Into the wild

During Midsummer we Finns tend to leave the cities and go to the countryside with our friends and families. Our family's summer cottage lies in Sammatti, only a 50 minute ride from Helsinki. Despite being so close to the Capital region you can sense the tranquility of nature. From a traceur's point of view this does offer a lot of new opportunities. I do love training in nature, because it is a lot more difficult: you have to be more aware of you environment, because you can't never be sure whether something is durable or not. You have to be even more aware with he ground for it has all kinds of surprises waiting for you: acorns, ants, roots etc. I'm happy that there is so much wild nature left in Finland because it is always refreshing to train in the nature where everything isn't so precise and geometric

  

We do not have any electricity nor running water at our summer cottage so fresh rain water is always useful. It does feel really good to life in such a natural way, or at least for me it is quite relaxing that at least once a year I do not have to stress whether my lifestyle is green enough.

Another good thing about our summer cottage is the fact that it is next to a lake offering a new environment: water.

There might be differing opinions on whether training in the water ie. Swimming is a part of parkour or not. In my opinion to talk about whether something is parkour or not is in my opinion completely pointless as is the everlasting argue between parkour/freerunning. For me they are just terms, both used to describe movement. And in my opinion it doesn't matter whether you do flips or not, it is in any case movement. And to me it doesn't matter what word you use to describe it. I do personally use the term parkour, and I use it to describe my movement in any environment. And thus for me swimming is a part of my movement and water is just another obstacle to overcome.

 

Despite having a nice and calm environment for some nice natural movement I have built with my brother some obstacles for basic parkour training. For some reason, perhaps lack of time, I haven't been training with these as much as I would like to. I believe that one reason is that the environment is so much more inspiring than a couple of wooden bars and two blocks for precisions. Perhaps if I would spend more time at our summer cottage I would utlize them more, because we are usually there only a couple of days at a time.

At the moment I'm packing for our InterRail on which we are leaving tomorrow 3 a.m. During our 23 day journey I will try to find a new spot everyday and post it here. It is going to be quite thrilling to see what kind of different opportunities all of the countries have to offer, not to even mention our visit to the Mekka of Parkour: Lisses. In the midst of all this packing I was able to test run my shoes for the second time.  For the first time I ran with them and it felt like walking on clouds. It was a very smooth and nice feeling but on the other hand it felt like I was partially handicapped because I couldn't feel any objects on the ground.

Our first is Turku and from there we will be going to Stockholm. I hope that I have by then some interesting spots to share.

- Leo Alho

Shoe Crisis

As I mentioned in my last update, my Feiyues are really worn down. Besides my feiyues I do have a pair of Feelmax Fivefingers, but my Achilles tendons are also really sore so I needed a new pair of sneaker. Another reason for buying sneakers is that I'm going for a promenade of 100 km so I needed something that could absorb the impact and also support my ankle. And I'm rather sure that my feet would be completely dead without proper shoes.  So there was no other choice than to head to the stores.

The first store didn't have anything satisfying enough, only those same generic white sneakers with hard plastic in the middle. But the second one looked a whole lot better. As I mentioned before; I didn' wan't any shoes with that hard plastic in the middle, because you do not want to land with it on a wet rail. I also didn't want anything white, because I train in the most suspicious places, so they would be brown/grayish right after the first use. I was first struck by the variety of shoes, but with these requirements I was able to cut off most off the sneakers available.

One of the first shoes I encountered was this monster. It is ment for offtrack running and it looked really durable, and even the price wasn't that bad. But for some reason I didn't even try these on, perhaps they looked a bit too aggressive for me. I also haven't had any experience with brooks, and I wanted to make a sure choice.

  

After some searching and investigation I managed to find the right pair of sneakers for me: Nike lunarglide+ and even the price was reasonable: 59,90€. They're black and I really like the fact that they actually do not look like sneakers at all. The only downside is that the cushion is a bit to thick as with Nike shoes usually.

The next step was to test run them but before it, I walked by a gallery wh

ich had an exhibition of vintage sport shoes made by the Finnish company Karhu. I took a lot of pictures because it showed quite well how shoes used for sports have changed during the past decades. So here's a little montage for you:

 

I liked especially these shoes, its colors shape and the texture of the sole. My only doubt is that the sole wouldn't last numerous turn vaults and wall runs

The test run with my new pair of sneakers went quite well, it was so much easier than with my Feiyues, because you do not ave to pay so much concentration on your legs when you land, and you do not have to watch from how high you are landing. I believe that I will use these shoes during my InterRail and during the promenade, but I do believe that I will also in the future prefer bear feet/Feiyues over sneakers. Because with sneakers I do not have any contact with the ground although it is in my opinion quite good to have a pair of spare sneaker. For instance at the moment I have a wound on my heel, so it is in my opinion important to give it time to heal and use shoes which give enough protection, and which are clean enough (my both pair of Feiyues are so dirty from the inside that I do not fancy to use socks with them). 

I'm already leaving for my InterRail the 28th day, so from then on I try to find a spot in every city we stay and share it with you. 

  

Spot of the week #1

I've moved with my girlfriend to Helsinki for the summer vacation. Although it is only 12 kilometers from Espoo, it is a completely different environment offering different kinds of challenges and possibilities, As the the Spot of the Week I have chosen a small playground right next to our apartment. I have trained there only once, yet I am quite confident that this is one of the best spots in a walkable distance from our apartment. The spot itself is nothing spectacular nor anything special but it is just what you need for training basic and simple movement. The best part is that you can combine all of the different areas to make a nice run trough the whole park.

 

Heavy Rain

I find it rather funny that the areas which are held the most unwanted or simply ugly are usually wonderful places to practice parkour.  For instance, we were today training at Merihaka, an area in Helsinki where the main building material is concrete. Its most distinctive feature is that it consists of two levels: one for pedestrians and one for traffic. Simply said, the whole area is gray, causing it to look unaesthetic, repulsive and boring.

But for practitioners of parkour training in an urban jungle like this means being one step closer to heaven. Concrete offers a great grip, it doesn't wobble and you can rely on it. Besides concrete the whole area does have a lot of rails, walls and the vast parking lots offer great places to train despite the weather. So even the rain didn't stop us, although we were all soaked afterwards.

A quite ironic and on the other hand brilliant matter is in my opinion that these areas were originally meant to be as functional as possible, not places where people could come and express themselves trough movement. This is a factor which really drives me during my training: to find new possibilities in buildings meant for something completely else.

This is one reason why I am not a huge fan of parkour parks which are becoming more and more popular all over the world. Although I do understand the authority's point of view; it is more safe to provide traceurs parks, so that they wouldn't harm their environment or other people and parkour parks might activate younger people to move more. Yet it does take away a creative part, the part in which you explore your environment to look for new possibilities and try to think the most effective way in a new environment, because in a parkour park it is all there ready for you: you do not have to use your imagination to figure what you could do.

On the other hand, I have to admit that parks built especially for parkour are usually great places to train and they do offer loads of opportunities. I even would go to a parkour park myself only if there existed one near to me. Because after all to really move in one's environment is at least for me a minor part of my training. Most of the time I and most other traceurs concentrate on one place to train a specific technique. I am not saying that parks designed for parkour would be a bad thing, because they do offer the possibility to express yourself and of course you can always find new possibilities from parkour parks. Perhaps even new possibilities which the planners of the parks would never have thought off.

So perhaps these parks do not make us into mindless zombies who get ready-chewed obstacles. Perhaps we just have to adapt and take our imagination to the next level

Baby Steps

I have noticed a negative trend in the Finnish parkour society; there aren't any new messages on the message boards and it has been over a month since the latest update on the front page of the Finnish Parkour Society. Therefore I have decided to do my own share in order to make the community a bit more active.

I have been a practitioner of parkour for six years now. During these years my insensitivity of training has varied mainly because of school, overuse injuries and cold winters. At the moment I'm trying to train almost daily. Despite this I still feel like I'm on the starting point of my journey; I have yet to learn countless abilities and skills and even the skills I have trained during these years do need constant maintenance and improvement.

I hope that I can through my blog transmit my thoughts regarding on parkour, movement and life. If you have any questions or suggestions do not hesitate to contact me by e-mail.