Jamming National Parkour Indonesia 2010 (English)

Rifna Nurrahmawati, Parkour Tangerang.

This is my first experience attending the national jam (JamNas) 2010. I have been practising parkour for just 2 years and this is the first time I’ve participated in an event of this size.

The news had just surfaced that Stephane Vigroux and Thomas Couetdic would be coming to JamNas and I found that the feedback was extraordinary. At the start, I counted only a few attending  from Tangerang but 11 people attending JamNas from Tangerang including myself , was an amazing number to me. The latest news that I heard from my friend and JamNas committee member Willy, was that 150 people would be attending this annual event!! Wow, awesome.

I had a few misgivings, was afraid and didn’t believe in myself. I’m only a girl whose parkour skill is 0.0001% of KAT’s (Kat de la Torre), while the participants who would attend JamNas were stars of Youtube Indonesia. Suddenly, I wanted to back out thinking of my various weaknesses, of which there were many, but with the others, I brought the name of Tangerang, I am one of the Tangerang representatives and I have to be there.

Friday, 24 September, the day.
The day finally arrived. After I almost could not sleep because of a painful stomach and feeling like I wanted to throw up, I felt like a weak child who had to be taken by the hand until I couldn’t sleep. What a dilemma.

At 7 o’clock sharp, Bis brought me to Bandung with the other 10 participants. I was praying throughout the whole journey that the pain would not worsen. From Twitter and Facebook I found out that the other attendees had already completed their registration and that Parkour Tangerang were actually the last group to arrive.

The first day of the event, at around 11:30 we were brought to the valley and from the event schedule we would be doing a 2 hour climb of Mount Jayagiri, then running downhill for 2 hours. The event commenced after the practitioners had carried out friday sholat prayers, lunch and divided into groups. I was in group 6, there were 16 people in our group: 14 male practitioners and 2 female practitioners. Before leaving for Jayagiri, we were given directions about what we were going to do there, a few games had been prepared to judge our physical capabilities. I had never climbed a mountain before, I could only pray again in my heart.

At the starting point, finally I met Stephane and Thomas, it turns out that they are very very friendly And the event started. Stephane opened JamNas 2010 at the foothills of Jayagiri with a warming up session. His English had a very very obvious French accent when he gave us instructions but he was easy to understand. And then the climbing started while the heavy Bandung rain poured down. My fears only increased as I get the chills easily. I started praying again in my heart.

We then did all the each games made by the committee. Carrying each other, balance, quadrepedal movement uphill on the muddy ground (like crawling on a treadmill) until finally we finished Thomas’s training. I was so thankful to be taught by a parkour practitioner of his calibre. Although obviously Thomas only considered me as a girl who likes to cause mischief with my actions for example when I almost fell from a high place and the stamp of “troublemaker” was placed on my forehead. Hah, what a day. It was as if my prayers did not help place me out of trouble’s reach. (-.-”)

I never wear a watch so I didn’t know for how long we were climbing under the rain. Maybe at around 6 o’clock we started downhill. There were  a few problems when we started descending, many of us took off our shoes when climbing, resulted in problems frequently occuring, such as  slipping. In addition to the loss of daylight because night was approaching, I could only see the silhouettes of the people right in front of me and the roots of the trees crossing the path made me trip a lot. In these conditions, I remembered one sentence:

“Never leave a man behind”

I tried to help my friends who were having difficulty in walking because they were shoeless or those who were in the dark. I’m not strong, I can only help those that I can. But the most important thing was that I didn’t leave my team.

9:30p.m. After all the strength had been used up in the climb, after shoes, shirts, wet training trousers were completely soaked, after taking a shower and dinner, all the practitioners assembled for the social meeting. All the tiredness disappeared momentarily, we laughed together and I could say:

“Hi, I’m Ina, one of the representatives from Parkour Tangerang ”

Saturday, 25 September, Day 2.
I woke up feeling as if I’d just been beaten up by some thieves who had crept in during the night. My body huuuuuuurt everywhere. But it didn’t dampen my excitement for the second day. I read the day’s rundown, we had 2 workshops with Stephane and Thomas at ITB. Can’t wait!

We were divided into 6 groups of around 19 or 20 people in each group, then Thomas started to lead the warm up. I learnt many variations of warm up movements. Really intensive warm up before doing parkour. I thought that what I learnt before was tough, but obviously that was only average. We carried out several variations of quadrepedal movements, then we ran around the ITB for about 20 minutes, while in my mind, the words of “never leave a man behind” were still in my mind.

Anyway, every time Thomas met me he always asked,

“Did you make any problem today?”

Dang, obviously the label of “troublemaker” is still stamped on my forehead.

And the workshop started. The committee had prepared 6 spots in the ITB area and each group led by their leader would rotate between each spot to try them. 6 spots were divided to become 2, 3 spots were held by Stephane and 3 spots were held by Thomas. We got Thomas’s spot first. We tried 3 spots and at each spot we did different movements. At the first spot we did precision jumps for about 10 minutes, at the second spot, we did cat leap (saut du chat) and we met with Thomas there. I found that when I was at the second spot, the grip of the bar for the catleap (SDC) was too high and because my jump was not high enough, I could only just touch the grip and my left knee slammed hard into the wall. I got a bruise and was seriously affected by a mental block when I wanted to try a second time.

A few tips from Thomas,
“When you want to jump, you jump, or you don’t jump at all, but do not jump and was like “no..no..no”. Because that’s dangerous”

At the third spot, Opal, the president of Parkour Bandung led us on some balancework on a bar, alternating each foot for 2 minutes. After the first 3 spots, we took a break for lunch, rest and chatting and laughing with the other practitioners. Unfortunately for us, Bandung’s heavy rains returned full force. There were still 3 spots left and our group had not yet been taught by Stephane But our spirits picked up, because when the rain had reduced, Opal proposed to run around the ITB with Thomas and Stephane. I tried to run barefoot, ouch, it hurt a lot. Also my knee that was still throbbing and bruised came back the moment I did small movements. Double throbbing

At night, there was a Question and Answer session with Thomas and Stephane in the hall, but from  exhaustion I dozed off and woke up at 11pm when everyone in the hall was clapping and finishing the event. Hmm.. I arrived late and really regretted it. But it’s ok

Sunday, 26 September, the last day

I think, I’m the only one who gets up with feeling really stiff and immobile. So, when I saw that everyone else was walking rather akwardly, my self confidence increased. Evidently, they are human too just like me

And this was the last day of JamNas 2010. We did the closing ceremony in ITENAS and then free jamming with Stephane and Thomas. We took photos with them to remember this moment and asked them to autograph my shirt so that I would feel motivated during training.

At 1 o’clock, I bid farewell to all the practitioners. Quite sad, I will definitely miss the hustle and bustle of JamNas. When saying goodbye to Stephane I wanted to sing “Time to Say Goodbye” by Sarah Brightman but then I remembered that I was only daydreaming, so I didn’t sing. And when saying goodbye to Thomas, he looked at me as if saying:
“Stay away from problems young lady”

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