Traveling for Parkour - It's a Must for Community

Yesterday I drove from my house in Maryland up to Atlantic City. Jaimin, a local traceur, was holding a very special training session. It was designed to teach people about four things: RRDD. Respect, Responsibility, Dedication, and Discipline.

Jesse Danger and I wanted to use this to start a new effort we're promoting - visiting other cities to attend their events more regularly. It's normally a 3 hour drive to Atlantic City, but Janine Cundy, Charles Moreland and I all drove up, and Jesse Danger his friend Rick came down from New York City.

I ended up missing an exit on the New Jersey turnpike, and we got there 3 hours late... so I ended up missing the training session. But you know what - that's okay. I still met up with Jaimin, and after hanging out for a little while, we drove home.

9 hours in the car yesterday, about $25 in tolls, about $40 in gas, and we trained for maybe 20 minutes. And I feel like yesterday was a total success. I got out, I supported a new project a friend of mine was working on, and I had fun.

More people need this attitude. You don't need to drive 3 hours every week, but your community should make an effort, at least once a month, to take a roadtrip somewhere. Wake up at 6am, get back at 10pm, and go visit another community.

We always talk about how important community is to traceurs and in parkour - so lets show the world instead of just talking about it. Get out there, sacrifice some time and money, go somewhere, visit old friends and make new ones.

Flow Jam

Hey just wanted to talk a bit about a great training session we put together in NY. A little over ten people came out to train, a few of them doing parkour for the first time but had trained extensively in other disciplines. and a couple completely new people. We started it all off with a proper warm up and it was great to see some of these new guys trudging on right behind me on all of this QM they hadn't tried before. Everyone managed to push out every step and everyone ended it off feeling satisfied.
From there we broke the big group down into 3 smaller ones led by Nikkie, Irish, and myself. Nikkie led an extensive railwork section teaching people how to flow and weave through rails. One of the guys there would have no problem doing muscle up after muscle up, but when it came to those underbars he was working up a sweat. Irish led a section on vaulting, teaching people to keep tempo and to transition well between vaults. He put everyone through some time trials on some circuits he made up. I led a section on plyometric work, teaching people to better bound and rebound through their environment and of course stressing to always use proper landing technique and never train plyometrics too frequently. To finish it all off we broke down in to two groups and each set up their own circuits incorporating what they had learned.
It was a really positive experience, it's great to have new people coming and training hard and striving for self improvement.

Johnny Parkour Appleseed

As a member of the APK Alliance, I set a lot of expectations and goals for myself. I'm always trying to improve APK as a website, organization, and community. The Alliance is composed of strong local community leaders though, and so I spend a lot of time working on my local community in Rochester, New York.

That being said, I'm in a fairly unique position. I've been involved with APK and NYPK for most of my parkour-life, and I've created a very strong community in Rochester out of nothing. Through other non-parkour projects too, I have a lot of experience building/rebuilding organizations and making them far more effective.

I was looking at the Google Analytics map for New York State the other day, and I realized that there were bubbles of activity around a lot of major cities (Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, etc) in Upstate. I realized that there are a lot of people interested in parkour in these areas... they just don't know where to go.

That's when I came up with my New York State Area Reps program. This program has two functions:

1. It designates a specific "Go-To" person, essentially an official community leader, for each city. This gives newcomers an official person to contact. If for some reason the two parties can't meet up, the Rep might know other people in the area that they can connect with.

2. It provides a network of support for all the area reps. The reps can give each other suggestions and advice, and learn from each others' successes and mistakes. It will be easier to plan cross-city events and implement a "traveling traceur" program.

That's what I've been keeping busy with here in New York while I'm at school. However, the school year is coming to a close, and then I'll be back in Maryland for the summer.

I've already been contacted by a traceur from Baltimore and a traceur from my hometown. They're both looking to legitimize their communities a bit more - hold Beginner's Workshops and more structured training sessions. I'm going to be spending a lot of time working with them and really building up their communities.

I realized that a few days ago that I've become the Johnny Appleseed of Parkour communities. Coming into a new city, planting the seeds of structure and leadership and community, and then moving on when they become self-sustaining.

Not a bad way to pass the time...