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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 the PNWPA 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 landing

Goals 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 PNWPA. 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 PNWPA 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!

When the PNWPA first opened up classes at NW Crossfit we had an absolutely amazing first class with a lot people there. In the weeks that followed though we found that most of those people at the first class were our supporting friends in the WAPK parkour community who loved what we were doing but weren’t really interested in taking beginner classes themselves (they’d already gained most of that through the community).

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I’m excited today to announce the launch of PNWPA’s Leave No Trace initiative. Leave No Trace is a philosophy that extends into everything we do at PNWPA, most importantly into our training. It means, simply, that we respect and preserve our training grounds before, during, and after training. It’s a philosophy that Janine (pax) and several great traceurs have been promoting for over a year and which recently has taken hold of the whole North American scene under the Leave no Trace name. It drives our clean-up efforts at local training grounds, is featured prominently in our community outreach efforts, and is becoming a cornerstone of our Parkour classes.

In practical terms, Leave No Trace is both about advocacy and personal responsibility. It means that you as the traceur are respectful of property and don’t leave smudge marks from your shoes on a park wall, and it means that together we advocate for shoe manufacturers to develop non-marking shoes. It means that you as the traceur know which equipment in your local playground can handle your high-impact Parkour practice, and it means that together we work with playground designers and suppliers to install equipment that adults can use too.

You can find detailed information on the Leave No Trace project page where we outline the specific steps that every traceur should take to keep Parkour safe and unregulated. As we continue to develop advocacy plans we’ll update the project page. In the mean time we welcome your feedback and ideas.