Hops & Drops

Ever since I started Parkour, I always found challenges that instantly got added to my ‘one day’ list.

Although they are things that I know I wouldn’t be able to achieve, I knew they were things that with enough time and training, I would be able to accomplish in the future.

As I trained more, and spent years practicing Parkour, my aspirations developed along with my skills, so as I began to tick off challenges, new bigger ones came along that would be my next goal to work towards.

Although some were relatively easy to accomplish, there were a few that seemed so far from being achievable, that they just remained in the back of my mind for years and years.

I knew they were possible, but only having just begun Parkour, I knew it would be many many years before I would be at a level high enough to even consider them.

But then years and years of training passed, and the idea of doing many of these ‘one day’ challenges came closer and closer to reality.

The Hurstville Double Kong

Growing up in the Hurstville area, often it would be a challenge to find good spots to train. There’s no proper good spots, but instead many ‘half-spots’ as we would call them, that are scattered all over the place. One of these included the fountain out the front of the train station, located in probably the busiest street of Hurstville.

My friends and I always trained here, doing all the novice jumps between the strange rectangular pool and stairs, and the occasional flip in between. However one challenge stood out to me since the first moment I saw it.

The double kong measured 11 of my UK size 14 feet across, plus the water in the middle meant bounce offs and prep attempts weren’t really an option.

This saw it as ‘the move’ of the spot, but to what I could find, no-one had ever done it before. There was rumours of Bidhu apparently doing it at some stage, but after asking in person, he claimed he hadn’t and there was no evidence of it ever really being done by anyone.

I’d seen it for years and years, and was drawn in by the fact that it remained unlocked. But also over the years, every time I looked at it, it looked flippin far, but more achievable every time I revisited.

I spent countless nights analysing videos of Toby Segar kong technique, and countless days slapping the takeoff wall, envisioning and rehearsing the movement. I created identical set-ups in Gyms, and found that I could do it, only at absolute full pace after spending 40 minutes building up to the distance and with perfect execution.

But still, it could be done.

I remember around the time where I was feeling ready to do it, it the early months of Covid-19, and two police officers told me to ‘be careful slapping/touching that wall all the time’ and ‘make sure you sanitise your hands’.

It took me around two or three hours to fully warm up and get ready to do it. I don’t think I’ll ever get over the feeling of the first time I did it. The preparation and patience that all led up to finally achieving it paid off completely, the execution of the challenge itself felt like second nature.

I ended up filming it four times, but ended up using the first attempt for the project video as it managed to capture just a small fraction of the satisfaction I felt moments after finally achieving what I’d worked towards for years.

The Cronulla Cat Pre

It was probably sometime in late 2018 that I’d gone to Cronulla for some supper one night, and having parked in the Carpark, I hopped around on a few of the walls and immediately noticed the gap between the two platforms.

I remember telling my friend who I was with “I’m going to do that”

“That’s just dumb” he said, to which I thought ‘yeah, it would be dumb to do it now, I’m not ready for it yet’.

The challenge presented gross-ness on several fronts, whereby the wall meant you were unable to see the landing until take off, but the rail atop the wall created a far more technical side to the challenge and a realisation that you had to be precise and focused on all parts of the movement, from take off to landing.

When I train, I usually focus on pushing physical limits at ground level. I never had much of a focus on mental training until I noticed this challenge.

Most people don’t know this, but I suck at dealing with things with height. I have a big fear of heights which means I’m definitely not one to just chuck myself across gaps without thought.

I spent a long redirecting my focus in training to strengthen my mental game. I started small by walking around on rails, maybe one or two meters in the air, getting used to the idea of doing simple, easy tasks, but with a increased amount of consequence.

Over the course of months and years, I was able to grow more confident in trusting my abilities, to the stage where I was capable to perform easy tasks and manoeuvres at height as I knew I would perform them well and will be able to do them.

For the Car Pre, when I first imagined the idea of doing it, the thought me me sick, but after many many revisits to prepare my focus for the given space, envision and mentally work towards it, the challenge became more and more clear and reasonable as my focus and confidence in my abilities grew stronger.

This took many years of training, and its important to know how to challenge yourself safely, where you aren’t being silly and doing things you’re not 100% certain you can do when high consequences are present.

I quickly became aware that in order to do the Cat Pre well, where I would be focused purely on the movement, I had to minimise any distraction where possible. I reached out to Clyde to ask if he could help me film it and the legend said yes.

When I felt ready and confident to go for it, we organised a day, and met up at the carpark.

It ended up taking around three or four hours to prepare mentally and find the right headspace to be able to perform the challenge with enough focus and confidence to be calm and collected in the moment.

When I did the Cat Pre for the first time, I remember nothing else other than completing this one task. Nothing else mattered, I had one task and I executed it the way that I knew I could.

It was like I’d been pushing against this wall for so long, and as soon as I did it for the first time, it was like I broke through it. I did it another two or three times, each as focused as the one before.

It was strange because the move itself wasn’t hard at all. There was nothing overly physically challenging about it at all and I probably could’ve done it the first night I saw it. But if I had, my friend was right, it would’ve been dumb. The years it took me to overcome the mental challenge were essential to ensuring I was focused and confident to execute the move perfectly, regardless of the consequence or not.

Hops & Drops to me was a mark of the progression I have made since I began Parkour. It’s like a little note of things that I once couldn’t do, but over the many years trained, prepared and worked to be able to achieve.

The project emerged out of my never ending list in my end of ‘one day’ challenges. Of things I always want to one day be able to do, but I know I can’t achieve right now.

I think everyone has one of those lists in their head somewhere, and the things on them might seem crazy scary or crazy unachievable or just crazy in general on first impression.

But I think with enough preparation, and enough time, those things will slowly but surely come more into reach of what you can achieve.