Today we’d like to introduce you to Curron Gajadhar.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I dropped out of art school in 2010 after not being able to receive any loans for tuition. I’d seen parkour a few years before on Ripley’s Believe it or not and the ‘Jump Britain’ and London documentaries. Between looking for a new job and painting, I still had a lot of free time to fill the void of physical expression. I wrestled all four years of H.S. and was looking for a new discipline to fill that role ever since. After shying away from it for a few years and making excuses, I finally went out on my 21st birthday and tried a view basic vaults I knew of at the time. I eventually tracked down other pk practitioners in the area and smoothed out the basics with them at meetups around the city but due to my work schedule and impulsive training style (sometimes starting at 3 am), I ended up training alone most of the following years experiencing a bit of divergent evolution as far as locomotion goes compared to other traceurs.
Standard movement on their part became my own solutions, similar but usually more feline. I drifted from moves more so to developing my own style of locomotion all together. I didn’t have proof or a reason at the time for this gut feeling but in the next few years, I learned the importance of preserving our natural responses to stress as our bodies were designed to. These conclusions led me to the developing s more “hunter gather style “of training, akin to a physical behavior and character of movement before we lived as self domesticated as we do now. The restrictive clothing architecture and even travel from A to B shape our bodies self-concept and emotions (see Situationist). Parkour became a consistent ritual for building muscle defeating mental boundaries and a gateway drug to kinesiology, Chinese medicine nutrition, and other studies.
I’ve since toyed with cross training other physical arts to test the universality of what I teach, getting better at using your body as designed so secondary, expressive, non-survival based physical activities also improve. Movement and locomotion are primary as expressed through design, sport is tertiary and skill based. The Benefit of cross training for myself in modern dance, ballet, football, baseball, MMA and so on, is the opportunity to become a beginner again at a skill and shorten the learning curve using my own system. If I can start cutting down that time it takes to approach an intermediate level of new physical art or skill, then I’ll really know the portions of my program that work best and a sharpen it over time. As of today, the main cross-training element that I’ve added so far is MMA as an easy tangent to break into but ballet will soon follow. Setting an example of honing a masculine or yang activity with a yin activity as well is part of the approach. I’m in the best shape of my life and maintain most of it myself short of an accidental injury. Feels a good place to be.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s definitely not been smooth. At all. Ha! You learn a lot about yourself once you commit to something worth pursuing, that kind of momentum comes with an unfoldment that is inevitable, but in a way, you can’t prepare for. One of my biggest upset was to watch mentors teachers and brands fall from pedestals once I finally eyes of agreeable rose-tinted glasses. Getting to this point involved a lot of sifting through fitness trends hype and colloquialisms thrown around the gym or workshops. Since the genesis of that was really to solve issues for myself, I felt a stark contrast whenever I worked with someone long enough to realize that fitness is just another front to the marketplace and they are willing to sell you anything that sounds convincing enough. Sometimes, the experience is the lesson and I had to let a lot of people go who verbalized enthusiasm and sense of duty didn’t align. There’s quite I wish I figured out sooner, (who doesn’t) but I did take away that the journey is worth it and pride and joy can be found in the direction alone sometimes. Learning when to back off of a sword in stone when it’s time to, readjust and tense once more… grows you. I’ve seen my material, execution business flex and mature as I do and it’s always nice to have a mission alongside you to reflect those pivots. Find a mission that’s worth it and the turbulence won’t phase you. You’ll be more excited to pick up wherever you let off and have to fortitude to do so. Working on something that means more to you will help distance your from the pack or forget about it altogether in your own self made lane.
Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
To build a traceur is a training approach that highlights natural parkour movement at its core and a means for total body tone and awareness. Most athletes that are performing at a high level are starting to realize the advantage of having a core competence of natural movement training and a prerequisite to better performance in a sport specific skill. I give my students a means to be better informed about using their body with respect to its design, heal most structural aberrations in the muscle or joint tension and tools to completely transform into a more densely muscled explosive animal with loads of stamina. The latter end is based on my personal needs to continue to grow towards a high-level traceur but my program is adaptable to the needs of sports or any physical art. I teach only what I’ve been willing to test on myself. I’m the strongest and most limber I’ve ever been so I post my own training as a benchmark for my clients to keep in mind that I can help them attain the same abilities.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @iamaspernaut
Image Credit:
Photos by Ish Holmes and Johnnie Kornegay @ishholmes, @jayrayisthename
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