"This year I attended the Montreal Summer Jam, which historically takes place during the first weekend of September. This was the second Montreal jam that I’ve attended and in comparison this one was far better, simply because I arrived earlier before the jam and stayed longer after the jam then I did two years ago."

"My hosts, Tamila Benabdallah, Alex Mitraillette-Gendoute and Steven “DimMonk” Leblanc were extremely accommodating.  Staying in a house full of traceurs was a great experience in terms of everyone having so much in common as well as it being such a positive environment.  In addition to myself, they were hosting two or three other traceurs including, Max Stussi and Curtis Randolph from Toronto and Fred Paradis from Rimouski."

Check out the rest of the write up by APK sponsored athlete Trevor de Groot by clicking read more...

   
"I arrived in Montreal on Thursday night before the jam, leaving me with Thursday night and Friday to kill before the jam actually started.  After dropping off my stuff at the house I headed out to Mont Royal to do some light balance training with Max, Mich and Abla"

    Friday was spent doing some light training near Mont Royal with everyone from the house (minus Dim who had to work) as well as getting some footage for the next Tam With A Cam series.  We soon decided to meet up with Mich and Abla again, but this time at Place Des Arts.  Most of the day was just light training, since no one wanted to be completely worn out for the jam on Saturday.

    Saturday had us start off at Champ-De-Mars station.  Our group got there a bit late, so I only had time to warm up and play around for ten or twenty minutes before we moved to a place called    Seringe Parc.  There was a lot to do there key features were massive concrete pillars and a fountain or moat system that didn’t have water in it.  There were some nice strides, fair sized running    and standing cat leaps, precisions at height and a couple of good lines to vault through.

    From there we moved on to a place called Palais de Justice.  I remembered this place from two years ago, since this was the spot that I fell in the big fountain.  It would've been pretty fun to jam here, except the sprinklers that watered the plants in the area were on, making the whole training area soaked and pretty slippery.  As a result, the group relocated to a different area in Palais de Justice and jammed there until we went for dinner in China town.  China town has its own fountain area with an assortment of training areas, so the training didn't really stop while we ate.  We then finished the day off by heading to some spots around McGill University.

   Sunday the group was headed to Southbank.  It was an overall interesting choice, since only one or two people had ever trained there before.  There were two basic spots in Southbank, one was an old abandoned structure by a pond, while the other was multiple sets of railings.  The leaders of the group brought some wooden boards and bolted them to the grass that was at the structure by the pond which provided more obstacles to move across.

   
I don’t know whether it was because everyone had such a great day on day one or whether it was the location, but no one really seemed to be moving too much on the second day, at least compared to the previous day.  Having said that, I was sick on the second day.  My stomach felt extremely queasy and I was light headed at times, which might’ve affected my overall perception of the day.

    After the group grew tired of the locations we headed back from Southbank.  By this time it was late in the afternoon, but most of us mustered up the energy to go to a couple more spots in the city.  This    concluded the jam for most people, but I didn’t leave until Tuesday.

    The following day on the Monday, we got out of the house a lot later, but our group still managed to meet up with some traceurs who still wanted to do some post-jam training.  I didn't train at all this day,    since I still felt queasy and light headed.  Thankfully my decision not to train at all on the Monday paid off and on the Tuesday I felt so much better in terms of both muscle soreness and my stomach.

     Since I was feeling better, Alex and Tam took me to go train at a place called Piscine Hochelaga, which is one of my favourite places in Montreal!  It has a great variety of obstacles and stands out from other training spots due to the prominent red brick that composes the walls and floor of the training grounds.  I enjoyed that it was just a small session on my last day in Montreal, since it was interesting to see what Tam and Alex’s “typical” training was like.

    I felt as if my last day in Montreal was well spent and I look forward to being back in that part of the country in the near future.

    Before I sign off on this post jam write up I would just like to thank my hosts, everyone I met and all of the down-to-earth people that make up the Montreal parkour scene.

Until next time,

Trevor de Groot

 Photos courtesy of Yann Bissonnette.