Back to Bangkok and the PkGen Asia show at the Queen's Imperial Park Hotel

After another long (but during daylight, and pretty picturesque) ferry ride back to the mainland, we took an overnight bus (a lot less enjoyable) back to Bangkok to get back in time for a day of adjusting and light training before getting ready for the PkGen Asia debut show.

Coming back to Bangkok after so much time in the south of Thailand was a bit of a culture shock but it was also a very welcome relief to get back to training on a regular basis.  Of course the first place we went to was Saphan Taksin, where we showed Dan Edwardes around (who had just arrived from snowy London, and was soon sweating like a one of those funny-hatted guards in red in summertime).  Dan had come to Thailand to help Stephane with the official launch of PkGen Asia.  This also happened to coincide with a PkGen performance at a rooftop party at the Queen’s Imperial Park Hotel in the heart of the city.  Aparently this party was one of a monthly series of parties that were pretty popular on the Bangkok party scene.  While the initial estimates of 1,500 people sounded pretty outrageous to me when they were outlining the game-plan I was also pretty nervous, especially since this was to be my first official parkour “performance”.

A publicity photo of the hotel as seen from the nearby park.

We arrived a day early at the hotel to check it out and to get things set up for the show, mainly the choreography.  Of course the scaffolding that we were supposed to be performing on wasn’t ready when it was supposed to be, which gave us a much smaller window to practice things in and to figure out our respective routes for the show.  Despite that, we managed to get in enough runs the evening before, and the morning of the event, and I gorged myself into a semi-food coma at the buffet brunch in the morning (it was probably one of 3 meals that I had during my month in Thailand that left me “full”).

A bit of an upgrade from the bungalows of Ton Sai...

Enjoying having my "own room" for the first time in a while.

The set-up.  Photo courtesy of Julie Angel.

Hanging out underneath the scaf to take shelter from the midday sun.  Photo courtesy of Violetta Beral.

Julie figuring out angles for video and grabbing a few still shots.  Photo courtesy of Violetta Beral.

The starting line-up at the top of the roof, preparing to make the descent to the scaf.  Photo courtesy of Violetta Beral . 

Dan making the drop to the scaf.  Photo courtesy of Violetta Beral.

After a power-nap and few last runs on the scaffolding before the reporters started arriving we got ready for the show.  The first (of three) show was actually held right after a press-counference in which Steph announced the launch of PkGen Asia and described a bit about the company and its goals.  The video below was made by Julie Angel and shows a bit of Steph speaking as well as the full show.

After that performance we had a few hours before the next one where we could watch the party start and hang out with the guests.  It was pretty interesting to watch the party begin to unfold and to see the Bangkok "party scene" come to life.  By the time we did the second performance, things were starting to get pretty wild.  The second show went off smoothly and I found that I actually really enjoyed the “performing thing”, especially when it’s doing something that I know well and am comfortable and relaxed doing.  By that time the party was well underway and by the time we did the last performance about a half hour before the party was due to be closed the audience was pretty excited.  Despite some improvised flair elements that threw off some of the timing a bit, the third performance went well.  After a rather prolonged photo-shoot afterwards we headed back to our rooms to take quick showers and change before heading out to join some of the other team members for celebratory smoothies and drinks at a local bar.

The performance team and PkGen Asia staff.  Photo courtesy of PkGen Asia.

An introduction to Bangkok

So after my visits to London and Paris had flown by, I headed to Bangkok for the next part of my adventures.  I arrived in the city and was welcomed by a sudden gust of hot humid air that hit me the moment the airplane doors opened and forced me to take off the multiple layers that I had been wearing.  I was immediately struck by the “foreignness” of the city, which is very different from the other places that I have visited over the past year and a half of traveling.  While many aspects of life in Bangkok were similar to things that I’d seen in other cities, there were a lot of things that I had never seen before, and unlike most of the other places that I visited, my “foreignness” couldn’t be hidden by keeping my mouth shut and nodding and smiling, instead it was broadcast to all passerby's by my "Western" appearance.

Within a few hours of arriving in Bangkok I met up with the other members of the Parkour Generations family that had congregated in Thailand.  While not all of the visits had been planned to overlap with the others, there were way too many of us for it to be called a coincidence.  After spending an afternoon and evening getting re-adjusted to the climate and the time change, we met up for a group training session at Lumpini Park, conveniently located near the guest house some of us were staying at.  The training group was an international medley featuring Andy “Kiell” Day (UK), Violetta (Spain), Stephane Vigroux (France), Leon Lawrence (UK), the Annty Marais (France), Bruno Peixoto and his wife Rafa (Brazil), myself (USA), and some of the guys that Steph had started training with from Bangkok.  Anan Anwar (Thailand) and Shaun Wood (Australia) also showed up to the park accompanied by Jason Paul (Germany), who was in town to hang out with the guys and make some new videos with Team Farang (more details to come).  Since I’d been hearing about these guys from various people throughout my travels it was good to finally be able to train with them and see them move in person.  Needless to say, we weren’t a particularly small or inconspicuous group and we soon discovered that the Thai park authorities were not nearly as understanding and accepting of parkour as their British equivalents and we found ourselves moved on from one spot in the park to another.

A PkGen family (+ extended family) reunion in Lumpini Park my first day in Thailand.  Photo courtesy of Leon Lawrence.

 The next day we spent the morning exploring the city before heading over to Saphan Taksin to meet up with some local traceurs.  The park that we met in was located under a major highway overpass and had a number of basketball, football, and sepak takraw (think volleyball + football) courts, a weightlifting area, and most importantly, a metal climbing structure that looked like it had been built for insanely heavy children, or just designed to stand for the next 200 years. 

The park.

Perhaps the demographic that it was initially intended for.

While the design of the structure may look pretty simple at first glance, the simplicity and unadorned design is perhaps the genius of it as a training structure as it allows for an almost infinite amount of creativity in movement.  The park happens to be the preferred training spot of a group of young traceurs (aged 8-23) that call themselves the “Dark Monkeys”.  While it still isn’t clear to me how much of their movement in the park is inspired by traceurs like Anan Anwar and the other members of Team Farang who have been using the park for the past few years and how much is totally organic (there seems to be a pretty incredible amount of “play” and “natural exploration” that goes on among the group, most of whom are between 10-16 years old), the routes and movements that they do show just how much time many of them spend there (it is almost guaranteed that 5-10 of them will be there any given afternoon after school lets out).

The first 2 minutes of the video below shows some footage that Leon took of movement at the park.

As one can see from the videos, the park offers seemingly limitless opportunities for creativity and expression.  It was pretty amazing to watch the kids “playing” in the park as their movements seem to defy their ages in many cases and show just how much time many of them actually spend in the park.  Training with the kids was a lot of fun and it soon became our “default” training spot throughout our time in Bangkok.  While many of the traceurs had a high skill level when moving around the park, many aspects of “Parkour Generations/Yamakasi” training were pretty new to them, most notably many of the warm-up and conditioning drills.  It was interesting to see how the kids had developed in the atmosphere of “play” which was very different from the atmosphere that exists in the Yamakasi and Parkour Generations training tradition.  Many of the kids were very curious about the way we trained and even more so once shirts started coming off due to the heat and there was a a notable difference between the physiques of the two training methods (Leon was probably the most obvious example and his Hulk-like muscles were fascinating to the kids).

Leading a"Parkour Generations style" warm-up at the park.  Photo courtesy of Violetta  Beral.

Winterval at LEAP

After a day to sleep off the jet-lag I headed back to the LEAP facility for the Parkour Generations Winterval event.  The idea was initially inspired by the success of the Rendezvous events held in the summer and meant to encourage people to train in the colder months of the year as well as the nice ones.  It also served as the launching event for the LEAP Park, which had officially opened the day before.

The location for Winterval 2012. (Photo courtesy of Saiyan Parkour Academy)

While the weather was a bit colder than it is for Rendezvous in August, Winterval had the same great community feeling and atmosphere that seems to be especially prevalent at the Parkour Generations events that I've had the opportunity to attend.  The participants were divided into different groups based on their skill levels and spent the day training throughout the park and the surrounding athletic facilities with instructors from a wide variety of backgrounds.

I spent the day coaching alongside the other PkGen staff and a number of guest coaches that had been invited from the Greater London area.  While there were definitely a few downsides to not being a participant (it’s a lot colder for the instructors than most people realize) it was great to be back coaching in the UK and to be able to work with a wide variety of skill levels.  Since we had some free time throughout the day I also got a bit of time to reacquaint myself with the park (until then, I’d only trained on the park once the rest of the Westminster facility had been closed down for the night) which seemed to just as daunting in daylight.

Leon and Dan planning their station for the day.  (Photo courtesy of  Saiyan Parkour Academy)

Overall, I think that the event went really well and should be a staple event on the "parkour calendar".  Not only is there a big lack of events going on during the winter months, but I think that the there was also a bit more a "

For a better look at the park and to get a feel for the event, check out the video below that was made by fellow globetrotter Bruno "Rachacuca" Peixoto:



Some more pics...

Hanging out with some of the other instructors and making my typical "photo-face".  (Photo courtesy of  Saiyan Parkour Academy)

Photo courtesy of Parkour Generations.

The "official" group picture from the event.  I'm right above Forrest with my hat over my face- thanks Abdu. (Photo courtesy of Parkour Generations.)

Back to London for the LEAP Parkour Park Opening

After a few months back in the USA, my arrival back in London felt oddly similar to coming home, and it felt good to be back within the PkGen community.  Unfortunately my flight was delayed so I missed the official opening of the LEAP Parkour Park at the Westminster Sports Academy, arriving in the city a few hours after everyone had already left.  I've attached a brief clip below that includes some footage from the event.

While there was a lot of debate at the beginning of the year in the London parkour community as to the usefulness of the park with a fair amount of resistance to the concept of “paying to train” in a city with so many great public training areas, the park seems to be becoming more and more popular.  Part of it is probably because of the presence of a number of skilled traceurs at the park, especially since many of the PkGen instructors and advanced students are often at the Westminster Academy on a regular basis anyway for classes and training (the park has also seen frequent visits by the awesome "Supa XXL Sunday Training" group).  Also, despite what some veteran traceurs may claim, the park offers a convenience factor that is tough to beat, with a large variety of very challenging obstacles (both mentally and physically) located within a small training area.  Instead of having big jumps and different training surfaces spread over the entire city or neighborhood, they are all located in a compact area and are interconnected, which allows for additional creativity.  While the park is by no means a substitute for training in the greater urban environment, it is a good place to work on specific physical techniques and mental obstacles.

Watson: Year 2 – the return to London and Rendezvous 2011

So after a few weeks at home I returned to London for two months.  While this was done under the general premise of continuing my research into parkour, I also wanted to attend some key events, get a lot more instructing experience with Parkour Generations, and to learn more about how a “parkour company” is run and organized.  I returned to London on the day before Rendezvous and arrived in the city just in time to catch the tail end of the instructor’s meeting at Elephant and Castle.

Photo courtesy of Jun Sato.

Group conditioning with the other instructors.  Photo courtesy of Jun Sato.

Taking over a local restaurant for dinner (and lots of press-ups).

While it was great to see a lot of familiar faces from my travels, it was also slightly disconcerting to see many of them standing side by side and interacting with each other.  This feeling was compounded the next day with the official start of Rendezvous VI, which featured a very diverse group of participants, among them people that I had last seen in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, or Italy.  While it took me a little while to get used to, I left the event with the distinct feeling of being part of the “community fabric” of the sport, which was a pretty cool feeling, especially when looking back to Rendezvous a year ago when I knew almost as many of the French guys as I did anyone else at the event.  It was also really good to see how far my “generation” (no pun intended) has progressed over the past year.  While I’m sure that the steady improvement is pretty standard in the sport, I do get the feeling that the group of people that I started training with in London has made a particularly concerted effort to get better and “make something” of their parkour.

In my initial plan to come back to London for Rendezvous, one of the reasons for this had been that the event was also supposed to coincide with the opening of the L.E.A.P. parkour park and training facility at the Westminster Sports Academy.  However, due to a combination of problems with the builders and municipal bureaucracy, this was not to be.

Checking out the park.  Photo courtesy of Ludo. 

So nice, yet so unfinished...  Photo courtesy of Ludo.

To be re-visited.  Photo courtesy of Ludo.

Despite the absence of the “headliner”, the event was still a big success and included nearly 200 traceurs from around the world. During the two-day event participants were given the opportunity to partake in a number of different workshops that were led by a variety of specialists from around the world.  Some were parkour training specific such as strength training and body-weight training with Chris Keighley and Blane, while others dealt with issues such as proper stretching routines, nutrition, and even some presentations by Julie Angel and Andy “Kiel” Day, the renowned film-making and photography duo that are probably some of the most knowledgeable people about the history and development of parkour today.

A stretching session led by Awsa.  Photo by Philippe Gaya.

The rest of Rendezvous was filled with two long days of the hard training that has come to be synonymous with the event, which was only exasperated by the presence of Williams Belle.  While it was later confirmed that he did everything at the event with two broken shins bones, he still managed to move around with a grace and fluidity that was inspiring to witness and which left pretty much everyone, including a lot of the more experienced guys, struggling awkwardly to master the new movements.  This was the first time that I managed to successfully cross paths with Williams in my travels and I was glad to finally be able to meet and train with him.

For me, this year was an interesting contrast with my participation in last year's event, mostly because I was wearing a white "Instructor" shirt this year.  While the absence of Chau and Laurent, who seem to have an innate ability to make people do quantities of exercises that they would not normally perform voluntarily, was definitely felt, the mantles of "hard-ass" were quickly taken up by some of the Parkour Generations instructors who seem to have perfected the art of self-inflicted physical misery as well.  Needless to say, I’m sure that that there were a lot of people that woke up very sore the following Monday and Tuesday.  All in all it was another great event and was a testament to the ever-increasing popularity of parkour around Europe.

Trust falls.  Photo by Philippe Gaya. 

Forrest leading the stretching at the end of the second day.  Photo by Philippe Gaya.

Brian getting some extra exercise.  Photo by Oliver Thorpe.

Training in the skate park next door.  Photo by Oliver Thorpe. 

Photo by Jun Sato.

The instructors of RDV 6.  Photo by Jun Sato.

Homesick for London?

I saw this video the other day and got a wave of “homesickness” for London and Parkour Generations. While I don’t miss the cold weather and bundling up in layers every day, the community there is pretty unique, and there was a vibe there that was really condusive to the "parkour lifestyle".  This video also gives a bit of a glimpse at the classes that Parkour Generations runs.



The video was made by Bruno Peixoto, a Brazilian actor, filmmaker, and one of the key members of the PkMax organization in Brazil. He is currently conducting research in London on a prestegious grant from the Brazilian Ministry of the Arts on the artistic side of parkour and its use in performance.  His other videos can be found HERE.

1000 muscle-ups

Since leaving London I’ve been trying to keep abreast of the events and training activities of the community back there and I realized that the event below is not only noteworthy, but potentially of interest to a lot of people back home. As parkour becomes more and more popular and widespread, the use of parkour as a fundraising agent is being explored. While this isn’t the first charity event involving parkour that I’ve heard of, it is by far one of the most impressive, not only due to the movement being performed, but because of the sheer volume of repetitions. The concept is pretty simple, it started off as a semi-joking question of “is it possible?”, started to germinate in people’s minds, became a popular topic of discussion amongst a core group of people in London, and eventually evolved into this. The rules: 24 hours. 1000 muscle-ups.

Below is a video demonstration for those of you that might not be familiar with “muscle-ups” (Courtesy of American Parkour Website).


The video below was put together to publicize the event, for more information you can go to the Parkour Generations website.



Just a note on what the money is actually being raised for. Naoki is a Japanese teenager that I met during the month that I spent with the Yamakasi and the rest of Majestic Force in the summer of 2009. When I arrived he was the other “foreigner” that was shadowing the team at the time. While I was there to do research and interviews, Naoki was there to train, and was pretty impressive for his age, even when his extensive martial arts background was taken into account. He was my first glimpse into the next generation of traceurs that was developing throughout the world, and kind of opened my eyes to the true international extent of the sport. He was also a really friendly and fun-loving guy, and always seemed to have a smile on his face. Despite not knowing more than a few words in French and a limited grasp of English, he got along pretty well and even did a brief interview for me to include in my research. After spending a few weeks with the guys in Evry/Lisses he went to London to train with Parkour Generations. Apparently he made a pretty big impression while he was there because when I arrived in London a year later people still said his name with a slightly reverent tone. While in London, Naoki broke his back during a training session and had to be repatriated back to Japan after being stabilized in a British hospital. In Japan he has undergone extensive medical treatment to get back to health and despite the fact that he was initially told that he wouldn’t be able to do parkour again he has made a pretty impressive comeback.

Video of Naoki pre-accident:



Needless to say, the cost of the repatriation and ensuing medical costs have been huge, so any money that can be raised to defray those costs will be most welcome for his family.

When I first heard of the challenge back in October I thought about trying to attempt the full 1000. At that point I had just done 105 over the course of a 1.5 hour class and was pretty confident that with 2 months of training I could be in physical (the mental is the tough part here) shape for it. Since my departure from London I’ve been struggling to keep muscle-ups in my regular routine and will admit that I haven’t been quite as rigorous about the conditioning as I could have been. In an effort to not injure myself by attempting things that are out of my range I joined some of my fellow “classmates” from London in doing 101 repetitions to support the efforts of our instructors at PKGen. I completed mine this past Friday with surprising ease, clocking in at a pretty speedy 25 minutes, 45 seconds, and ripping only one callous off in the process. While they definitely weren’t as hard as the last time I did them, I definitely started to feel it for the last 20 and was hard pressed to stay motivated to do any more. I managed another 10 after a break just to set a personal record for “Muscle-ups in 1 hour” so now I guess I have something to shoot for….

As I write the guys have just finished the challenge back in London. At the moment they are probably either in a comatose state of exhaustion or having their hands stapled/superglued/taped back together from their efforts. The last word I had from someone on the inside was that witnessing the event in its later stages was somewhat akin to watching someone give birth, over and over and over…

Hopefully I'll be able to post a link to the video that they make for the event in the near future …


Great job guys.



Note: for those of you interested in donating to this very worthy cause, click here:


Another note: HERE is another parkour fundraising event that was done by a guy that I met in London at the ADAPT Instructor course. 8 miles of quadrapedie to raise money for victims of the Haiti earthquake (To see what the "cat crawl"/"quadrapedie" is, see below).

Hyde Park Half Marathon

The “Weekend Wakeup” class on the Sunday after the Nottingham race was held in conjunction with the Parkour Generations booth and activity area that had been set up in the event village of the big Hyde Park Half Marathon event. This meant that not only did we have a big open space with lots of equipment, (they set up a bunch of gymnastics equipment and the portable scaffolding apparatus from the gym) but we also had lots of passersby to stop and stare.

Having fun on the scaffolding (photo courtesy of Bruno Peixoto)

Trying not to fall off the rail onto the passing bikers below (photo courtesy of Bruno Peixoto)

A little "help" from Dan while doing conditioning exercises (photo courtesy of Bruno Peixoto)  

The class was great, and although it was kind of weird to have spectators at first, I forgot about them as soon as we got moving. The weather was an atypical beautiful London autumn day, with bright sunshine, a not-too-warm-but-not-too-cold-either temperature and not a cloud in the sky. The class ran from 11 to 1 and then a lot of us stayed to hang out and continue “training” on the equipment. I write “training” because what it really felt like was playing. Maybe this was because we were soon joined by lots of kids that wanted to try it out as well, but it’s more so because of the general feeling of festivity and leisure that pervaded the entire day. Maybe it was because of the constant “monkey see, monkey do” antics, or the plethora of free samples of anything from sandwiches to hand wipes that were to be had all over- whatever it was, it felt similar to that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with a summer picnic in the park with friends. I may be drawing too many connections to the carefree daysof childhood but that’s certainly what it felt like. Just one more example of how important and influential the “parkour community” has become during my stay here in London…

The people that were up bright and early Sunday morning to train (photo courtesy of Bruno Peixoto)

ADAPT Course

The good news that resulted in my departure from London being pushed back yet again was that I was able to enroll in an ADAPT Level 1 Certification Course. The ADAPT (Art du Déplacement And Parkour Teaching) certification was a system set up in a collaborative effort between Parkour Generations and the Yamakasi/ADD Academy to establish an internationally recognized standard of parkour teaching excellence. It is currently the only internationally recognized standard and there have been certification sessions held in Brazil, the US and France.

The goal of ADAPT was to create an international standard of teaching excellence for parkour by which to train and certify instructors for teaching parkour and l’art du déplacement. The program was started recently after several years of development after the need was identified for some sort of standardization of instructors. In Britain in particular there had been huge increases in demand for parkour instructors, especially after the airing of the “Jump Britain” documentary by BBC 4 (see below).



Since most non-practitioners can be easily wowed by basic movements/bravado lots of people could claim to be proficient in a sport which they had no idea how to do, let alone teach. The need for a nation-wide standard was evident, especially since many of these individuals would be working with children.

There are currently 3 levels of ADAPT certification. The third level is the most advanced, and there are currently only 10 people that are Level 3. These include the directors of Parkour Generations, the Yamakasi, and other people that helped to develop the sport in its early days in Lisses/Evry, the birthplace of the sport.

Level 2 certification is require to be a “Full Instructor” and to be able to lead classes. It requires a very high degree of physical proficiency and experience, and also substantial teaching experience. A Level 2 certification basically means that the instructor is capable of “teaching the fundamentals of parkour to anyone wishing to learn, in any situation”. Since the instructor may find themselves teaching multiple classes per day it is necessary that they be able to comfortably perform a high volume of any movements or conditioning that they ask the class to do.

Level 1 is the most basic level of certification and is essentially an “Assistant Instructor”. The real emphasis with the Level I qualification is in the “transfer of parkour knowledge to the student”. So it’s really not how well you do parkour, but how well you can teach it. While Assistant Instructors are not allowed to lead classes by themselves, the certification allows them to start gaining the experience necessary to gain a Level 2 certification. According to the Parkour Generations website the Level 1 Instructor must have good knowledge in the following areas:

- Definition, history and principles of parkour
- Parkour terminology
- Parkour ability
- Body management: stretching, preparation, maintenance
- Teaching skills and awareness of best practice standards
- Basic injury management and rehabilitation knowledge

“The candidate must complete the Assessment Course, which involves practical assessments as well as a written assessment, and can then begin logging the required minimum 10 sessions of supervised coaching. There will be a further 2 assessed live coaching sessions at the end of this period, and if successful the candidate will then receive the ADAPT Level One Qualification.” (Courtesy of Parkour Generations website)

The course runs from October 26th to October 29th which means that I won’t be able to get all of my practical assessment hours before I leave for Australia on November 1st. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a number of my hours in Melbourne and then finish up the final coaching sessions when I return to London in March 2011.

Since one of my main objectives for this trip is to take the teaching techniques and institutional structures back with me to the States, I’m very excited to be taking part in this certification as it will be a big check mark on my “list of things to do during the Watson year”. I will keep you all posted on how the course goes next week.

Different Sports, Same Goal

I came upon this article in the newspaper on the way back from practice tonight, “Street cricket project ‘helps bowl out youth crime in 15 boroughs’”. It wasn’t just the interesting oxymoron posed by the title “street cricket” that caught my eye, but also the connection between a sporting activity and youth crime reduction. Since the use of parkour as an agent for positive social change is one of the primary things that I’m investigating during this journey, I’ve been very interested to see how other organizations are using different sports to accomplish a similar goal. To me, the most impressive part of the article was the fact that the program has already reached 94 schools in 15 boroughs around the city, with an estimated 13,000 children- all since July 2008.

I was intrigued and a quick Google search brought up the “StreetChance” website . Reading through the site not only strengthened my admiration, but also answered a lot of the questions that I had about the program, its funding, and the actual effect on the neighborhoods. All in all, I was pretty impressed, and seeing such positive results for the program has been encouraging for my own research.

For those that might be curious to see the parkour side of things, and also one of the big inspirations behind my Watson project, "Jump Westminster" is a great video and gives a taste of some of the work done by Parkour Generations.

Rendezvous 5

So I realize that I’m writing about this post a month after the event took place but it has taken me a while to totally digest the action-packed few days that were “Rendezvous 5”. This event, which took place on August 14th and 15th and was hosted by Parkour Generations in the Southbank region of London (near Waterloo Station in London), was a sort of international gathering of traceurs, similar to the ADD Experience that I went to in France this past June (see first blog post). The weekend included 2 full days of training sessions, workshops, group discussions, and general networking with traceurs from around the world, but with a special focus on those from throughout the UK. While the activities and training was great, the thing that made the event so special was the atmosphere that pervaded the event.

The logo of Rendezvous 5, designed by Andy Pearson.

After having endured several weeks of veterans hyping the event, I was both curious, and I’ll admit it, a bit apprehensive about the event. After the ADD Experience in France, I figured that I had been to the best parkour event possible and couldn’t see what the Brits could do to equal it. In retrospective, I think that this might have been due to the fact that I hadn’t quite come to understand the depth of the Parkour Generations organization yet, and also because I was (am still am) fiercely loyal to the group of people that “introduced” me to parkour.

The event started early Saturday morning with a group warm-up session on the roof of one of the big theaters in the Southbank district. The group size was impressive in and of itself, with more than 150 people showing up to the first day’s events. The participants ranged from veterans who had started practicing 7+ years ago after the first videos and documentaries came out, to people that had heard about the event from friends and had decided to try it out for the first time (needless to say, they were pretty sore after the first day). As usual, the diversity of nationalities was also impressive, with lots of people flying in for the event from all over Europe, with strong representation from Italy and France. The event also featured special guest instructors from abroad, with Laurent Piemontesi (the Yamakasi founder who I trained with last summer and who had a profound effect on my interest in the philosophy of the sport) coming in from Italy where he is establishing a parkour academy; Sebastian Foucan (James Bond: Casino Royale); Chau Belle-Dinh, Serika Kingman, and a few other members of the Yamakasi/Majestic Force/ADD Academy team; and a number of Parkour Generations “ambassadors” who seemed to reconvene from all corners of the world for this event.

Yamakasi founder Laurent (left) and co-Director of Parkour Generations, Forrest (right). Two people who have had a huge influence on my training and development in parkour.


The instructors- it would be hard to find a more talented or open group of people.

After a grueling warm-up led by Châu and the Majestic Force guys, the participants were divided into groups based on skill levels and sent to different locations around the Southbank area. We spent the rest of the day rotating among the different instructors in our small groups, with each “station” working on a different skill set, usually with a heavy influence from the particular instructor’s personal style. After 8 hours of training, many people headed back home to recover in time for the next day, while the “hardbodies” (or masochists) met up again after dinner for a “night-training” session. Slightly different from a typical training session, practicing at night in an abandoned housing project definitely gave me a new perspective on movement and a lot of the things that one doesn’t think about in broad daylight. The entire 2-hour session was conducted in compete silence, from the mimed warm-up to the “follow the leader” challenge that took us through the 3-acre estate. I’m convinced that if we had attempted this in an inhabited housing development someone would have called the police, but the fact that the windows boarded up, there were no barking dogs or murmur of voices, and even the traffic seemed muted by the dark and abandoned towers around us. This environment amplified every sound and made us painfully aware of the scrape of trainers on a misjudged step, the thump of landings not made on the balls of feet, the clap of palms that missed their marks, the scuffle of leaves underfoot, or the muttered curses that escape when the overhang jumps out from nowhere to attack one’s head. Since moving efficiently and smoothly ideally involves very little noise, this night exercise was a great way to make one aware of corrections that needed to be made.

Stephane Vigroux, one of the instructors for the night training session. Photo courtesy of Andy Day Photography.

Sunday morning saw another early start (it felt especially early for those who had just gone to bed after getting back from the night session) and full day of training with the different instructors and trying to absorb as much of their knowledge and the general atmosphere as possible.

The first official picture of me actually doing some of the stuff I’m writing about.

One of the most striking things about this weekend for me was the spirit of community that seemed to pervade all the events. While the atmosphere had subtle differences from the one that I encountered in France, (one might chalk that up to one being French and the other British), the spirit of cooperation, unity, and pursuit of the common goal of personal development and general fitness were the same. These events really seem to be the glue that binds a lot of these organizations together. The friendships and mutual respect that are forged by two days of blood and sweat seem to create a “community” aspect to parkour that I think stems from the inclusive and progressive philosophy of the sport. An example of this is the accommodations set up for the event, with all of the “imported” instructors being hosted by Parkour Generations team members, and many of the foreign participants staying with friends that they had made at previous events.

The warmup at RDV5 (Photo courtesy of Parkour Generations)

Maybe it is the stark contrast with the individualistic aspect of the sport that makes this sense of community so striking, but it gives me a lot of hope for the development of the sport, and the desire for it to outlast the labels of “fad” or “fashion”. Much the same way that the sport of Frisbee can only be played as long as the “spirit of the game” is respected, parkour seems to depend on this as well. Not only do traceurs have to keep the reputation of the entire sport in mind when they practice, since one incident with an unhappy resident or damaged private property can result in a city-wide ban on the sport or an unfavorable view in the eyes of authorities, but also because so much of the development of the sport seems to depend on the sharing of knowledge and experiences- moves, techniques, conditioning exercises, practice spots…

Perhaps one of the best ways to capture the attitude of this weekend is with the phrase that became the mantra of the weekend, “We start together, we finish together”. Originally taken from the Yamakasi expression “On commence ensemble, on finit ensemble”, it not only describes the general practice of waiting for everyone to finish the set/route/rep before continuing as a group, but also of a state of awareness for the safety and well-being of the others that one is training with.

Rendezvous 5: I’m in the top left, sporting a bright orange shirt and the usual tousled mane.

For more pictures of the event (there are a lot of great ones) check out Andy Day's shots from the night session HERE or pics from the Parkour Generations site HERE.