"Wax on, right hand. Wax off, left hand. Wax on, wax off. Breathe in through nose, out the mouth. Wax on, wax off. Don't forget to breathe, very important."

Some of you may remember these immortal words from Mr. Miyagi to young Daniel, others may know the current version as “Jacket on, jacket off” from Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) to Dre (Jaden Smith) in the latest Karate Kid movie. How many of us have had that “Huurrhhh say what? You want me to do what?” moment when training? This starts from Day One when you step into your first class for parkour when your teacher introduces you to quadrupedal movement.

 

Today, he or she announces, we are going to get onto our hands and feet and crawl around on the ground. Do it forwards, backwards and even sideways. And then after class, instead of saying that you have been crawling for 2 hours, say “I did le quadrepedie” with a French accent and now it sounds cool. Cool and French, baby. 

 

To the casual observer, a lot of training for parkour doesn't make sense. Standing on the curb and jumping to the opposite curb, turning around and repeating 100 times? Parkour. Duckwalking on a railing? Yeah, that's Parkour. Pullups on a tree branch? That's Parkour too. Curious looks, queries from passerbys, occasional catcalls and even heckling are commonplace for those who regularly train parkour in public. So, why do we still do these small movements and conditioning. Why not just do something huge and impressive? To put it into a Karate Kid analogy, why bother waxing a car, or taking on and off a jacket 1000 times when we can just blast out a roundhouse kick? Well, some of us might do that anyway. Each and every one of us is probably capable of doing something impressive that will leave the onlookers slack-jawed at our physical prowess. So why do we still bother with the repetition of the small movements?

 

As they say, "God is in the details". This means that anything worth doing, is worth doing thoroughly and well. Being able to do something is a feat, but being able to do the same thing well many times in succession, and with the same level of precision as the 100 times before is an accomplishment. So we train it over, and over again - 100, 1000 times, in the day, in the dark, when it's wet, or snowing, when you've just woken up, or haven't been to sleep in the last 24 hours. Sometimes we train little parts of the movement, aiming for precision and control, or we condition for the movement, so that when we do it we can do it stronger, faster and with more control and precision than before.

 

Another reason is because one discovers oneself in the depths of fatigue, exhaustion and misery. Anyone who's tried to do 100 pullups and has needed to do 1 more pullup on the 99th to finish (or the 999th pullup if your name starts with B and ends with lane), will discover how dedicated they are to completing a given task. If you have done 99 pullups and never gotten that far before, then the last one to a hundred will be the sweetest you have ever done in your life. We each may have different reasons for starting parkour, but each and every one of us believes that we will be transformed at the end of it. The effort, practise and sacrifice only makes the reward sweeter.

 

In other words, suffering and repetition builds character. If you used this same rationale and applied it as a formula, one could deduce that repeated suffering builds up mountains of character. But if mountains of suffering sounds a little daunting at this point of time, let me pull you back in with another Karate Kid analogy. While Daniel and Dre don't understand the reason behind the seemingly mundane movements that Mr. Miyagi and Mr. Han is making them do, at the end of the movie they will knock out the bully, make the spectators rise to their feet in wild applause and win over the girl. While life isn't like a Hollywood movie, we can measure our own progress by personal milestones. The highest wall run achieved. Balancing to the end of a long rail without falling off. A vault that we couldn't do before. If we had to overcome obstacles at the beginning then success only tastes that much sweeter.

 

But at the very beginning, Daniel-san waxed cars and floors, and Dre repeatedly took his jacket off. There will be quadrepedie, your legs may end up over your head at some point and possibly people will stop to stare or laugh at you. But there will be transformation. And it only happens if you “wax on wax off”.