“
The ultimate parkourer acts only on instinct.
For david bell, the founder of the sport,
Parkour moves like a sacred way of worship,
When he hangs his bare hands on the wall,
As if to say,
"I live, I have life".
”
In an ancient capital heritage park in Beijing, parkour founder David Bell tugged at the city wall with one arm, bearing the weight of his entire body. The biceps are clearly visible, making the white shirt look tighter. His legs were bent underneath his body, his shoes were against the wall, and from a distance he looked like a meditator in the air.
When appearing in Luc Besson's Violent Block, starring David Bell's body was the best stunt. He can step over tall buildings that are a few meters apart, and he can also instantly drill out of the car window without touching the border.
He came down from a five-story building in many ways, such as magnetic stickers generally sticking to the building's exterior walls, and stepping on the window sill with precision when falling, only four steps from the roof to the ground; Or jump over twenty steps in the stairwell and land on the handrail, a process that takes a few seconds.
Usually, a person running down from a height of 20 meters will produce nearly 800 pounds of force when touching the ground, which is enough to cause death or severe fractures and disabilities. However, David Bell would tilt his body and flip his heel when he landed, while bending his knees to turn his entire body into an elastic shock absorber and land unharmed.
This posture comes from the instinct of the body and does not require any thought. It's like facing a glass that's about to fall and reaching out to pick it up without thinking, "Parkour was already part of the body's genes by then." The Frenchman, who had just celebrated his 43rd birthday, said.
A few years ago, between two tall buildings in London, the camera space for shooting advertisements had been set up, and the staff chose two buildings 7 meters apart, with a height difference of 4.5 meters. The audience at the bottom looked up at the sky, "Is that crazy?" They talked, some people opened their mouths, some people saw David without any protection to fly over two buildings, and he was scared to tears.
"Boom", David jumped up, leaving a perfect arc in the air, and landed steadily. A low exclamation came from the onlookers below. David jumped again, the second time to prove that it wasn't luck.
Once in the mountains of France, the mountain was almost perpendicular to the ground, and David was halfway up the climb when he suddenly saw a sign: "No climbing, the mountain will fall off." Without any protection, he hung halfway up the mountainside, his hands began to tremble, his head sweating, and wasps buzzing around, unable to retreat.
"You can only climb up carefully, the movement is as simple as possible, be light, otherwise the stone will fall down."
He spoke quietly about the successful ascent, and the beard on his lips trembled. Nowadays, he rarely faces such a life-and-death moment.
"In fact, parkour pursues not a limit, but a balance of its own." David used to hold the handle of the chair with his hand, and he used to feel the solidity of the objects around him at any time, "A lot of people do things to achieve a certain state and height, but parkour is not like this." Parkour is about finding a balance between the body and the obstacles. ”
A 4-hour David Bell Mistakes special is circulating online. Once in Los Angeles, after 4 hours of shooting, David was very tired and his legs were a little shaky, but the director was not satisfied with the effect and asked him to jump again. Taciturn, he began to run, making a cat jump in the air. Just when everyone was relieved, his hand slipped at the moment of touching the ground, and the whole person fell straight down like chopsticks, "a bit like the feeling of you falling asleep in bed and suddenly falling to the floor." This is already much luckier than peers, some people have fallen from the 4th floor when they flip over, and their heads have unfortunately died of touching the ground; Someone fell from a 51-meter-high tower and lost his life; When someone climbed over the bridge, he was hit and killed by a speeding car.
He later concluded that this was the result of ignoring the body's instincts to signal. Most of the time, David is like a yo-yo that has been thrown, taking off, spinning, and returning to the original point. What he asked of himself was that whether he was facing a step or a tall building, he had to go from departure to return unscathed.
The most effective way to avoid mistakes is to know your body. When David stood on the edge of the roof of a tall building and tried to take a step, instinctive fear often struck.
Jump or not jump? The body is often the first to give a direct answer, "A goat wants to jump, it knows its own ability, if the goat can't jump this obstacle, it will definitely find other ways to overcome it." ”
Everything comes out of physical instinct, just like a person falling on the floor, not directly hitting the wall, but instinctively holding it with his hand; Just like people will not jump hastily, the eyes will visually detect, and the feet will be perceived; It's like facing a gust of wind, and the instinctive reaction is to dodge immediately.
He will decide the movement and the way according to his physical condition, "When facing an obstacle, if you stay two or three minutes of thinking time, then it proves that you must not be confident." 」 ”
When whether he could overcome the obstacles became a suspense, David felt that instead of taking risks, it was better to find a more certain obstacle and keep training until he could easily overcome it and return to the obstacle that had made people hesitate.
Between the ages of 15 and 25, David trained 1,000 times a day, eight or nine hours, and after a week of practice, he didn't want to climb the stairs, and he felt like he had suddenly become 60 years old. He used his arm to drag against the wall to exercise his arm strength, watching the muscles get bigger little by little. As soon as he got home, his mother prepared chicken and tomatoes for him, "I was so hungry, I ate it directly with my hands, I was so hungry." ”
But after a week, he felt his legs stronger, there was an aura that "crossed" the whole leg, each jump was easier than the last, the muscles were changing, and he reshaped his body.
"Parkour doesn't mean courage, it means the training process. If you have the courage, whoever you want can do whatever he wants, but only once. Once you make a mistake and get hurt, you're done. ”
David's father told him it was similar to an obstacle in life. When faced with difficulties, there is always a way to overcome them. He learned some methods of training his body from his father, after which David, who was not a good talker, began to grope alone. At the time, he was 15 years old.
He formed the "Yamakasi" organization with friends on the outskirts of Paris, pioneering the first group of parkour sports. Yamakasi is say's Bantu language, meaning a philosophy that explores human potential and pushes the limits of the body and mind.
There's a philosophy behind parkour, and for me, it's the pursuit of freedom. It is a dynamic meditation because it forces you to focus and makes you forget everything. When he was a child, David liked to run and jump on the beach with the ebb and flow of the tide, and he also liked to wander and climb between trees alone. He was willing to stay in the mountains and didn't like the crowds. He is obsessed with studying monkey tapes, observing how monkeys in the forest move forward and walk, looking for parkour inspiration, and at the same time incorporating acrobatics and gymnastics into parkour, which is both aesthetic and practical.
At that time, every new city could have become David's training ground, "now less willful, parkour brings me a kind of intelligence, being able to immediately familiarize myself with the surroundings and react, everything is within the expected range." 」 David said that this feels a bit like martial arts, when he was young, he liked fierce boxing, and as he grew older, he precipitated himself into an old man in martial arts, walking idly with crutches, and once alert to something was wrong, the crutches could immediately become a weapon.
His ability to sense signals from his body was stronger. Those messages sent from the inside out, in addition to making people sleepy, eat when hungry, lie down when tired, sometimes the body will issue instructions to "move", even faster than the mind.
When it was closed in the hut for a long time, "You have the desire to go for a walk, to get some fresh air." It is equivalent to not your brain controlling the body, but your body controlling the brain, and all the reactions are emanated from your body. A bit like we said, if your qi is very sufficient, the state of the whole person is very good; If there is no such qi, it will be particularly bad. ”
The body is no longer just a bearer of instinctive reactions, but also a window of communication with the outside world. For example, after watching a drama that makes people feel uncomfortable, David will break through the door, encounter obstacles, jump over it, try to jump, and think about nothing in his mind. After jumping over, take a deep breath of relief and stop being impatient and impulsive.
"When the fist is clenched, the 'qi' is still in the body and is not released; But when parkour, the hand goes to grab the wall, it is open, more like a way of gratitude for life. David felt that parkour movements were like a sacred way of worship, grabbing the wall as if to say, "I live, I have life"; When rolling on the ground and cushioning, it is a pilgrimage to natural prostration. "It is to worship the sky, to thank nature, to present oneself to the Creator." In the first years of his life, student David had already shown a different trait, and when the bell rang at 4:30 a.m., the other children came down the stairs, and he flipped directly through the window; The neighbor girl climbed into a tree, and he had rescued the girl before the firefighters arrived; Another man who lived on the third floor locked himself out of the door, and David easily climbed into the window to help him open it.
When asked how the body does this, David replied, "You ask a cat, how do you do it jump around, it doesn't say, but it's a very natural manifestation." If you have to explain, it's instinct; You ask a little bird, how did you fly to the ocean, the bird answered affirmatively, then I don't know, I flapped my wings, there was no explanation.