The first few days with Streetmovement in Denmark

 When my flight arrived in Denmark on a night in early June it was dark, cold (relative to Italy), wet, and raining.  Needless to say, as I stood on a street corner in downtown Copenhagen waiting to meet my contact I wasn't too excited about finding myself bundled in a jacket and a sweatshirt for the first time in 8 months.

However, things started to shift toward the better the moment that Martin arrived, and continued getting better and better over the two and a half weeks that I was in Denmark.  The next morning, we were up bright and early so that Martin could head to Streetmovement headquarters and the moment I stepped outside I realized that Denmark during the day wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been the night before.  As we stepped out into the street I noticed that Martin wasn’t wearing any shoes, but despite this, the people we passed only gave him a cursory glance as he jogged by (we only had one bike, so Martin had opted to run the first leg to the office).  This would be the first of many slightly quirky observations about the Danes that I would make during my time in Denmark, but the vast majority of them paint a slightly more optimistic picture for the future of humanity that the one that I’d gotten used to living in the US.

After a quick tour around the Streetmovement office, Martin showed me around the surrounding area.  The office is located in the part of downtown Copenhagen called “Carlsberg”, named for the fact that it was the site of Carlsberg Breweries until 2006, when the company moved all of its production and most of its infrastructure to another part of Denmark.  Since then, the area has been redeveloped for commercial use and 5 years later the results are pretty impressive.  Carlsberg is now home to a number of hip and “artsy” companies, and the building complex that the Streetmovment office is located in also hosts a number of architectural firms, designers, dance companies, artists, and theater groups. Pieces of “interactive artwork” are spread throughout the Carlsberg development and many of the pieces make for great training spots, especially since some of them were designed by the Streetmovement guys as part of a beautification project for the site.  One of them in particular, nicknamed “Rail Heaven” by the traceurs, is pictured below and definitely lives up to its name.

Rail Heaven.  Photo courtesy of Streetmovement. 

Photo courtesy of Streetmovement.

Another one of the "interactive artwork" pieces. Photo courtesy of Streetmovement.  

Photo courtesy of Streetmovement.

A bit more background and images of the Carlsberg site:

After spending the morning wandering the grounds while Martin had a meeting with one of the other Streetmovement directors, Mikkel “Hipster” (there are two Mikkels at Streetmovement, both are bald and very fit so I’ve included their nicknames for identification purposes), Martin and I headed back to his house to pick up some of the “Young Gunz” and head to Gerlev.  The Young Gunz are the “second generation” of Streetmovement guys, and as I was soon to discover, they are a lot of fun to hang out with in addition to being some of the most skilled practionners that I’ve met.  Packed into Martin’s small car with Thais, Oliver, and Andreas for the hour-long drive to Gerlev I found that the trip flew by in a blur of music sampling (both good and bad), a constant stream of banter, and me asking lots of questions about the Danish parkour scene.

A video of the Young Gunz a few years ago when the park was first built...

My first encounter with Gerlev was brief but made me realize just how lucky I was to have the opportunity to visit with the Streetmovement guys. We arrived at the school just in time for lunch, and upon entering the dining hall I realized why we had been so concerned about getting there in time for the midday meal.  The dining hall itself was bright, simple, and packed with more blonde hair that I’d seen in a while, but my attention was immediately arrested by the huge platters of food stretching, buffet style, down the center of the room.  Upon closer inspection I found that not only did the multicolor smorgasbord include everything needed in a healthy and balanced diet, but it was also completely composed of organic and locally grown produce. The result was a meal that had me coming back for thirds, with a brief interruption halfway through my second helping for my official “introduction” to the Gerlev student body (a slightly objectifying, but very welcoming experience).

After lunch I joined in the “Terrible Tuesday” afternoon conditioning session, which gave me the chance to begin getting to know some of the students at Gerlev, and also to train with another one of the Streetmovement directors, Mikkel aka “Babyface”.  The training session went really well and I got a good glimpse at the unique way of training that the Streetmovment athletes have developed.  This method seems to be a sort of hybrid that incorporates many of the Yamakasi’s values and basic conditioning techniques into a more modern and scientifically based training regimen, supplemented with a very sensible “Danish/Nordic” attitude toward proper nutrition and lifestyle.  After the session, which included lots of running, hills, squats, and quadrupedal movement, we headed back to the main hall for a quick “snack” (freshly baked bread, homemade jams, honey, and carrots) and then back out to the structure for the second afternoon session.  I spent the rest of the afternoon training with the Streetmovement class and getting to know the structure that I would be spending a lot of time on for the next two weeks.  At the end of the second session Martin took me on a brief tour of the rest of the facilities before we headed back to the dining hall for dinner (Note: this was the third meal since my arrival only a few hours before), which proved to be just as amazing as lunch.  After dinner Martin and I headed back to Copenhagen to pick up Brian, who was flying in the next morning from Parkour Generations to be a guest instructor at Streetcamp 7.

The Structure in all her glory right after construction a few years ago.  Photo courtesy of Streetmovement.   

The rails right next to the structure.  Photo courtesy of Streetmovement.

When we learned that Brian had missed his flight and would be coming Thursday morning instead we found that we had a lot of free time on our hands so Martin and I spent the morning catching up on sleep and hanging out at his apartment.  In the afternoon we went over to Street Mekka, a facility in downtown Copenhagen that opened in 2010 to offer “street based” leisure and sports activities to the youth of the city.  Street Mekka was created by a company called GAM3 and a large chunk of municipal funding for the restoration of an old warehouse in central Copenhagen into a vibrant and beautiful community center.  The facility offers classes and safe training environments for breakdancing, parkour, graffiti, dee-jaying, street basketball, street football, and hip hop dance throughout the week.  As the Streetmovment classes are an integral part of the “positive street culture” that Street Mekka is working to promote, a permanent parkour structure dominates the central courtyard area outside the building and Streetmovement classes are offered several times a week.

The entry to Street Mekka. Photo courtesy of Streetmovement.   

The main hall of the facility.  Photo courtesy of Streetmovement.

Children's classes at Street Mekka.  Photo courtesy of Streetmovement.

The adult Streetmovement class that I hopped into after a tour of the facilities proved to be just as well-run and challenging as the ones I’d seen in Gerlev, and like the classes I had seen at Pakour Generations in London, they seemed to cater to an older group of “working professionals” (both men and women) looking for alternative ways to keep fit, as well as the typical parkour demographic of boys aged 16-22. 

The adult Streetmovement class.  Photo courtesy of Streetmovement.

After the class Martin and I headed back to his place to grab some food and hang out a bit before heading to bed in order to pick up Brian the next morning and head straight to Gerlev for the start of Streetcamp 7…

KRAP Parkour

So after a brief visit to Padova to have a bit of “vacation” time with some close family friends and a day spent sightseeing at Venice (it was cool, but not nearly as interesting as people make it out to be), I took the train to Schio, Itlay, a few hours outside of Vincenza.  I had met Giovanni and his brother Luigi at the ECCE event in Rome and they had piqued my interest talking about a “park” they had built.  Although my schedule for the rest of my time in Italy was pretty tight by then, I found a way to squeeze in a flyby visit as I was en route to the Venetian airport for my flight to Denmark.

Upon my arrival at the Schio train station in the late morning, I was hit by a sudden wave of uncertainty that often accompanies meeting new people and being in new environments.  This wave was partly due to the fact that I was still adjusting from an intense weekend with family friends in Padova, I really wanted to get to Denmark where I’d be able to finally “settle down” for a few weeks, and can also be attributed to the usual fatigue that comes with constantly being on the move.  From the train platform, the town looked sleepy at best and very different from the bustling urban centers that I had been exploring throughout most of the trip. 

Most of these doubts were banished the moment that Giovanni showed up and we drove back to his house to grab some lunch.  After dropping my stuff off and inhaling some food, we jogged over to the facility while his younger brother Luigi rode alongside us on his bike “encouraging” us.

Any remaining doubts that I had were banished forever when opened the front door of the “training facility”, called the Krapanonne.  Once again the combination of lady luck and my growing “parkour globetrotter instinct” had been proven right.  Unfortunately my pictures from the visit are lost in the abyss of electronics that is my failed digital camera so I don’t have much to show for this section of the trip besides images I’ve taken from their site.

The facility is housed in a nondescript, industrial-looking building with a small bright red door, set in the middle of a strip mall that seemed semi-vacant.  As Giovanni opened the door, I caught a glimpse of the best indoor parkour training facility that I had seen on the trip.  Entering the Krapanonne felt like entering into some surreal and impossible parkour paradise.

First of all the Krapanonne is HUGE.  While I’ve seen a few warehouse/garage-based parkour facilities, the Krapanonne’s building might be better described as a small airplane hanger.  Despite the Spartan furnishings, it’s also very well lit, which seems to make feel even bigger and more inviting.  The simple fact that KRAP has this much space to work with allows them a lot of flexibility in what they do and how many things they can have going at the same time.

The second thing that struck me as I entered was the “rawness” of the space.  All of the construction and renovation work had been done by the members of the association, and the result is that most obstacles and set-ups look and feel like they have been made by people that actually use them.  This is also a distinctly unpolished feel to the facility, a sharp contrast to the only other facility that I’d heard of that might rival the Krapanonne, that of Tempest Freerunning (I haven’t been there yet but am hoping to visit this fall). The result is that the space feels like it’s in a constant state of change and evolution, as new sets and “toys” are built in the workshop at the back of the building.

The center of the facility is dominated by a huge ramp and scaffolding that border an enormous foam pit that looks like it could hide a small army, or at least a large monster, beneath the surface.  The setup allows for a huge range of training environments, for parkour, as well as skating, bmx, skateboarding…. 

In addition to the great training environment, the Krapanonne also functions as the KRAP World Headquarters, and so is equipped with a full kitchen, (with optional bar setup), viewing platform/raised reception area, fully-equipped dance studio (used for children’s classes in dance, gymnastics, and “movement”), a decked-out media lab, and some very Spartan living quarters.

The back of the facility is devoted to a workshop of sorts that seems to be constantly spewing out all sorts of cool additions to the Krapanonne.  These can be useful- like the skateboard racks that I watched being manufactured for a “store” being built on the viewing deck, and “not quite so useful”- like the giant space-invader figures that were built for the KRAP Invaders event (more on that later) but now seem to materialize at most KRAP parkour events.

After ooo-ing and awing at the space for a while I took some time to film one of the “Natural Movement” classes that KRAP offered to kids ages 3-8.  The class was a lot of fun to watch and I was reminded again about how similar kids are all over the world and how naturally we resort to many of the movements that are at the foundation of parkour.  The guys explained to me that the class was designed to teach all sorts of movement, including elements from dance, gymnastics, parkour, and yoga in order to give the kids a basic understanding and control of their bodies.  After being inspired by the kids in the afternoon I took some time afterwards to play around on the scaffolding and foam pit and take advantage of my amazing surroundings, despite an aching and tired body.

After resting up for a bit we prepared for the adult parkour/freerunning class later that night.  As the official “gringo” and newcomer I was invited to lead the warm-up for the class, and based on a lot of the reactions that I got mid-way through it, I suspect that most of the people hadn’t been exposed to the same level of conditioning that I’d gotten used to with Parkour Generations.  That being said, the guys adapted well and the rest of the class passed in a flurry of trying to observe everything while also trying to participate to the maximum.

Once the class was over, I retired to the “lounge” where I did an official “KRAP interview” about my travels.  Apparently they interview all of the foreigners that come to train with them, and I was told that at some point the interview would be put on their Youtube channel, although the English-Italian language barrier promised to make editing difficult.  I also got a chance to do my own interview of the management team, and learned a lot about the organization, how it started, how it worked, and some of their future plans and ambitions.  I left the session, which became more of a friendly discussion by the end, in a daze around 1am, when I realized that I had to be up and on a plane to Denmark a few hours later.

I’ll pass along the basics of what I learned, for more information, and for some awesome videos, check out the KRAP YouTube channel.  The “KRAP Assc.” was founded in 2008 with the goal of giving youth in the area the opportunity to practice various freestyle sports in a safe and constructive environment that emphasized the values at the core of most of the sports.  One of the key benefits of the membership is that it provides insurance coverage for a number of these sports, including parkour/freerunning, skateboarding, skating, bmx biking, snowboarding, and juggling.  After the initial success of the KRAP classes and events, the association started construction on the Krapanonne, which opened in 2010.

KRAP runs classes and workshops at the Krapanonne and various hotspots around town for the various sports, and this year is also hoping to start working with a number of schools in the area as well. In addition to the educational side, KRAP also has a developing commercial branch, and “sponsored” athletes are featured in a wide variety of media productions, some of which are coordinated by members in the Krapanonne media lab (example).  The KRAP calendar of events is pretty impressive, and it seems like there is a constant bustle around the place as various events are being planned and staged.  The most important parkour event, called “KRAP Invaders” is a multi day event, that, among other things, features a one-day “invasion” of an Italian city by a small army of traceurs that moves from spot to spot throughout the city over the course of a day.  The event also features a day in Schio that includes jamming on a specifically built scaffolding setup, as well as an afternoon “cliffdiving” in a local spot.  The videos for these events are pretty awesome in and of themselves, and feature an impressive roster of traceurs from around Europe...

KRAP INVADERS 1.0 (2010)


KRAP INVADERS 2.0 (2011)

A big thank you to Giovanni, Luigi, and Jessica for their amazingly warm welcome into the KRAP family.

Watson Conference Video

So I have a few more articles to write about the end of the year but I just presented this video at the 2010-2011 Watson Conference so I might as well open it up to the general public.

Rome - The tourist's perspective

Since I had a few days left in Rome before heading to the next destination I spent most of them wandering around trying to get a better feel for this amazing city… While no means representative of what I saw during my time in Rome (I'm pretty bad about taking pictures) here are a few shots from my wanderings.

The Pantheon 

Trevi fountain

Gotta love a city with bits of 1,000-year-old bridges hanging around.

By far the best view from a track I've ever seen.

The ruins behind the track.

I totally look like an American tourist....

.... but I fit right in.

Some say that the French are a bit grandiose, I'd say that the Italians top them...

No visit to Rome is complete without a shot of the Colosseum.

Or of yourself posing by the Colosseum. 

Beautiful scenery, delicious food, and an awesome host.  Not a bad "stopover".

Rome – ECCE Parkour Event

After spending a great two weeks with Laurent and company in Milan I braved the Italian rail system and headed to Rome.  While I’d expected chaos, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rail system in Italy, like in France, seems to run with a different mindset than the rest of the country.  The journey passed uneventfully and upon coming out of the train station I found myself in one of the coolest cities of the year.  While a lot of the other cities that I’ve visited have had fascinating buildings, great museums, and interesting monuments, Rome brings all of this to the next level.  There is something about the city that is immediately captivating, and I soon began relishing walking around corners, since I never knew what awaited me.

After figuring out how the Metro system worked (not the world’s best) I met up with the friend of my family that I’d be staying with during my time in Rome.  The reason that I was in Rome wasn’t just because I’ve dreamed of visiting the city since I was a wee lad dreaming of legions and gladiators, but my visit also conveniently coincided with a workshop hosted by ECCE parkour that would be importing some of the Parkour Generations instructors to lead it.  Having heard about it a few weeks earlier, I arranged my travel plans so as to be in town for the event, giving me a glimpse of Italian parkour and also getting the opportunity to finish up the last remaining ADAPT supervised instructional hours (I also added some days on to my stay after the event to do a bit of the tourist thing for once- more in the next post).

The next day I was up and battling the crowds of Romans that engage in a daily ritual that is startlingly reminiscent of the battles that raged in the streets of Rome about 2000 years ago.  Rome only has 2 subway lines, and their sole overlap point also happens to be the central terminal for all the regional trains coming into the city (all roads and trains lead to Rome).  This setup, combined with the passion that means that most voyages in the city will involve at least one episode of the hand-to-hand combat that is subway travel.  The roads aren’t much different, as I soon learned from the friend that I was staying with, who had one car for the hand-to-hand combat of city travel, and another for traveling outside the city limits.

Upon arriving at the location for the event, I was shocked to find that it was located less than 50m from the walls of the Vatican, and hill that the Vatican sits upon rose up behind us and formed a beautiful background.  After gaping at the setup, I headed over to reunite with Forrest, Chris, and Alli, who I had last seen in London a few weeks previously during my briefly stopover.  Since I still had a few hours to complete from my ADAPT certification, I volunteered to lend a hand throughout the weekend, which led to me getting way more hours than I needed.

Forrest atop some of the scaffolding set up for the event (the Vatican is in the background to the left).   (Photo courtesy of Sophia Jeque)

As we hung out and helped with the setup we watched the participants for the weekend start to filter in.  The crowd was pretty diverse in terms of experience and skill levels (over this year I’ve learned that these are not necessarily connected), and there were a number of guys that were at a pretty high level.  After delaying the start a bit to finish setting up and let the latecomers drop their stuff off, we set out for the warm-up.  After spending 2 months in Brasil, where a group warm-up is usually about as organized as most events got, if that, the ECCE event was a nice change.  The organizers had structured the event into a number of sessions each day, with breaks for lunch and snacks.  Each of the sessions was to feature instruction or conditioning led by the PkGen instructors, or free time in which the participants could train on the equipment as desired.

In addition to organizing a very well-run event, ECCE parkour had also done a great job in choosing a location to host the event.  Not only was the main location just outside the Vatican, but it was also within a short jog from Piazza San Pietro (St. Peter's Square) (where we attempted to do the first warm-up before being shooed out by the security), and also the San Angelo Castle, where we did warm-up and conditioning for the rest of the days.

The setting for the first warm-up. (Photo courtesy of Andrejs Surdjukovs)

The setting for the rest of our warm-ups. (Photo courtesy of Andrejs Surdjukovs) 

Each day we started off the day with the typical Parkour Generations warm-up.  For those that haven’t experienced it, the Parkour Generations warm-up (like the Yamakasi one that it’s based on) is designed to not only wake (and shock) the system into a high state of alertness, but also doubles as a mini conditioning session.  I also found that the “exported version is cleverly designed to gauge the fitness levels of the participants at various workshops and seminars, which determines many of the drills and exercises throughout the rest of the event.  Over the course of the event I had the opportunity to see how the Parkour Generations “workshop division” works from the inside and the huge amount of things that go on behind the scenes that most participants never notice.  I also had the opportunity to lead a few of the training sessions and found that the more I did, the more my confidence rose and the more I enjoyed the teaching.  By the end of the event I was definitely on a teaching high and realized that I was now not only in love with the sport, but also in teaching it.

Throughout the event I tried to mingle with the Italian traceurs as much as I could and try to get a grasp of their experiences with parkour.  This was facilitated by the fact that instead of going back to my friend’s place each night I went to the local accommodations that had been set up by ECCE to accommodate the large numbers of traceurs that needed lodgings.  While far from as comfortable (a sleeping bag on a mat on the cold stone floor of a church basement) or convenient (a 20min bus ride away, with showers available for a 1-hour window 15-minutes from the church) it was just as much fun and I found that it was a great chance to really get to know the guys.  It was pretty funny to see the different “parkour event” experience levels that attended since some the more veteran guys brought good but compact sleeping mats and bags, while the “greener” ones brought everything but the kitchen sink.  While my Italian wasn’t nearly good enough to allow for much conversation in the native tongue, I found that between their English and my Spanish we were able to communicate pretty well.

Our makeshift lounge while waiting for the showers. (Photo courtesy of Andrejs Surdjukovs)

I found that despite the fact that the traceurs at the event hailed from all over Italy there was a dominance by the northern states, where apparently parkour seems to have caught on faster.  I also found that like many European countries, parkour in Italy can probably best be described as in it’s “teenager” status, with pretty high skill levels and the basics of established teaching organizations, but still far from the standard being set in places like the UK (busy teaching schedules, full-time parkour instructors, international workshops, indoor/outdoor facilities…).  However, I also got an invitation to visit another parkour organization a few weeks later when I passed through Padova en route to the Venice airport.   Those adventures will be detailed in a future article…

A great group of guys...

By the third day of the event people were definitely starting to show signs of the hard training that they’d been put through over the weekend.  Despite this, everyone mustered their energy for a last technique session in the morning along with some light conditioning (we decided not to do a “beast” session after gauging energy levels).  They even managed to take full advantage of the “free-time” that they had between the last organized training session and taking down the scaffolding.  I left the event that night with a feeling that I had had a major breakthrough in my approach to parkour teaching and feeling very inspired about future plans.  While I hadn’t quite decided what I wanted those to be, the thought of “taking the unexplored route” upon completion of my Watson year instead of heading right to grad school was beginning to grow in my head.

However, after 4 solid days of training I was ready for a bit of a break and a chance to really explore the city…

The Kalenji Success lives on.... well kind of

For those of you who mourned the passing of the Kalenji Success a few years ago this might be of interest.  Decathlon UK will be releasing a new version of the shoe this fall (featuring slight improvements after input from experienced traceurs).  Hopefully the shoe will be the first item in a line of apparel and footwear designed with traceurs in mind.  While I was in London two weeks ago I got a chance to actually hold the only model of these currently in existence.  While the final product will be a bit different, you can get the idea from the video below.



The design for the final model is below (courtesy of Parkour UK):

Also, check out the message from Decathlon UK that came out recently (courtesy of PKUK and the PkGen website):

Hello Traceurs,

Decathlon UK in partnership with Parkour UK will be selling a new version of the shoe for the Parkour community. This product will be a first price shoe that will retail at approx £16.99. We have developed this shoe with the Success grip in mind but have improved the quality and durability the upper and to give traceurs more support when training. This product is an exclusive for Decathlon UK stores. We are hoping that this first product will be available for late 2011. The name of the product has not yet been confirmed as we are currently working on prototypes with Parkour UK.

We are working closely with Parkour UK, as the NGB, to bring a brand that will hopefully have products in the future specifically for Parkour. Decathlon UK values Parkour as a sport and we would like to invest in this in the future if this first project is successful. We have been overwhelmed by the response to the shoe and we ask for your patience as we want to be sure that the product, name and launch is a success.

The product will be available on the internet for the UK. We are also looking for a solution for international requests. If you have any queries please contact Decathlon UK or Parkour UK.

We will keep you fully informed as we progress towards the launch in late 2011.

Thank you

Decathlon UK

For more information on Parkour UK and the work that they are tirelessly doing on behalf of traceurs throughout the UK and around the world, (which often goes unnoticed), check them out here: http://www.parkouruk.org

Tourist in Milan

I actually did a bit of tourism while I was in Milan when I wasn't training with Laurent.  Milan isn't exactly a touristic city, or even a very pretty one, but it has a few things worth checking out.

Like most of the Italian cities that I visited, Milan is full of churches.

Thought this was pretty interesting- Luis Vuitton across from McDonalds in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

I couldn't go to Milan not visit the Duomo Milano.

Probably the coolest part of Milan, the Castello Sforzesco is also next to a great park in the middle of the city.