’re supposed to warm-up, but I’m kind of impatient, so instead of a proper warm-up I just try to move a little bit, and just increase the intensity and call that a warm up, but I guess I should do a proper one sometimes.
What small thing do you always make sure you have with you?
Evie: Some small things I always have with me when I’m training: stick on heatpacks, a jumper if there is the slightest chance of it getting cold. Accepting my disability has meant having to accept that I need provisions to help if I have a flare up when I’m out of the house. For a long time it just felt like it wasn’t safe to leave the house because I was risking being far from home and being in pain. I’m slowly starting to feel safe to get further from home, but I know instant heatpacks (and warm enough clothing) are the number one things that help me if I have an unexpected flare.
Jem: A bottle of water, absolutely. I try to bring more than what I think I’ll need, regardless of the time of year. I used to think you don’t need as much in the winter, but I’ve found you actually need more because you’re working harder to stay warm. If I have some water, everything else can go.
What small thing do you know will always affect your training?
Evie: My chronic pain isn’t a “small thing” but it obviously has an incredibly pervasive effect on my training, and everything in my life. Some days I’ll have a higher level of pain, but still be able to train and enjoy myself despite it; other days I’ll have barely perceptible pain that I just can’t push through.
Self compassion, patience and unlearning productivity culture, and uninternalising capitalism have become some of the most important tools I wish I hadn’t been forced to learn.
Jem: Coffee. That’s a small thing that will always affect my training. You know that spiderman film where you’ve got Doc Oc saying “I’ve got the power of the sun in the palm of my hand”, that’s how I feel about coffee. You know those sunny day vibes when you’re throwing some huge shit, if it’s a little bit cloudy or whatever, coffee can give me that back.
What small thing do you focus on or try to remember when you hit training plateaus?
Evie: Honestly I think plateaus mostly happen when you’re overtraining. For a long time I refused to believe I was overtraining because I wasn’t getting injured, I recovered well, I was always energetic and if I did “less” my body didn’t feel as good. Part of the (mental) work I’ve done in the last 2 years is to reframe “overtraining” not as “training so much that bad things happen” but as “training and not getting anything good out of it”, so that includes all the hours I put into maintaining strength, skills, flexibility when doing less of each would’ve meant more recovery time and all of them being maintained with less effort.
Since I’ve worked on reframing that in my mind, I don’t feel I experience so many plateaus. That doesn’t mean it’s constant gains, because I mean, how could it be? But instead of worrying that “specific skill X” hasn’t progressed or has regressed, I focus on what has improved. Also, like, I literally took 2 years off from all training and lost all of my strength and this was all AFTER having an abdominal surgery that caused significant damage to my body and exacerbated my pain and other symptoms. I thought I would never be able to train again, I thought I would never get a handle on my pain. I definitely never thought that if I did start training again that I could get back to the elite level of strength I had before all of that, and here I am, so why would I be stressed about a plateau after all of that?
Jem: I find that when I'm hitting training plateaus, it means I'm avoiding fear. So I'll make an effort to find challenges, and if the challenge is proving particularly difficult I give myself a metal test to determine if the jump is worth doing - I ask myself "Do you want to go back?"
If I decide I'm too tired, my focus is drifting, my precision has been weakening, or the conditions are shit, I tell myself I can leave and leave without guilt because I've truly tried my best. Guilt is toxic for the soul, but often the cost of not doing the jump is too detrimental to me, i.e. a bad mood or poor focus the next day because I'm obsessing over it when I could be doing something else.
If I don't do the jump in that very moment then it could be weeks, months or years before it is finally broken, which is all time that could be spent breaking other jumps. A plateau is when you keep choosing to go back when you could have just done it.
What small thing has helped you cope with injury in the past (or now)?
Evie: Look, not a lot has helped me coping with injury and illness. The fitness industry and the circus industry are both incredibly ableist, body shaming and just all round capitalist, patriarchal trashfires that don’t value individual human variation unless it can be exploited.
Acknowledging that has helped me a lot. Getting angry at the systems that fucked me over when they’re supposed to be there to support me, that helped. Uninternalising capitalism and productivity culture and getting PISSED that we’ve been so completely programmed to feel that we’re not of value unless our productivity can be exploited has really helped.
As a disabled person with a chronic illness, it’s been really helpful connecting with those communities, and blogging about my experiences [Check out the blog at getwellcircus.com/journal/categories/evie] and finding ways to honour my experiences and my limitations without framing them as failings—they’re not my failings, they’re the failings of our society to accommodate natural human variation.
Jem: I honestly don’t know, I really don’t cope with injury well. I don’t really have a system in place. I guess, video games? Or focusing on my artwork. Honestly, I end up waiting until it's healed just enough to train with again, and then I make the injury last way longer than it needs to be.
What small thing has helped you cope with the pandemic in the past year?
Evie: Frankly, the lockdown aspects of the pandemic—and I’m in Naarm or so-called “Melbourne”, so-called “Australia”, where we had 112 days straight of hard lockdown, only leaving the house for 1 hr per day for 4 accepted reasons—baaaaaarely impacted my day to day life. It gave able bodied and biotypical people an experience of what disabled life is like for so many of us, so dealing with being housebound and socially isolated is something I’d already had to learn to live with. Lockdown actually made a lot of things more accessible for me, and helped relieve the social element of capitalism culture, which all-round made life a lot more tolerable.
Jem: Parkour. I just threw myself into it. Parkour and drawing. The pandemic was quite an interesting one for me. Days before the first lockdown happened, my uncle passed and he was like a father to me and so I wasn’t even really aware at the time that a pandemic was going on. I was just trying to obsessively focus on something else so I threw myself back into parkour. I went out training all the time.
And when I wasn’t training, I would do these portraits, as technically detailed as I could make them, sitting for hours just scratching away. Patching all the creative art bullshit, because that takes a lot of mental energy, and instead just hundreds of these - as detailed as I could - technically banging portraits. I‘d go make my coffee first thing, then just draw until the light faded, then go train, or train the next day. Parkour brought me back to me and helped me feel like myself again. It was actually really peaceful, in a weird way, at the start of the pandemic for me.
[INTERVIEW ENDS]
Next week, we’ve get some chat from Seb and Maebh on when to redirect your energy, the importance of good music and how the people around you can affect your training.