Playing With Parkour

On a recent Monday night, I became a kid again.

Along with other novice students, I climbed, crawled, jumped, balanced, swung and squatted. Using a gym as our playground, we played with every creative way possible to get from Point A to Point B.

By the time the introductory class ended, we’d all sampled a small slice of parkour. For some of the newbies, it would be just the beginning of a love affair into the sport. For others, it was a glimpse into a sport they’d only seen before on video.

I came to Parkour Visions, a nonprofit gym in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, with little real knowledge on the sport. To me, parkour meant James Bond, scaling walls and leaping through windows. Every time I said the word “parkour,” I couldn’t help but think of the episode of “The Office” where Michael, Dwight and Andy leap around the building shouting “Parkour!”

Those aren’t unusual preconceptions, Parkour Visions Executive Director Tyson Cecka assured me. Most new students learned about parkour over the Internet or through pop culture. During my intro class, I was put in a group with a number of teenage boys, many of whom told me they’d shown up because they’d seen YouTube clips.

Actually, according to Cecka, parkour is a discipline that trains participants to overcome obstacles. Athletes must figure out how they can navigate ever-changing courses by climbing, running, jumping, skipping, swinging or any other number of physical skills.

Cecka and the rest of the Parkour Visions staff don’t plan to teach students how to leap off buildings. Instead, they want their athletes to learn skills applicable in all areas of life. Parkour demands constant physical and mental reinvention, Cecka said.

“You are always trying to improve and challenge yourself,” Cecka said. “It makes you a very adaptable person.”

The sport of parkour began just 25 years ago in France, when a handful of young guys began designing their own challenges to find their way between two points in urban Lisse. They called the game parcours, which is the French word for “obstacle course.”

Parkour didn’t really become known until the past decade, when YouTube became a household name. The French adventurers posted videos of their stunts online. Parkour (as the name evolved to, to give it a hip hop flavor) became a worldwide phenomenon.

The sport then made its way to Washington. At local college campuses, 20-somethings began experimenting with parkour. In 2005, the online community Washington Parkour was created, connecting the various parkour fans across the state.

Parkour Visions took root when Cecka, then a college student, received a Mary Gates Endowment to fund a parkour project. Cecka ended up creating the nonprofit and became so busy with the venture that he dropped out of school. Parkour Visions opened in October of 2009. It was only the third parkour gym to open in the U.S.

Since Parkour Visions remains the only parkour gym in the Puget Sound region, students travel there from the Eastside and north and south suburbs. They come to Parkour Visions for a variety of reasons. Some are athletes in sports such as running or cycling and want a way to challenge their muscles in new ways. Others adapt parkour as a competitive sport, and take part in the matches Parkour Visions organizes. Still others simply think parkour looks like fun.

At Parkour Visions, students learn how to build up to difficult stunts. At the beginning, instructors emphasize landing correctly. New students traverse obstacles at low levels rather than leaping from heights.

“We don’t want to just copy crazy things we see in videos because you can learn a lot of bad habits that way,” Cecka said.

Parkour Visions classes rotate through skills each week. Disciplines include quadrupedal movement (moving on all fours), running, vaults, climbing and swinging. In my introductory class, we sampled a handful of skills, playing on a climbing wall, balance beams, vaults and bars. The Parkour Visions space includes an assortment of gymnastics equipment and obstacles, all of which were donated or recycled from former uses. Cecka likens the play area to the gorilla habitat at the zoo.

“We want to build a human habitat,” Cecka said. “For us, this is what people need to not go crazy.”           

Since Parkour Visions’ current gym size limits the amount of equipment and people, the nonprofit plans to move to a much larger facility later this year. Cecka is currently negotiating a lease. The new gym will allow for multiple parkour classes at the same time.

 “We’re already teaching every day of the week now, and we want to get more people gym access,” Cecka said.

Parkour Visions’ students vary widely in age and gender. An all-female class allows women to experiment without the pressure of having guys around. Youth classes cater to various age groups. Circus stunt people regularly visit the gym and attend either intermediate classes or open gym hours.

At my class, I joined a group that included my 32-year-old friend Chris and a number of teenage boys. Whereas Chris and I considered injury potential before swinging and leaping, the boys flung themselves into all activities. Their fearless attitudes meant they occasionally banged a body part or two (eliciting a few “ooh, that had to hurt” from Chris and I), but they also caught on to the new moves quickly and with ease. Parkour, I decided, fits the 15-year-old male mindset quite well.

And as for myself? I don’t see myself acquiring the guts to leap off walls and jump onto balance beams anytime soon, but as the Parkour Visions teachers pointed out, I don’t need to. Parkour can be as simple as walking forward on a balance beam. Climbing to the lowest level of a rock wall. Crawling under a hurdle.

Parkour is what you make it.

 Parkour Visions is located at 4216 6th Ave. NW in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. The first Parkour Visions class for all students is free. After that, fees range from $20 drop-in (kids) and $30 drop-in (adults) to monthly memberships that go from $95 to $185, depending on age and gym access.