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(This is cross-posted at BlogHer.)

If I were outdoors and happened to see someone leaping over park benches, dangling from tree branches, and balancing precariously on things that most people wouldn’t think to bother with, I’d probably think they were a little bit crazy. Or at least I would have thought they were crazy before I heard about a sport called parkour.

According to Wikipedia, parkour focuses “on moving from one point to another as smoothly, efficiently and quickly as possible using the abilities of the human body. It is built on the philosophical premise that any obstacle, physical or mental, can be surpassed.” Doesn’t that description sound nice? The reality involves much more than that, though.

There are thousands of matches for parkour on YouTube, and this amazing example was posted just a few days ago from a parkour team in Germany:

What gets me is that most people try to exercise safely. We wear expensive shoes designed for the specific activity that we engage in most often; we wear wicking fabric to absorb our sweat; we pay attention to minute twinges in our body that signifies something is wrong and needs attention before it gets any worse.

Indeed, some people have expressed concern about the popularity of this fast-growing extreme sport. According to Jacqueline Stenson at MSNBC.com:

With all the jumps and falls, participants risk stress fractures, ankle and knee sprains, and ligament injuries, among other potential problems, says Ross [spokesperson for the American College of Sports Medicine], a foot and ankle specialist. And the sport could be quite dangerous if participants attempted over-the-top stunts such as jumping from one building to another, he says.

I’ve never seen anyone do this activity in real life, but it would be interesting to witness. Who are the people who decide to do this? Do they do it by themselves or prefer the camaraderie (and safety) of a group setting?

Adventure Girl has tried parkour, and she has an excellent post about her experience with a training class in New York City. There were both new and regular people there, and the instructors took them through a grueling workout. Adventure Girl said that parkour is “serious physical conditioning and focus, and over the next two hours I got the best workout I’ve had in recent memory.” This was just the warm-up:

* Extensive stretching of all joints – wrists, shoulders, knees, and ankles
* 1/4 mile jog while stretching and loosening elbows
* More stretching with a focus on quads, hamstrings, and hips
* Curb running – running on a narrow curb without touching the ground
* Squats
* Quadrupedal walking – walking on all fours while maintaining a straight back
* Arm circuit – 3 rounds of 4 kinds of push-ups, plank (1 min), side plank (right and left each 30 sec)
* Ab circuit – 3 rounds of plank (1 min), dip push-ups, airplane (1 min), 20 crunches, boat pose (30 sec), 10 leg/butt lifts

(And these classes aren’t just New York City. They’re offered in DC, too — a place called Primal Fitness offers both CrossFit and parkour training.)

Kelley Eskridge thinks that parkour “is amazing — beautiful and exciting, combining talent, skill, elegance and pragmatism (a blend I’ve always found compelling). So fabulous to see the human body in use, in motion, in flight.” She wishes she would have found out about it sooner:

My entire girlhood, my entire life, might have been so different in so many ways if I’d had any of this when I needed self-confidence, when I needed to be living in and learning my body rather than being so wary of it. Oh, the possibilities.

FitSugar describes how parkour first came about.

What do you think? Would you try it?

(This is cross-posted at BlogHer.)

I have no idea what it takes to plan a conference. I’ve planned meetings and taken care of various types of logistics at my job, but that’s on a pretty small scale compared to organizing something of this magnitude. First you have to think about big-picture things, such as choosing a city and the venue. You have to decide on an agenda, and whether you’ll serve food, and how much you have to charge attendees in order to make sure you can pay for everything. Will there be sponsors? Who will be your speakers? And most importantly, will anyone register?

Enter FitBloggin’10, a conference whose goal “is to educate, inspire, share, network, and learn how to blog your way to a healthier you.” They’re planning “events and panels geared towards anyone who blogs or is interested in blogging about a healthy lifestyle.”

FitBloggin’ is the brainchild of Roni Noone (I’ve heard that other fitness bloggers are collaborating with her on this conference, too, but rather than attempting to list them all I’ll ask them identify themselves). She blogs at Roni’s Weigh — in addition to a number of other sites — and will be a speaker at BlogHer ’09 next week. She also spoke on a panel at the regional D.C.-area BlogHer conference last fall.

I have to admit, I think the idea of a fitness conference is pretty cool. Next week I’ll be attending my third BlogHer summer conference, and I must admit I’ve always wished they had a specific track dedicated to health and fitness topics. Why don’t they? Well, there’s only so much time, I suppose, and there’s a lot of stuff to fit into that time.

Is FitBloggin’ strictly for fitness bloggers? Absolutely not. There are plenty of people who write about exercise and living healthy on their blogs, but also write about other topics, too (including myself). And just like there are people who attend BlogHer conferences who have never-ever blogged before (yes, I’ve met them), or because they want to find out how to get started, FitBloggin’ won’t turn you away just because you don’t write exclusively about health and fitness.

Due to all the preparation that must be involved, it’s no wonder that a conference taking place next March (3/20/10, to be exact) would already be asking for input, suggestions, and recommendations. (Heck, even the folks who plan the BlogHer conferences begin planning the next year’s conference as soon as the current one wraps up.)

Additional information:

Location: “FitBloggin’10 will be hosted at the Marriott Baltimore Waterfront. Located on the edge of Baltimore’s historic Inner Harbor and steps from downtown. The Marriot is located in Maryland’s newest neighborhood, Harbor East.”

Tentative schedule: It’s just a rough outline right now, but it’ll give you a good idea of what they’re planning. It looks like there are three discussions scheduled (and possibly having a choice of more than one option if they end up having multiple sessions).

Call for ideas: Roni said, “I hope to get more information about, and for, sponsors in the next month but more importantly I’m interested in what YOU want out this event. After all, if it’s a place to connect, learn, grow and network what is it you want to connect, learn, grow and network about? I’m hoping to see if my ideas are on the right track but to also make this conference a place where we, collectively drive it’s direction.”

Contact: You can leave a comment on any of the posts on the FitBloggin’ site, or email Roni at roni@skinnyminnymedia.com.

What do you think of a fitness/health blogging conference? Would you attend if you could?

Related Reading:

Merry Mary said that she’s “all for the idea” of FitBloggin’ and “will be there no matter what I have to do (sell a kidney for plane fare? hitch hike to Baltimore?).”

Stacie facilitated a fitness workshop for the Go Red Girlfriend Women’s Conference, sponsored by the American Heart Association. She says she “had alot of fun encouraging women to use simple dance and movement as forms of exercise in order to improve their health and decrease their risk for cardiovascular disease.”

(This is cross-posted at BlogHer.)

For some people, staying fit qualifies as a fun hobby. They choose to do things they enjoy, like running, biking, swimming, or rock climbing (or all of those things, and more). Other people know that they should move, so they choose activities that are convenient and effective — even if they don’t particularly like to do them. But what makes someone go from just liking (or putting up with) exercise to saying, “I LOVE to work out?”

Personally, I find it hard to imagine that someone can have a good time on an indoor cardio machine, like a treadmill or elliptical. Even when I used an elliptical machine on a regular basis, I would never have said that I was enjoying myself. Sure, you can tell me that you don’t mind it — that you’re easily distracted by the television or music and it makes the time goes by “so quickly” — but a good time? When I think of pumping endlessly away on an indoor machine versus getting up early to bike outside in the crisp morning air…it just doesn’t seem like a fair comparison.

To be fair, it’s impossible to enjoy physical activity all the time, even if we’re doing something we normally love. While I prefer to be outside because it helps the time go by faster, I certainly don’t like it every time. Of course the best situation is being outside when the weather is beautiful and I have a lot of energy — but that doesn’t happen nearly often enough. I went for a walk a few nights ago even though I didn’t really want to; the air was a little humid, and my legs were sore because of the lower-body workout I’d done the previous day.

I was glad when I got home, and no, I didn’t particularly enjoy my walk. Still, I was glad that I’d gone out, especially since I could relax on the couch afterward without feeling quite as slug-like. But did I go out for a walk because I wanted to? No. Did I go because I felt like I had to? “Had to” is a strong term, but I knew it had been a few days and that I needed it. So I guess I went for a walk because I felt like I should.

Now, working out with weights, I actually don’t mind that so much. I like the feeling of walking out of the gym, barely able to lift my arm to unlock the car door because I’ve exhausted my upper body. But do I love weights so much that would I do it even if I knew I wouldn’t see any results from it? Of course not.

Yes, I definitely work out because I feel like I should. No, I don’t always love it. But I do like the results — which is why most people spend time working out, I suppose. Exercise doesn’t just improve your physical appearance, it makes you stronger, increases your endurance, and helps maintain a positive mood. Given all those advantages, it’s definitely worth it to me.

Do you love to work out, or do you do it because you feel like you should?

Related Reading:

Roni’s Weigh: Roni says she loves working out, but it was a gradual process to get to this point.

I convinced myself for so long that I was not athletic. That I didn’t like the gym or working out. I made fun of gym rats, calling people who exercised on vacation insane. I really thought I just wasn’t built for exercise. Then S.L.O.W.L.Y. things started to change. [...]

Now…I’m embracing my new hobby. And that’s really what it is, a hobby. I enjoy it. It’s an outlet. It can be social yet solitary. I can measure my success by weight lifted, miles ran, time, even muscle tone. Not to mention it has health benefits and makes me feel fantastic!

Cindy’s World: Cindy loves working out “so much that sometimes I wonder why I didn’t choose a career as an athlete of some sort rather than as an artist.” She was encouraged by a recent article in the LA Times about “the original owner of Bally Total Fitness who is 76 and still in GREAT shape and kicking butt in all kinds of athletic endeavours.”

Phillygrrl used to work out, “but that was back when I worked at a gym and it was free.”

I hate hate hate working out. In general. I have no will-power, never have. I used to work out, but that was back when I worked at a gym and it was free. Now that I’m actually paying for a membership, I rarely use it. What’s it been, seven months already? That was a waste of $150. Shoot. I would’ve been better off investing in yoga gear so I could at least fool people into thinking I work out. (A yoga mat can also double as a floor rug, people.)

That’s Fit: Top 5 Reasons to Always Be Fit