This spring, some of our board members made a trip to Texas to train with other national leaders and the amazing SA crew. Much training and jubilation ensued! Some was even caught on tape, and edited by Jereme Sanders of Texas Parkour. Look for guest appearances by Tyson Cecka, Brandee Laird, and Janine Cundy.
March 15th boasted the first parkour class taught by Parkour Visions at Northwest Crossfit in Bellevue. This was a completely free event open to the public. With thirty-six attendees, two main coaches, and three assistant coaches, the gym was packed and full of movement for two hours. And, excitingly, it was one of the most diverse classes we’ve had yet! The age of attendees ranged from single digits to happily over the hill, and entire 
families—yes, moms, kids, dads, even grandma!—jumped in to share the lessons of the day.
We started with a balance course to ease into activity, practicing ‘touch’—acute physical awareness—with variation challenges of walking forwards, backwards, and sideways while balancing on rails, thin boards, and navigating over boxes. Next, a vigorous quadrupedal warm-up, traveling through the room after Tyson follow-the-leader style over, under, and through. Everyone received some extra burn courtesy of Adam in the conditioning that followed, had a water break, and were grouped out to hit the basics. Here, the youngest enjoyed their own lessons with Janine while the older cycled through their stations—safe falling, jumping, landing, and rolls. All ages regrouped for the movement techniques that followed: vaulting, climbing, and jumping precisely. There was something distinctly delightful about watching people shimmy like monkeys on the bars during Rafe’s climbing work, hanging and swinging around—for many, recalling and reclaiming the playground years they’d thought passed.
It’s always so inspiring for me to see and meet people exploring new movement, pushing through the intensity of exercises, and ending the day smiling with pockets full of new skills. It’s also a huge delight that in the recent classes, more families have been showing up together; I wish my family had had parkour class to go to! How cool would it be if you could say to your parents and siblings, “Lets go jump!” and have everyone know exactly what you mean? Seeing so many people come to train together is the reason I love and want only to share parkour, to bring individuals closer to their bodies and build solid communities of healthy, moving people.
We received an overwhelming amount of good feedback from the class, such as, “I thought enthusiasm and clarity were great,” and, “There was a good variety of skills taught.” That “everyone was friendly and motivating and helpful,” is not only something for us to be proud of, but for us to acknowledge and continue to strive toward in every class and clinic we teach. Feedback of any constructive nature is greatly appreciated, so if you attended and want to comment further, please do! You may comment to the blog, or send your thoughts to classes@parkourvisions.org.
I’d like to thank everyone who showed up to make this class possible; being shown the interest is all we need to be there. Great job to everyone who jumped at this opportunity to learn something new, and keep an eye out for us in Bellevue!
More photos from Parkour Visions events can be found <here> on Flickr.
Join Parkour Visions as we offer our first Bellevue class on Sunday, March 15 from 3pm – 5pm at Northwest Crossfit in Bellevue. The free class will be modeled after our highly successful free monthly workshop in Seattle; it will be led by veteran traceurs Tyson and Rafe and will focus on fundamentals such as safety, running, jumping, climbing, vaulting, and rolling.
Parkour Visions’ future plans call for expansion into the Bellevue area with regular classes, and this marks our first East side offering. If you or someone you know lives on the East side and has an interest in learning Parkour, email us at classes@parkourvisions.org or stop by this free class to learn more about our classes, and membership options.
Northwest Crossfit Bellevue is located at 12121 Northup Way, Suite 110, Bellevue WA 98005.
I recently received an interesting question from Zak Zabriskie. Zak is a student writing an essay for a school project and I thought I would share my answer here as well since it’s becoming more and more relevant as time goes on:
Would an increase in popularity of Parkour be beneficial or detrimental to the philosophy and fundamentals of Parkour?
I recently received a request via the contact form to assist with a research paper on Parkour. Matt Marble wrote to us:
I am doing a research paper on Parkour for a school project and was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about this topic:
1. Who founded Parkour?
2. When was it created?
3. Why was it created?
4. Where does it exist?
5. Why is it so popular?
6. What challenges has it faced?
7. How will the problems be fixed?
Thanks for the inquiry, Matt. I’m posting my answers here for the benefit of others and any comment others might wish to contribute.
After straining my ankle…again, it became clear that ankle health is a key component to my active lifestyle. I confined myself to the house for the day with my foot up on ice and decided to share all I could to help other traceurs avoid injury. I’m just beginning further education toward a medical career so this is all pretty exciting stuff for me. I’ll try to simplify and recap without being too dry and boring. Truly, I believe the more you understand about what is going on under your skin, the more you can learn to control it.
Jake Mohr goes to Gig Harbor High School and has chosen to learn parkour and integrate it into his schooling as his senior project. To do so, he is setting and working toward numerous training goals, duly documenting his journey along the way. He contacted Parkour Visions to assist him in this process by providing a mentor from the community–that’s me–as well as seeking opportunities for community service. The project is well on it’s way and it’s to be an exciting six months of learning, training, and play!
Last Saturday, the 8th of November, I met with Jake for the first time to work with him on learning the fundamentals of training parkour. We began our day of basics at Gasworks Park–a popular training ground for Seattle traceurs–starting with running to get our blood circulating and followed immediately by a solid quadrupedal movement conditioning session on a section of stairways by the waterfront. From there we moved to practicing rolls, jumping and landing, and precision, then moved over to vaulting techniques and balance. Overall it was a good few hours of overview, focused on the importance of conditioning and essential training technique.
A bit from Jake’s training log on the Washington Parkour forums:
I started parkour for personal reasons, and took serious steps for academic reasons, let’s see how it turns out!
November:
Week One (technically week 2):
So, today I met up with [Brandee] at Gas Works Park and here’s my recap:What I learned:
1. an awesome conditioning routing
2. tips on how to roll, jump and vault
3. improvements on jumping and landingGoals for this week:
1. try to increase amount of conditioning using [Brandee's] tips
2. dedicate a minimum of 10 minutes to practicing rolls while out practicing …
After training we hit the NWCrossfit Gym in Greenlake to check out the facility and meet some local traceurs attending the weekly parkour class taught by Tyson and Rafe of the Parkour Visions. Unfortunately, we hit the very end of class (free every second Saturday after the regular class,) and so missed out on the training of the day there, but we were able to make the Parkour Visions board meeting, which had a large turnout and yielded plenty of good information and progress within the association.
All around it was a great day for training parkour and I am strongly looking forward to working wtih Jake and experiencing the improvement that’s sure to come for both of us while training together.
Cheers to all and safe training!
Me Working
My name is Tim and recently I had the opportunity to work with Rafe Kelley and Erwan Le Corre in France, on the island of Corsica. For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been pointing my video camera at parkour practitioners for the last couple years mostly in Portland, where I live, but occasionally in Washington as well (here are a few I’ve shot). This incredible trip came about because Erwan came to Washington to teach about his method of training called MovNat. I found his concepts interesting, so I went and shot the two day clinic, and after than Erwan asked if I wished to join him in Corsica to shoot a more substantial piece. Unfortunately for the moment I cannot really share much of the work I did in Corsica because the MovNat site is still being prepared. But even so I hope some of this will be inspiring to you, to again reconsider your surroundings either urban or rural, and realize there is always, always somewhere to train.
