Tree-Climbing Snacks
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“I love climbing trees. One of my favorite pastimes during my Parkour walk [<link; short read] is what I call tree-climbing snacks.“
“What are those?“
“It’s a little game I invented for myself. The rules are simple:
Pick a tree.
Pick a branch at height. The goal is to climb and touch that branch.
Bonus points if…
– you don’t take the same route if you’ve climbed the tree before
– you don’t take the easiest route
– you spend a few breaths at height until your heart normalizes – expand your awareness for a beautiful little Zen moment
– you come down on a different route
“
Parkour Vision
The world is your playground.
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“What is parkour vision?”
“One of the (many) things I love about Parkour is how it changes your perception of the environment. Among practitioners, this phenomenon is called parkour vision.
Parkour vision allows you to see possibility within the ordinary.
With parkour vision, the environment becomes magical: every rail is an opportunity to balance on, jump on, or vault over, lines on the ground are virtual rails, parking poles (bollards) are literal stepping stones, light poles and walls are vertical walkways… Children’s playgrounds are exquisite bundles of joy with beautiful echoes of childhood. The limit is your skill level (the more proficient you are, the more possibilities you see) and your creativity.
What’s beautiful about parkour vision is that it’s always on. It becomes a part of you, the default lens through which you see the world. It enriches your perception of reality, and, by extension, your life.”
Life Patterns
What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits. (Carl Jung)
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“What current aspects of your life are an evolution of previous ones?”
“I’ve identified three major aspects:
Moving as a child
I love moving.
I used to love moving as a child. Running, jumping, climbing, creative physical challenges… I realize I was doing Parkour long before I knew Parkour existed. Discovering Parkour was actually a rediscovery. Parkour is an evolution of my playful childhood adventures, and something I see myself doing forever. As I like to say, ‘Traceur forever’.
Soul Quest: Parkour Mastery
Identity: Mover, Traceur, Athlete
Mantra: Move beautiful.
My gaming years
I love playing.
Video games have been an addiction for me for many years. Many people play games as a temporary distraction from the real world. For me, they were my reality. I lived in imaginary fantastic worlds, and the real world was a temporary distraction.
I left video games behind and finally discovered the game of my life: my own life. I call it The Beautiful Game [<link; medium read]. The game is a meta-game, which is made up of a myriad lower-order games. I engage in it as both a Player and a Designer.
Soul Quest: Playful Living – Life as Play
Identity: Dani, the Ever-Playful
Mantra: Play is destiny.
Thinking as passion
I love thinking.
I lived in my head most of my life. At some point, I jokingly remarked that if I were to visually represent what the world looked like for me, it would have been mostly empty space and curves of attractive women.
I’ve been playing with ideas for a long time – one of my favorite pastimes. I disregarded other areas of my life, but in the process I got pretty good at it.
The next level in my evolution as a Thinker is meta-thinking, a concept I created to describe the (practical) process of creating conceptual tools and deconstructing meaning. It also involves balancing Thinking with Awareness. I realized that in order to master Thinking I also need to master Non-Thinking, disengaging the mind.
Soul Quests: Thinking Mastery – becoming a Super Thinker; Artful Living – Life as Art
Identity: Thinker, Life-Artist, Explorer and Creator of Meaning
Mantra: Think beautiful.”
The Parkour Walk 2
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“The tube (underground train) in Bucharest is beautiful.”
“What do you like about it?”
“It forms a continuous moving path littered with human-obstacles. It’s a beautiful movement challenge.
Whenever I go by tube, I walk back and forth from one end to the other for the entire duration of the journey.
Fun!”
“You must be getting quite a few stares.”
“This is an integral part of the practice. It’s also a beautiful emotional challenge.”
On Burpees and Meaning
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“How can I get to 100 burpees every day like Brian Johnson does?”
“Understand that it’s as much mental as it is physical. You have to make it meaningful.
Deeply internalize that Energy is your most important resource. It’s an enabler for everything you do. Movement is one essential aspect of Energy – and your overall well-being –, next to Rest/Recovery and Nutrition.
The most important systems of personal meaning are your Identity and your Values. You have to integrate Movement into both of these systems.
Embrace your identity of Mover / Athlete.
Embrace Movement as one of your primary Values.
In strategic terms, do them in small sets, and spread them out throughout the day. To ensure consistency, have a system for it.”
“What does your system look like?
“I use the following terminology:
Micro-Unit = 1 burpee (the floor)
Unit = 5 burpees
Macro-Unit = 2 x Unit = 10 burpees (the ceiling)
I like multiples of 5 because they’re easier to count.
The key to consistency, I found, is connecting the burpee habit with other activities.
More specifically, with my work time. I do 3 units (3 x 5) during every work hour: one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. If for any reason I skip one, I do a macro-unit (10) next time.
The beauty of this system is that, once it becomes a habit, you don’t need to track your overall daily progress. You know that if you’ve worked 6 hours, you’ve done 90 burpees.”
“What if I can barely do 5 burpees? How can I build up to it?”
“To build up to it, adjust the unit.
Start with the micro-unit – 1 burpee. This is the habit-seed [<medium; short read].
Stay at 1 burpee until it feels easy, then add another one. This becomes your new unit.
Whenever the unit feels easy, add another rep.
Whenever you feel tired during the day and feel you can no longer sustain the volume, gradually scale down the unit for the day, all the way to the micro-unit if need be. It’s more important to maintain the habit – three units per hour, however small the unit – than to reach 100.
Focus on Quality. (Perfect/Quality Reps)
Think of every burpee session as a micro meditation. Start every single one by taking a deep breath and connecting with yourself (Centering).
In terms of feedback, use sound and markings on the floor to assess quality. The less sound you make – this is called Stealth in Parkour –, and the more precise your hand and foot placement, the better the quality of the rep.
You can also add Variety from time to time and experiment with various types of burpees.”
The Antifragility Game
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“How can I practice Antifragility?”
“See it as a game.
In essence, it’s a game of Perception. You’re playing with Attention and Meaning.
For instance, let’s say a specific situation triggers frustration. Like when a web-page takes too long to load.
What’s the antifragile response?
You might ask yourself:
How can I beautify this moment?
You might choose to focus on – direct your Attention to – Gratitude. You can bring to mind all the silent gifts you tend to take for granted: your computer, with all its peripherals, the Internet, the chair you’re sitting on, the table you’re sitting at, etc.
You might choose to focus on Time. That small time-window is a beautiful opportunity for a micro-meditation. You can take a few mindful breaths, smile, connect with yourself, and relax.
By accessing some internal resources – Gratitude, Meditation – you’ve taken the situation and turned it on its head.”
“What if in the same situation I’m in an unresourceful state? That makes it harder to access my internal resources.
To quote Tim Ferris:
In a lowered emotional state, we only see problems, not solutions.
“
“In that case, changing your state becomes the absolute priority.
The best way to change your state quickly is by doing something intensely physical. Like a sprint, or a few burpees… or climbing a tree.
The Movement Game is an essential aspect of the Antifragility Game.“
“What if I’m somewhere in public?”
“Even better. You get to practice indifference to other people’s opinions as well – or what I like to call, social deconditioning.”
The Parkour Walk
Be your unapologetically weird self. (Chris Sacca)
Fragments from imaginary dialogues
“I go for a walk every single day. It’s not your typical walk. It’s a game.”
“What’s the game about?”
“It’s one of those endlessly evolving games.
Structurally, it’s a collection of rules and themes. The rules serve as creative limitations [<link; short read]; the themes serve as guidelines.
The game is modular. Adding and removing rules and themes is itself a part of the game.
The main theme of the game is Parkour.”
“So you’re training Parkour every day?”
“Yes. And I plan to never stop.
The game is a playful exploration of my neighborhood – or whatever location I’m in.
The main rule of the game is to always take a different route.
We have a tendency to take the same route and do the same things every time, to get stuck in habitual patterns. The rule ties in with one of the game’s themes, which is pattern-breaking – breaking out of familiar patterns.
In taking a different route I’m also scouting the neighborhood to discover potential training spots and challenges, and I’m creating a mental training map.
Another theme of the game is what I call creative training. Going beyond the obvious, and looking for creative training possibilities within the environment.
One aspect of it is an idea I adore, which I know from Max Henry [<link], one of my favorite Parkour practitioners and coaches. It’s called Something Out of Nothing. Looking at a seemingly uninteresting spot in the environment and coming up with creative ways of playing with it.
Another theme is Quantity. By that, I mean maximizing training density. Getting as much training done as possible within that time span. One aspect of it is maximizing the use of what I call transitional space – the space between training spots or rep(etition)s.”
“Can you give an example?”
“Let’s say I want to get from training spot A to training spot B. The space between the spots is a transitional space. I could walk the distance, or I could QM the distance – traverse it using Quadruperdal Movement, so on all fours. In the second case, I’m increasing training density, I get more training done.
Or let’s say I jump from point A to point B. This is one rep. I could choose to walk back to A and do another rep, or to jump back from B to A. In the second case, I’m increasing training density. In the same time span I’ve performed two reps instead of one.
Another theme is Quality. The how is as important as the what. This means striving to be as present as possible at all times, and only counting quality reps – or beautiful reps, as I like to call them.
Another theme is Variety. I aim to move in as many different ways as possible. In the same session I might jump on the markings of a parking lot, balance on a fence, vault over a garbage can, climb a tree, roll on a patch of grass, do a wall-run followed by a climb-up, etc.
I live on the 8th floor, so every session ends with a little strength & conditioning session up the stairs – I always take the stairs.
And yet another theme is a focus on the fundamentals of Parkour. I don’t train only the fundamentals, but there’s no session in which I don’t train some of them.”
“Don’t you mind looking weird to the people around you?”
“That’s an essential aspect of the practice.”
Dani Trusca 
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