American Parkour

We're very excited to be up and running and honored that you've decided to check us out.

Please read this whole post carefully, it will save you from embarrassment and from wasting other people's time.

While you're here, please keep a few things in mind:

Our forums are run with one guiding principle, the golden rule. If you do unto others in a polite and respectful way then we have a great forum. If you do unto others unkindly, we will ban unto you. You are welcome to share your opinion whatever it may be (barring religion and politics which are verboten) all we ask is that you do so respectfully using kind words if possible.

Although the main focus of this site is Parkour, we are tolerant and do discuss other kinds of movement, including Tricking, UF's FRPK, Free Running, and other types of movement which would be of interest to people in the Parkour community. We do not always moderate or differentiate, so please take the time to familiarize yourself with the basics.

We cannot be responsible for advice or information given by all the members of this forum. This is the internet, use advice at your own risk, and always try to verify information before putting it into practice in real life.

Train Safe, Train hard. Welcome to APK!


To guide you through your first experiences here at APK (save your NOOB Ass) ASA has put together this great guide:

First off, if you haven't already, check out the FAQ (http://www.americanparkour.com/smf/index.php?board=17.0) & The Forum Rules (http://www.americanparkour.com/smf/index.php?board=16.0), which you can read in the Rules & Regulations section of the forum are:

1: Treat others the way you would want to be treated, with respect.

2. No discussion of religion or politics, neither belong in a Parkour forum.


After that, if you'd like, you can introduce yourself to the APK community by posting a little about yourself in the Welcome Thread (http://www.americanparkour.com/smf/index.php?topic=7.0).

Other features (http://www.americanparkour.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=10&Itemid=38) that the Members and Administration of APK present are Jesse Woody's Workout of the Day, Demon's Drills (http://www.americanparkour.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=10&id=27&Itemid=38), or APK Live, our weekly chatroom.

To find out how to get linked into your local community, check out the "Locals Only (http://www.americanparkour.com/smf/index.php?action=collapse;c=3;sa=collapse;#3)" section of the forum, and find your state, from California to the Carolinas, and everything in between.

If you have questions, or want to add something about any topic, use the search bar at the top of the forum to help you find the applicable thread (forum conversation). If you can't find it, the people in this forum are some of the kindest and most entertaining people you will ever be in contact with, feel free to ask any unanswered questions in the proper forums.

See you out there!



Reccommended Reading:

To learn about the history and origins of Parkour, the articles about "Raymond Belle (http://parkour.net/modules/articles/item.php?itemid=3)" and his son "David Belle (http://parkour.net/modules/articles/item.php?itemid=2)" from Parkour.net are must-reads.

To understand the role of specific movements in Parkour, we suggest you read "Techniques in Parkour (http://www.americanparkour.com/smf/index.php?topic=415.0)."

To further understand the philosophy behind Parkour,try reading "Greater than the Sum of it's Parts (http://www.americanparkour.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=78&Itemid=40)" by Jesse Woody.

- The APK Mods

I get the feeling that the site going on line will mark the beginning of a new era of growth, understanding and unity within the US parkour/movement scene. Keep your fingers crossed and your nose to the grindstone, everyone!

Welcome, welcome....finally a hub for our growing community! :D

lol, things look great guys verry exciting times ahead!

Neat, up early :) and I thought you were trying to trick me with that "for sale" nonsense. Everything looks lovely.

Awesome job! I'm super excited, and can't wait to see where this goes and takes the US scene!

Can I get a woooo wooooooo for a collective US parkour site???  Ill keep tabs on you kids until my knee's decide to heal..  :P

Let's get this thing underway! Woot!

Honnestly, a great idea.

Very happy to see the site up an running been waiting for a couple weeks now. I think this well be a great step for the american scene. It was cool to read the parkour defination put up after the debate over on parkour.net . I think its an well written defination.

it is AWESOME to see a community like this up and running!

surely some good times to come :)

Thank you to M2 for our own forums.  I appreciate all that you have done for US.  Thanks for everything!

awesome.. can't wait for me people to join up.. we need more people down in VA Beach to jam with me.. lol

Great times ahead folks, but remember that as a community-based site, it's success depends primarily on us all! So keep submitting, and keep making this about the scene from YOUR standpoint!

-gameyy

Hmmm ..


this is a bit different... in some ways .. but its home now ;D

good job on the site M2
me likey

Hey guys, thanks for the kind words .. let me be ungrateful for just a minute though ... nobody here is fishing for compliments, we're looking to do things right, so PLEASE make suggestions!! Tell us where we've gone wrong and what we're doing right, tel us what's missing and what we can do to get MORE INPUT FROM THE COMMUNITY!!
Thanks!!

hmmm ... you know something ..

every party ... needs ... LAAADDDDDIEEESSSSSSSS. 

 :)

I love VA-parkour but i lust for American parkour! lol my dilemma is clear woe is me!...wait ill just do both! HOORAH! problem solved!

wow ... i just looked at how many people we,ve got on here. and sence yesterday when i looked ... its gone up 80 members..

CRizaP!?!?!

Deadpool, I'm so with you on that one, we need some hot girl traceurs! No joke, something different from the typcial sausage fest...

I would like to throw my $.02 in at this point (unlike all those other times when I'm so shy and reserved).

Women / Girls will come to this sport depending on how they are treated. When a girl show up on the forum and gets 20Pm's asking where she lives and how she's doing and how old she is and would she like to go do some PK ... it probably scares the crap out of her.

alternately when everyone in the forms goes "ooh girl" ... that doesn't help either. If a girl is going to join us, she needs to be treated like she is one of us, not so special. Just give girls the same respect and treatment you give other people, forget that they are girls because their femininity has nothing to do with their PK except that they can move better than we can :)

Also remember that as much as guys have been told to get down off walls or out of trees, girls have been told that 10X over ... "little girls don't do that" ... so it may be more of an adjustment for some of the girls, give them time, give them space, and treat them with respect. That's all we can ask for anyone.

When you say the same respect and treatment we give other people, I think we should maybe give them a little more respect then we do ooooh say gear? Hahahaha j/k.

Hey m2, love the site man, keep it up.  ;)

i would say gear deserves the respect of my shoe....god i love those shoes....ALOT.... ;D
GRENADE!!!!!

Hey spotted one chick on here but forgot and didn't think much about it.

BTW have you noticed how many new traceurs there are in the past few weeks. Here there used to be me and one other, now theres around 15. WOW. We also just did another article in a paper so that should bring even more. I'm getting excited!

Yeah, at the Bethesda jam there were a good 20 people. Granted M2 and Pistol are from Jeresy, but still the thought of that many people like right around here was awesome. Let's do it again soon guys!

yeah it was AWESOMMEEE!!! never been to a jam THAT BIG!!! and it was great meeting and hanging out with pistol whip and M2. and those 20 some people made the jam awesome. to bad i couldn't come to the gym session afterwards...

great job on the site, happy to be here!  8)

Good site.  Much respect.  Now, as for something you can change,....well....


heck I am no web designer, it looks good for me.  Now lets start setting up some JAMS! 

I'm sure if M2 were to set up something, people from all over would try to make it.  Especially in such a wonderfull PK wonderland as NY..(so I hear)  ;D

You do live in NY right?  Because the north pole wouldnt work as well..possibly.

just joined that site and im glad. just saying i came from over their at urban freeflow but live in florida so this...is my new home

Irish Riot  ;D

Hi, i'm Bry. 17 years old i started practising parkour about 1 month ago, and ive been lurking on this site for a while, just thought id introduce myself. I live in southern maryland, but i run in northern Va/D.C. most of the time. I will be moving to northern va next summer. i practice daily. i enjoy parkour, and even in the small amount of time ive been doing it, i've started seeing everything in my world differently. heres all my random junk:
myspace: http://www.myspace.com/marshmallow_face
AIM: psyrotic
email: inthistogether@gmail.com

Hey bry, welcome abourd.

In addition to this site, you may find www.va-parkour.com a helpful resource.

Forum is very good. It's cool that parkour is connected in so many countries. (my english language is bad=(((( )
I'm a russian tracer. StreetArt Parkour team. David Bell rules!!!!!!

wow finally came back to americanparkour forum
good to be back

im back to .. soo WATCH OUTTTTTT ... .. wait .. i wasnt ever really .. gone i was here ... just ... hovering hahahahaha

riz esta aqui....

No habla Espanol  ;)

No hablo Espanol. :P

Thanks for that save Demon  ;D

yo hablo espanol un pocco, porque yo soy un gringo

I wish I was bilingual :P, but as I have said before, I just can't be good at everything ;).

hahah This is how far Spanish II has gotten me in school "hola como estas" "no me gusta" and last "NO ME DIGAS!" yea can you say blowoff class

just a quick shout out,

you guys rock!

A Russian!!!
Prevet i priem esle vy - Vse eshe zdesj. Ya lublu Russkih!
Moa Ruskia yazyk ochen’ ploxh.
Eto pomoglo bih, esli ya mol bih obiyabet’ v kerellechenskia pesjmax.

That's my contribution to the bilingualness in the thread and a shout out to the foreigners.

Ich denke, dass ich etwas von diesem zweisprachigen Posten hier hinzufügen werde. Ein Schrei aus zu den Deutsch :)

I HATE USING ONLINE TRANSLATORS BUT LOOKS LIKE IM GOING TO HAVE TO! >:(

No you wont!! All you have to do is simply learn Russkie and German!! Shouldnt take to long.

im looking foward to hopefully meeting up with some people near my age (15) in sarasota fl. i think this site kick ass.

i wish i lived in fl. okc is so small each time we go jam we probaly cross the entire city in about an hour        but we usually find new things to do so i guess it isnt that bad

Glenn Sunshine, near Hartford, Connecticut. My son Brendan, age 14, wants to get into Parkour and has some friends he's recruited as well. It looks interesting and fun, but at age 30 (base 16), I don't think I'll be doing a lot of heavy tricks.

Is that how you stay young? Clever trick right there.

nah... go with my trick...

I hear a lot of people start freaking out when they turn 29, but honestly I don't know why... 20,10 was really no big deal, in fact, I'll proudly turn 20,12 this year! :)


although 20,20 has me a bit worried... as does 20,20,10

:D

That's funny, I'm 16, 16, 4 :)

&h 2B for me [0010 1011 binary] I knew those old computer classes would come in handy.

hi! I just started doing Parkour.. and want to devote my life to it.. I'm turning 18 next month, Do you guys think Its to late for me to do Parkour?

It's never too late to begin training, well unless of course you are 106, it might be kinda hard to sart at that age.  There are countless throngs of tracuers out there who didn't begin training until their 30's and 40's (note the over 40 - or even 30 thread). 

So I would say head out there and begin training, just know that there are many more things out there besides parkour (though maybe not quite as amazing (unless we are discussing ultimate frisbee)).  So just remember to keep an open mind while "devoting yourself" to it, and have fun.  ;)

<--- started at age 32. ;)

Don't devote your life to PK. The whole point of parkour is to get to what's important, or escape from a threat.  So devote your life to something that's important, and use PK as a way to get there.

Hey everyone, I'm new. My background would be that I discovered parkour along with tricking in the winter of last year, did no training until about spring. From there, I've done cross training in both of them, but haven't really trained rigorously enough to do too much, with swim team and work and school. I'm a junior in highschool and have become really busy, but for parkour, really the best I can do is that roll and landing into a roll as that's about all I've trained. I'm hoping to practice a little more, if I get more free time and the weather clears up. I hate Seattle weather.

Greetings all,

I'm new and have NO experience with parkour.
However, I've practiced several types of martial arts consistently throughout the last 12 years, and have otherwise been an active fellow.
I wanted to gather some opinions on the idea of learning parkour fundamentals solo, as I have not found any instructors near where I live, Albuquerque, NM.  If anyone knows of an instructor or club in this area, please let me know!
 ;)
-Christov

Etsi re Xristov, ti kaneis? Esei kala? Then eimai Ellinas. Boro na milou Ellinika yati mia kai brethika mazi Ellines epo stin Chicago. LOL.

Come again?   
I gave up guessing and had to check online, that is Finnish, is it not?  Either way I'm at a disadvantage.  Aber Ich kann ein bisschen Deutch lesen.... And gamol Angle.  But modern English is always best.  ;D

Oh, sorry, I saw the Greek writing on your signature at the bottom, and I thought you were Greek, especially with the name Christov, because that is common among them.

But you speak Dutch eh.. I'm sure that gives you a better understanding of English since it is based in Dutch anyway. So tell me about the meaning behind the Molon Labe... And welcome to the forum :)

I understand.  Yes, the signature is a little deceptive in that I do not speak Greek.  "Molon Labe" simply means "come and get them," a quote from Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae.  I quoted this because I'm a nerd for classical history.  So do you speak Greek?

I don't speak Dutch, though I just realized i misspelled "Deutsch" (German for "German") in my earlier message.  In any case, the languages are quite close.

Thanks for the welcome!  :D

Yeah, I can speak Greek a bit.. I lived with a Greek girl for four years in Chicago, and learned the language so I could converse with her grandparents, and many of my neighbors were also Greek, so I picked it up from them. It's getting hard for me to speak it as well as I used to because my wife is Somali, and I've been learning that language, along with Arabic, so when I try to speak Greek now, Somali or Arabic comes out. LOL.

Dutch, German.. all the same roots.. the Angles were Dutch/Germanic people, thus Anglish or English.

i can speak english :)
hahah 4 years of spanish, and first year of italian. :)

Hey, matcauthon12 here from nyparkour. I've been around for about a month and a half but just decided to introduce myself now :) Did gymnastics for a couple years and discovered parkour and free-running so here I am. And yeah, I don't know what it has to do with parkour but....I speak english, a little spanish, and I'm learning russian :P

Multilingual ability seems to be on the rise in America.

hmmm i really like this forum but there arent that many members but still its better that way because you dont have @ss holes critizing everyone

I know a little german.  I took it for three years in highschool, but I haven't really continued the study, so I don't remember alot. 

Mein name ist Michael.  Ich bin achtzeihn jare alt und Ich hasst nicht Parkour ur Free Running machen voher.  Ich fange an, mich heute auszubilden.

I think that's right...I believe i just said: My name is Michael.  I am 18 years old and I've never done Parkor or Free Running before.  I start my training today.

I took German 1 . . . twice, lol.  That's becasue I didn't do my HW the first time through.  I passed with flying colors the second time.  And I am amazed how close German and English is.

Don't know If I've ever introduced myself though.  I'm Michael (as well) and I've been practicing parkour for a little over two years.

I love it  :)

Is everyone in The Tribe from DC?

I'm new to parkour but a few of my friends have experience but i also want to learn from somewhere else if you can give me any tips they would be greatly appreciated

im new. found out about parkour a few days ago and ive been trying as hard as i can to master the roll i think i have it but i cant do it put of jumos and i dont know if im doing it right.  im sorta psychotic and i try most things i see.  im 12 and in pretty crappy shape but i spend about 2 hours a day at the gym on a bike or on a olyptical trainer and some weight lifting.  Im very cautious about what i eat and my family is all health nuts.  any advice on what i should do? I spend probably an hour and a half practicing some parkour stuff but i no nothing so it basically me falling on a mat for two hours which kinda makes my friend laugh but any advice i really could use some

Also new to parkour. sup people. i've been doing this kind of thing for a while but i just never knew it had a name haha!

Hello there!  I ran across this forum when I was doing reserch for my writing, and now I'm determined to learn Parkour!  (maybe a bit of free running wouldn't hurt...)

But yes, I'm in the US, enjoy writing, singing, reading and lookign forward to learnign Parkour  (step one, rolling XP)