Monday, April 22, 2019
End of a chapter
By the end of April, it feels like I'm moving on to another new phase of my life.
It's funny how there's always a countdown period to a new phase even in your mid-twenties, and you thought school (Pri > Sec > Poly > Uni) and NS were over and there's nothing left to dread. You thought wrong.
The past year was a unique one because I indulged fully into the Parkour hustle mode. After a four month stint in an video-editing job – I decided to say fuck it to my bachelor degree in film and go full out to live out of Parkour. So I did. I started out Kraken classes with Parkour Singapore and took up a full-time job at The Yard as a Ninja Director. These two decisions really spearheaded me into a direction in life that I've never thought I'll be taking.
Let's start with the positives:
To have the experience of running a brand new class at Kraken from the get-go is truly humbling and rewarding – from seeing 2 or 3 regular kids training in the gym once a week (had to pull through somehow), to having to work out capacity issues with classes up to 20 people in a small dainty gym. Now we run Kraken classes 3 times a week, and I have a couple of private lessons that could tide me by pretty sustainably.
Being a 'Director' of a new program in a new gym at The Yard was a totally different experience as well. Being put in the position of kids as young as 3 years old to 10 years old forced me to learn how to better connect with younger kids. Class control. Being able to work with parents expectation. Being professional. Coming up with more creative things to teach. And actually see some of these kids improve as they are being assessed with my level system. Marketing. Running Ninja Games.
On the other hand, there's a lot to this that I didn't enjoy as well.
Admittedly, working for someone else was the reason for a lot of unhappiness in the past year with the Yard. Apart from restricted freedom to run your lessons how you want to, the amount of corporate bullshit and backstabbing that happens (even in a gymnastics business like this) is crazy as well. I re-learnt that I have to be careful with who I trust. This is also the reason why I had to call it quits after one year (only got to enjoy a decent pay raise the past 4 months, but oh well, off to greener pastures).
There's also a lot of stresses that comes with running your own classes. Business is blooming, which is amazing. It was also this year that we decided to merge with Move Academy so that we have more brains and manpower. I'm super happy with the new website and direction we are working towards all whilst doubling the size of our student base. However, there's still a lot to work on before I feel fully satisfied with it. Now needing to split the profits four-ways (and more) is much more complicated and there's a lot of touchy topics that requires a lot of discussion to make things fair. I just have to remain calm and believe that the good will come out of this soon.
Lastly, after indulging in the coaching life fully and trying to learn more and push myself to become a better coach, I still feel that in the very essence, I'm still an athlete that wants to get better in movement. Living the coaching-6-days-a-week type of life has not only made me somewhat sedentary as well. The drive of training after coaching 7 hours is gone because you just want to head home after that. On top of that, my brain is fried 24/7. You're on high alert constantly –making sure kids are safe and not running off, not affecting the other classes/students, are still improving, and appeasing the parent's (and other coaches') expectation. You also have to make sure that you are catering to every skill level in a class that has kids, teens, adults, and seniors. There's also only so much you can do to keep things fresh while you coach back to back week after week at the same old facility. Slowly, you start to feel that the quality of your classes has dropped, despite you trying your best to maintain the top quality coaching that you claim to offer. Am I looking forward to coaching my class after 1.5 years of this? Not so much...
This new phase of life will mean so much to me to finally be able to train again. I'm 99% healthy, my power level hasn't dropped too drastically but I'm determined to get it back up. Mentally, I haven't pushed myself in ages, and my technique probably got rusty a little. I can't wait till I'm back on regular training form and I can start to enjoy moving so much more again, while just having to coach twice (instead of the original 6 times) a week.
Now I finally can also have more time to create content. God knows the number of projects that are currently left hanging and collecting dust in the hard drives. I got so much I want to do, but it will still require quite some time and easing back to. Hopefully something good will come out of the content I'm intending to push for...
I am going to rearrange my schedule and make sure I stick to it. 2 days of coaching, 1 day of admin work. 1 day of weights gym, getting back to the rehab & stretching life, work on my handstands & 1-armed pull-ups, work on some new skills (Ninja, Yoga, Climbing), and then loads of practice. I want to make a goals list for Parkour moves as well. I'm also going to read a book once every week, cut down on social media scrolling and unnecessary spendings. And sleep early!!!
Unfortunately, there's still quite a fair bit of work to do outside of coaching, and that's because we're about to go full swing into planning mode for LCG2019. Hopefully with much more time and experience, I am able to pull this off to the best of my ability. Pushing it to the next level. I'm also going to focus a lot on community events and driving business to the classes. Let's hope it all works out.
Also, I think I'm going to go to Jump Off which I'm super looking forward to now. Miss big Parkour events and this would be a good one to go to.
Other than that, I can't wait till it's 27th April. New chapter begins then.