Sam's Adventures in Parkour

I suppose I’ll start this off by saying that I’m not an especially athletic person. Working out is kind of alright, but I would never play sports or go running by choice. That being said, parkour is universally acknowledged as being really cool. I signed up for the Parkour club in my freshman year at club fair (remember signing up for way too many clubs as a freshman?), but have never actually gone, because it sounded too similar to running.

I finally decided to go to parkour a few weeks ago. I figured it was probably about time. I mean, I’ve been in the club for three years now, I might as well make an appearance. After struggling to find the room where we met, I went inside. There was a fairly large gathering of people (I’d say around 30) and we all divided into groups of whose car we would take to get to the gym.

The gym was pretty cool. It was the kind of gym used for gymnastics, not working out. There were a few balance beams in the corner, and there were trampolines built into the floor. There were several soft obstacles, but the most fun part was a squishy floor. The main floor was raised slightly and bouncy. I‘m not sure how it worked, my guess is springs under the floor, but the floor was slightly bouncy, which is helpful if you’re going to be doing flips on it.

Anyway, it turns out that in addition to being really cool, parkour is pretty fun too. We started off by running laps to warm up, then we practiced breaking our fall by rolling. You know in how in action movies or in video games, the main character will dive into a roll, then be back on his feet? We practiced doing that. It was kind of jarring at first; I was a complete novice, and this looked like an advanced technique, but it really wasn’t that hard, and now I can do badass stunt flips (disclaimer: I can do awkward stunt rolls on a soft floor).

After that was jumping over blocks. There are several different cool jumping techniques in parkour (henceforth referred to as “vaults,” since that’s what they’re called). They’re pretty hard to do as an amateur. I only did one-handed vaults, since I found that the easiest; that is, I put on hand on the obstacle and used it to push my legs over the side.

It’s kind of hard to describe, but this is a picture.

 Pictured: not actually me

Then we just kind of did our own thing for a bit. I practiced doing flips off of a trampoline into a foam pit, and doing flips off a model house they had into a foam pit. Flips are fun and cool, and an important life skill to have.

We finished it up by playing parkour tag, which is really just “the floor is made of lava” with pushups involved. More specifically, we put obstacles all over the floor, then we played tag where you were only allowed to stand on the obstacles. If you touched the floor, it was a 5 pushup or crunch penalty.

Parkour was a lot of fun, and also probably a good workout, which got me thinking. As kids, we do a lot of this stuff naturally. Running and jumping is fun. As we grow older, we stop enjoying ourselves so much, or our parents tell us to be careful, and we eventually develop a proper sense of fear; not being afraid of monsters under the bed, but fear of hurting yourself doing physical activity (which is honestly kind of understandable; my risk of being eaten by a monster is 0, my risk of spraining an ankle by landing on it wrong is a bit higher). A lot of this is just learning as an adult to do what felt natural as a kid, and also attaching numbers to it. The fact that parkour is fun is good; the fact that it’s fun and probably counts as exercise is better.

I feel like I should also point out that people who are good at parkour are amazing to watch. Sure, we don’t have any pros or anything, but the more advanced members would dive over blocks, then sort of hand-walk over them while in the air. It’s insanely cool, and sort of feels wrong; you think to yourself that it shouldn’t be possible, somehow. But of course, it is; you watch your friends doing flips and flying through the air, and all is right with the world.

I dunno. I’m kind of rambling here. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that parkour is cool.