Day 7 - Rolling on Concrete

For my next fear challenge I went back to facing my fears in Parkour. This fear was dealing with one of the most important concepts in Parkour, the roll. For my challenge, I was going to be taking this move onto much harder territory. 

In order to do an effective Parkour roll, you have to be able to roll without feeling any pain. Now when starting off, most beginners will take their rolls on surfaces such as grass or mats. When you get better you move onto harder areas such as concrete. For me, I have moved onto rolling on concrete. A surface that causes a lot of pain if I mess up on the roll. 

After spending years try to perfect my roll I have finally been able to go from a sitting position and rolling nearly painlessly on concrete. However, because the roll has to be done to perfection for it to be painless, there's always a slight hesitation on going forth and doing the roll. So for my challenge, I was going to take this roll on concrete and a little momentum to it by jumping off a 3 foot surface then rolling. This added momentum would mean that if I did not do the roll perfectly, I would be dealing with a lot more pain. 

I took this challenge on at a park I go to often for Parkour. I started off leading into the challenge by doing my typical concrete rolls. After I felt I had enough practice, I jumped forward a few feet then rolled. I instantly felt pain from the roll and identified what I was doing wrong with the movement. After practicing a couple of more times I settled to try to do the jump off the 3 foot surface. I set myself on a platform at least 3 feet high from the ground . I stared at the ground for a good few minutes before I heard people coming from a distance. "Shit it's either now or never", I thought to myself as I took a deep breath. 

I jumped off the surface and did my roll on my right side. I then felt a shot of pain go through the middle of my spine. I identified that I was doing the roll too far forward. I quickly corrected myself and decided to do the jumped again. This time, I went at it with a clear mind. I spent more time correcting my roll and doing this jump more until I felt I needed to give myself a break.

Although I didn't accomplish a perfect jump to concrete roll, I did get over my fear of the jump itself. After I did my first jump to roll the rest of the jumps became easier. I was soon doing these jumps with no thought to them. I feel that I could take a lesson from this fear. What caused me hesitation was the idea of the unknown. Even though the roll hurt, it did not hurt as badly as I figured it would. It put me at ease following the next few jumps. Thinking back to my previous lessons in fear was definitely helpful in taking on this fear.