I must've looked like a dang idiot
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Yesterday I told you something NUTS happened to me. I also told you I'd tell you about it today. BUT FIRST.....obviously I have to derail the conversation to tell you a story 😜
2014 was a wild year. I had been in the parkour scene for 4 years. Did a crazy jump at Devil's Lake State Park that I'm never ever going to repeat. I was on top of the world, and I felt my Spidey Sense tingling, telling me the ol' Uncle Ben refrain:
With great power comes great responsibility 🕷️ I felt a calling to go teach parkour to others. This was the same year I started a parkour club at UW-Whitewater (my alma mater). But I wanted to be official. I wanted to be.... 🥁 ADAPT-certified. The ADAPT certification is the gold standard for parkour coaching -- period. No other cert carries the same weight. So I signed up for the ADAPT Level 1 course in Chicago at the Parkour Ways gym and carpooled down there with a buddy of mine who was going for the same cert. I won't reveal all the cool experiences we had because it's a secret. You only get to know if you take the course. But long story short, I left feeling like I could do ANYTHING. The thing is, though, you only have 1 year to finish your 10 assistant coaching hours before your cert expires...and the hours have to be to be supervised by a Level 2 coach. I remember going to an event shortly after the course where I got to check off some of those hours. But after that, after going back to small-town Whitewater, Wisconsin...I didn't have many options. I had to drive an hour to help out at the nearest parkour class with a valid instructor. Most of the time? My college class schedule got in the way. I never finished my 10 hours. I only got a few. I was pretty bummed. The rest, as they say, is history:
Parkour fell by the wayside for a long time... I still did it to relieve stress or brush up on my skills, but then I got that knee injury in 2022 because not only was I barely training, I was also 50 lbs heavier than I was in my prime. Ironically, it took getting my first parkour injury for me to finally want to coach again. So last week, I thought it'd be cool to reach out to the local YMCA and ask about offering parkour classes. I told them my story. They expressed doubt about the insurance coverage for it (even though other YMCAs have parkour classes). Ended up having to go directly to the CEO of my YMCA to make the case for it. She was my last hope (It's still not a "No" by the way, she's doing her homework on it). I realized it'd help if I was back on the ADAPT certification track, but I knew I'd need to retake the course to get certified as Level 1 again. So I reached out to ADAPT Qualifications and begged for sympathy (okay, it wasn't that bad). To my surprise, they wrote back with: Looks like we already have you in our database, here's your certification number 🎉 I've apparently been Level 1 Certified ever since March 18, 2015. I've been living a LIE.
There are a lot of lessons you could learn from this:
Okay maybe the last one should be Trust but verify. But honestly I don't care much about the lessons. I'm just really happy to know I'm already 1 step on the path to teaching the next generation about the discipline that changed my life for the better. I even added it to my LinkedIn profile under Licenses if you want to go admire my shiny new cert. Okay, for real, this did teach me something, though. If I could sit on this for 10 years and not know about it, what are you sitting on? So many of us never recognize our own potential even when it's staring us in the face. You might think you're not capable of something, even though in reality, it wouldn't take much for you to have the confidence that you could do that thing. What you most likely struggle with is the ability to break down a goal into its smaller parts. And then act on the next logical step towards getting what you want. I could've reached out to ADAPT Qualifications years ago. I didn't need to wait this long. I could've asked, "Hey, how many coaching hours do I have left?" And they would've told me exactly what they told me yesterday. Sometimes the goalpost isn't as far away as you think. You just need to sit with the problem a second longer, and take action on what's in front of you. You might have this problem with job-hunting right now. I make it crystal-clear what you're missing in terms of a strong candidate profile: >>> Increase your "Job Hunter Luck" in 2025 There are 6 chapters in there, each with practical assignments to help you look like a QA Diety compared to the other normies on the market. Can't really make it easier than that without 1:1 calls. Oh and it's Tuesday, by the way. Go make some tacos 🌮 (I will be) Cheers, Steven |
Steven Boutcher
Helping software testers increase their authority and influence.
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