The Russian Orthodox Church is one of the largest churches in the world and now they are teaching troubled youth parkour to help get them "back on track."
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Evgeny Krynin is one of St Petersburg's most renowned Parkour artists "It suits our national psyche. Our appetite for risk and love of speed - I guess we're crazy," he says.
"It has to be about more than glory, fame and showing off a well-toned body," he says.
So for the past three years, he has been giving training sessions in orphanages and prisons - and also in Russia's residential centre for teenagers on probation.
"Most of these kids have been drinking, sniffing glue or using other drugs for years," Krynin says.
"So we start them off with exercises to improve strength and flexibility before we try anything more complicated."
The St Basil the Great Adaptation Centre on St Petersburg's Vasilievsky Island has a team of counsellors and therapists to help the boys deal with their problems - but Krynin says Parkour is itself therapeutic.
"Many of them have been thrown out school. As a result they have few aspirations and a great deal of anger inside them. But you have to be calm and concentrated to perfect a difficult movement," he says.
"When they succeed, of course it gives them a sense of pride. It teaches them that every obstacle can be overcome with enough perseverance."
The lessons have to be having some effect as Juliana Nikitina, who founded the centre in 2004, said "Museum staff in St Petersburg have told me [the boys] are much better behaved than pupils from some of the elite private schools when they have guided tours."
Even while the church is under scrutiny for some unsavory issues it's great to see an organization as large as it trying to use Parkour to reach at risk kids.
