Parkour / Freerunning is an activity I really admire and I was reminded of it when I was emailed by Zachary Cohn, an Art of Ass-Kicking reader and vice chair of Parkour Visions. There are a lot of gymnastics and martial arts elements to Parkour / Freerunning and I can really appreciate how hard these things are. I’m a little sad that I’ll never really be able to participate because my bum knee wouldn’t be able to handle the landings, but it’s sure fun to watch.
This video is an awesome reminder of what’s possible with coaching, practice, courage and effort. None of these people were born knowing how to do flips off walls or jump off high surfaces with a twisting motion and just roll out of it. And you better believe they were pretty damn scared the first dozen times (or more) when they were trying it on their own. But they pushed through their fears, injuries and self-doubt to reach this high level of ability. And you can too.
I am writing a book called Winning Isn't Normal. Check it out.
Hey guys, I’ve got another great interview lined up – this time with Mari Asp, one of the strongest women alive. Born in Norway, she now trains with the Marine Corp in Pendelton Beach near San Diego and is a 5 time national champion and holds the world record in bench press for her weight class (330 lbs lifted at 123 lbs). Wow - I’m very glad to have her on the blog. Here’s what I learned:
how she structures her workouts day by day
the person who inspired her to return to competition after a series of serious injuries
the one thing she’s secretly afraid of
what it’s like to train & compete with the Marines Corps
I loved this interview – hope you do too!
1) In your email to me, you said you’ve done 3 sports for 2 countries. It seems like you do powerlifting now, so tell me more about gymnastics and fitness and Norway. How did you get your start in sports? What did you like about gymnastics and fitness?
At the age of 5 my parents took me to gymnastics, since I already knew how to do cartwheels – it was something I picked up on my own just playing around. I was a very active kid, sitting still was difficult so gymnastics was perfect. I loved it from day 1 and still do to this day. Gymnastics is the sport closest to my heart. It’s a tough sport, with a high volume of intense training that requires talent, patients, and lots of guts. Knowing the difficulty of it all, I have the highest level of respect for those who chose to do this beautiful sport of ours.
2) Is doing sports different in Norway vs USA?
Doing sports as a kid in Norway vs USA is a bit different. Unlike in the US, Norway doesn’t have sport teams at school. There are no high school or college teams. In Norway we have sport clubs where you are a member – training for a specific sport is done after school hours at the facility of the sports club. One of the clubs I was doing gymnastics for was Oslo Gymnastics club. When Norway is a small country with only 4.7 million people, many kids grow up in places far from a big city and it is limited with sport clubs to choose from. A sport like gymnastics that requires having a facility with all the equipment etc is far in between. A sport like soccer, on the other hand you will find pretty much everywhere.
3) You can bench 330 and hold the world record! That’s awesome. And crazy. What got you interested in lifting?
I was on the Norwegian National Team for Gymnastics since I was 13 but decided to retire 4 years later due to injuries. The following day of my retirement, a friend of mine from school who was training at an Olympic and powerlifting club and told me I to come with him and try lifting weights.
I did, and I bench-pressed 110 lbs that day, my first time ever lifting weights. 3 months later I won the junior national powerlifting championship. Today at 36, I am still doing it, thanks to the gymnastics training that gave me the skills, strength and ability to train hard and never give up.
Mari Asp in 2008. Her final lift is a world record!
Gymnastics is a sport about delivering under pressure. Even though you can make it a team sport by aggregating scores and swapping out players, there is actually not interaction between your teammates outside of them cheering for you and helping you prepare for your performance, or even between you and your competition.
When you raise your hand and salute before your routine, it is all on you.
There is usually nothing else for the crowd to focus on but you. Your entire team is watching you. There are 2 professionally trained judges whose sole job is the evaluate your performance and grade your 30-60 second performance in executing extremely difficult maneuvers without any mistakes or flaws. Competing in gymnastics is kind of like a basketball game of all free throws.
Talk about pressure.
I estimate that I’ve had saluted for nearly 1,000 routines over 16 years of competition [1], with over 200 of those salutes / routines being performed for a national level competition (Winter Cup, Jr Nationals, USA Championships, NCAA Championships, Future Stars Nationals).
Gymnastics has taught me a lot about how to perform under pressure, in clutch situations.
I don’t think I’m invincible under pressure. I’ve blown it when it counted. I get nervous and fumble my words – especially on camera or in front of beautiful women. I’m no Li Xiaopeng (see video), but I’m certainly much better than I would have been without gymnastics. Here’s what I’ve learned [2]: Continue reading →
I am writing a book called Winning Isn't Normal. Check it out.
I think most gymnasts consider pain and fear our twin companions. I certainly did. Gymnastics requires that athletes constantly challenge themselves to do more, much more. Routines that were performed in the Olympics in 2000 are being done by 15 year-olds in 2011. To learn new skills, you have to put yourself in scary situations.
One of the most important characteristics of a great gymnast is the ability to overcome fear and do what needs to be done. The stakes are higher: if you mess up a layup or a serve, not much is going to happen If you mess up on a Kovacs (the skill pictured above and in the video below) you could hit your face or slam your chest into a metal bar. And trust me, that does not feel good.
Ultimately, fear is about a mismatch in your mind between what you are capable of and what the environment demands of you. So to reduce fear, you have to address each of the elements – the risk of the environment, your capabilities and your mindset.
Reduce Risk
Fear usually isn’t a bad thing. It’s your brains way of telling you that it thinks you are in danger – that you risking bodily harm. And when you’re just starting to learn a new skill – your brain is probably right!
So the key here is to reduce risk – both perceived and actual – and prevent that harm from befalling you.
- Getting Spotted – this is when your coach uses his hands to support, hold, push and pull you through the skill. You’re lacking the speed, agility or power to complete the move on your own, so he helps you with the last mile. See this video as an example.
- Protective Surfaces - a big part of your fear is that you’re going to eat it and slam into the equipment in the wrong way and hurt yourself. Often your coach or teammate can slide a mat, or somehow pad/soften the area that could otherwise really hurt. Of course this doesn’t always work.
(Video: Kovacs Crash. From the video info: “Me eating it hahahah it didnt hurt but it was pretty scary”. Turn down the sound .. there’s a loud rock song playing in the background)
Takeaway:
So if you’re scared of something – find ways to reduce your risk. Are you afraid to talk to pitch an investor? Start by pitching your rich uncle. He’s less intimidating and fewer bad things will happen if you “blow it”. If you’re scared to do your routine of jokes at Open Mic night at your local bar, start by doing a few jokes at your next house party. Find ways to simulate the thing you’re scared of, but in a place where you feel more comfortable / safe.
Increase Your Capacity
After reducing the danger of the external environment, the next step is to build up your own capacity – to both do the skill and to absorb the consequences of screwing it up.
Get Better: This is generally an issue of skill acquisition. Develop your fundamentals, break the skill down into parts, practice deliberately and visualize.
Get Tougher: Have you noticed that most gymnasts are ripped? Our muscles help us perform these crazy hard skills – and also protect us when we crash. Gymnasts are also very familiar with pain. When you know you can take a beating and bounce back then things become less scary. Notice how Alexy just walks off after brutally slamming his shins on the metal bar and falling onto his head.
So if you are afraid of something, get better at it and build your tolerance for facing what it is you fear (rejection, pain, failure). Are you afraid of talking to women at bars? Practice. Get good at making interesting conversation with strangers. Do rejection therapy and toughen yourself up so that rejections don’t hurt you as much. Are you scared to ask your boss for a raise? Kick serious ass at work and make the raise a no brainer. Build up a savings account and a great reputation so when you tell him “More or I’m gone” you can mean it.
Man Up and Just Do It
The final thing I learned about overcoming fear is that you’ve got to man up and just do it. It works like this:
You do the drills. You practice with mats. You do the conditioning. You get spotted. And one day your coach steps back and says: “Ok, this one on your own.”
Even if you know you’re ready, you know you can do it and you know you can safely handle a mistake, you can still feel paralyzed with fear. One technique that works:
Have fun with it. Feel the fear, laugh, and then go do it.
Fear tightens you up. It makes you stiff. By taking the whole situation lightly and having fun with it, you get yourself limber, loose and flexible – and much more likely to make it, or recover from a setback. One person who laughs in the face of fear was Rico, a Stanford alumni.
In this video he has not been training gymnastics seriously for over 3 years and does a full twisting kovacs and grabs with ONE HAND. This is nuts – no one does one arm grabs on purpose. He did it by accident the year before and then did it INTENTIONALLY that time. I was at this meet, it was incredible.
Once you’ve prepared adequately for the thing you’re afraid of, created an environment where the risk was controlled and built up your toughness and resilience so you can handle a mistake, then the only thing left to do is go for it. Man up. If you feel yourself tightening up, find something about the situation to laugh at. If you can see the situation as fun, exciting and interesting, you will no longer be afraid. Just go for it!
Well, that’s what gymnastics taught me about overcoming fear. Next week I’ll do my final post on what I learned about delivering clutch performances.
I am writing a book called Winning Isn't Normal. Check it out.
In 1996, Men’s Health published an article where they used some ridiculous mathematical formula using variables such as fitness, skill, pain, brains, etc to figure out the toughest sport in the world. And gymnastics came up number one. Here’s what they said:
Male gymnasts may wear tights, but they score perfect 10’s for fitness and athletic skills, and near-perfect marks for injury potential, mental toughness and difficult conditions. Let’s see you spin in circles on the high bar, release, do a few flips and grab the bar again. Extra toughness points were awarded for the guy who survived a full-speed, chest-first plunge into the horse and for the Japanese Olympic medalist who dismounted from the rings with a broken leg.
I started doing gymnastics when I was six years old and trained for over 16 years. At age 11 I started competing and placing in national competitions at the junior and later the senior levels. The highest I ever placed in a national senior men’s competition was 15th – I was never Olympic material, but I trained with many who were. Previously, I wrote about how I blew out my knee and came back to win a national championship – this post is specifically about what gymnastics has taught me about acquiring and mastering skills.
Gymnastics is the perfect sport to teach these lessons because it’s one of the most demanding activities that you can do. Gymnasts have to master a large number of complex skills that require high levels of technique, strength and guts – and I think that with the intelligent application of these lessons, you’ll be able to learn skills in a variety of areas faster and more effectively.
Ok, ’nuff said. Onto the lessons!
Acquiring and Mastering Skills
Deliberate practice.
I hope this is so obvious to you that you roll your eyes. But seriously – the only real way to get better at something is to do it over and over again. There is no substitute.
However, what Malcom Gladwell said is right, the key is “deliberate practice“. This means being intently focused on every attempt and thinking carefully about how you can improve your performance on each turn. But in addition to practice, consider these other lessons: Continue reading →
I am writing a book called Winning Isn't Normal. Check it out.
Jason Shen is the co-founder of Ridejoy (YC S11). A former gymnast turned marathoner, his writing has appeared in Forbes.com, Lifehacker & The Huffington Post.
The Art of Ass-Kicking is about starting things, conquering fear and kicking ass in work and life. Learn more.
Jason Shen is the co-founder of 