By Therese Gunnarsson
Saturday 2nd of April, 2011
First of all I should have written this post earlier but unfortunately I haven’t had the inspiration or time until now.The meeting point for the yearly Roots of Movement jam, 2nd of April, 2011, where practitioners from all over Ireland joined in, was by the Spire (a known monument in the City Centre of Dublin). I was a bit nervous, no idea why, but probably because I didn’t know anyone going to the jam, I’ve only been training with a guy called Cormac before and he was joining later that day.
Photo by Therese Gunnarsson
First of all I dressed too much, I still had a cold and didn’t want it to get worse, so I was wearing a black long sleeve sweater with a top underneath and a scarf. Was already sweating on my way to the Spire because I was running a bit late. Did I mention that it was about 20 degrees, the sun was out and it was blue sky?! =P
Met by a bunch of traceurs and some traceuses, more then I had expected, estimating that we’ve must have been about 50-60 people. Luckily I was met by a familiar face approaching me, Tebbie, an active traceuse I’ve been keeping in touch with at www.pkire.com.
The very happy and eager to train practitioners started walking towards the first spot, DCC. A spot where much may be practiced. We all gathered at a close by park and I thought we were having a warm up all together. Some started to jump around, some had already warmed up and I went to BCB, the guy organizing the jam and asked him if there was going to be a warm up. Because in “my world” = my hometown Uppsala in Sweden we always start out with a “muscle breaking”- warm up all together. But that wasn’t the plan, it was really more like jamming, back in the “old days”, everybody warmed up on their own or in small groups, or some had already warmed up. In a way it felt really good but I was a bit stunned since I’ve been “raised” with a warm up done together as a big group. Basically the warm up for the Irish practitioners consisted of a few standing jumps and warming up the joints for a few minutes. While in Uppsala our warm up, about 20 minutes, usually longer during jams, consist of a lot of conditioning, by getting your heartbeat up and warming up all the big muscle groups by different quadruple techniques and also an extensive warm up of all the joints. So when the warm up were done the jumping begun..
In total I think we were 7 girls! And as usual it’s always nice to get together with other girls because often we have the same mindset. I was the only girl from abroad, some were from Dublin and some had travelled far to get here. We started practicing small popups and then some bar work- practicing flow followed by some precision jumps. It worked out really well despite the amount of people since the spot was quite big so people spread out!
After that we continued to another spot, Earl’s fort, also a spot there mostly flow and bar work could be done.
In the beginning of the jam there was a lot of activity, most of the people were on the move all the time, which felt great. But when we’ve moved to the second spot the activity decreased quite a lot, people started hanging out in groups chatting. This is very different compared to Uppsala where people usually keep training for several hours, 5-6 hours with short breaks, before people start to get tired. So why this difference? A jam for me in Ireland seems to be more of a social thing then a long day training which both certainly have there charm.
Despite seeing people getting tired someone came up with the idea to play “The chain” in a nearby park. This activated people again and mostly everyone joined in. It’s a game which aims to hook hold of each other in both arms and legs and then there are people chosen to “break” the chain. The goal is to keep the chain as tight as possible and not to break! Really fun game which brought a lot of laughter and probably some sore muscles the day after.
Photo by Therese Gunnarsson
So after being really nervous (as I said, no idea why, since the Parkour community always are friendly) the jam turned out to be perfect! The weather, the practitioners, the atmosphere, everything! This is what I love with Parkour, it doesn’t matter where you travel in the world, the atmosphere is always the same. Crazy, motivated, childish, happy and just enjoying every moment of being together sharing experience and training! And “outsiders” don’t understand why we do Parkour, HA!
Photo by Laur Ryan
An article written by Therese Gunnarsson, Uppsala Parkour, Sweden.
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