Congrats to Corndogg from SF Parkour on taking part in this great article. He and several other SF traceurs were featured in a great article by
Parkour is a new craze in which kids treat the city as their gym. Spider-Man would approve.
Helena Echlin, Special to The Chronicle
Saturday, March 25, 2006
The boys look as if they're trying to outrun the police. They jump over a wall, drop 10 feet and somersault to break the impact of landing. They leapfrog over a garbage can and clear a bench. They dash a step up another wall, grip the top and shimmy over.
But no one is chasing them. They're simply practicing parkour, the modern art of navigating through your environment with maximum efficiency.
It seems the whole world is watching APK ... in just one week since we've been on our new server, we've had visits from over 60 countries! It's great to see that Parkour and interest in Parkour and Freerunning are spreading around the globe! APK is proud to be part of the worldwide scene, and welcome visitors from all over. Our goal remains to be focused on being useful for the American scene, but of course we want to share information and good times with people from all over the world. Check out the list of countries (read more...)
Why is there a news story about this? Simple- I believe that trust is built on communication. APK is a community, and communities are built on trust.
Today marks the date when our first actual "Ad" goes into place. It is one of about 20 rotating banners, most of which link to APK forums or local communities. This one is an ad for hosting at Siteground. While web hosting has nothing to do with Parkour (indeed web hosting may be one of Parkour's downfalls :) ), Siteground really pulled through for us when we got slammed with traffic on only our second day of hosting with them. Read on ...
Well, the wonderful Crossfit link brought a ton of traffic to the site...but our new hosts didn't care much for it. If you experience any downtime, please be patient and check back a bit later, as we're trying to resolve the problem now. Thanks for checking us out!
Our host Siteground really came through in style .. they've moved us to a new server where they could remove resource limitations normally associated with shared hosting. Definitely Class-A customer service. www.siteground.com.
Finally, the APK tutorials are online! These tutorials show how to do the movements that make up the building blocks for many common movements in Parkour. Parkour can't be defined by movements alone, but these movements come up time and time again, and can be built up as a toolkit that can then be applied and modified as necessary while doing Parkour.
Please note that these tutorials are a trimmed down verison of the ones which will be available on the DVD. After the DVD is released we will begin to release the full versions on the site.
We're also opening up a pre-order for the Tutorial DVD done by theTribe. These tutorials are taken directly from the DVD and complete versions will be available as PDF files on the DVD. We expect the DVD to begin shipping in approximately two weeks.
Thanks to the Tribe and Mike Yamrus for the information and pictures in these tutorials.
Jesse is an active member of the Crossfit community and has helped to bring Parkour into their midst. He was recently certified at their last session in Santa Cruz California. Pictures from Santa Cruz. Be sure to check out the Crossfit Journal which Jesse is a regular contributor to.
Way to Go Gear!
Welcome to all the Crossfitters who this has brought to our site, feel free to ask question in the forum or just browse around.
APK now has a fully integrated working map to use as a Traceur Database by location, along with a Hotspots directory and Jam calendar. So, by looking at one map, you can find out who's around your area, or an area that you'll be visiting. You can find hotspots, and bigger national level jams. Read on for more info...
APK is now running (sort of ) smoothly at our new hosting home, SiteGround.
We have to say that we're very happy to have left Globat, they suck. A sad story really, when we started with them nearly two years ago they were constantly top ranked, but then grew to over 10,000 customers and still have only TWO top level technicians!!
How can we relate? Just having the most people isn't being the best, being the best is being the best. At APK we're constantly adding new information, articles, and features to help the Parkour / Freerunning community so that we can do our best.
There is a small problem in the forums, but it's a beautiful sunny day, so we'll have to get to that later, we'll be outside, and you should be too!
If everybody here isn't already aware of my complete awe of Crossfit, both as a method of fitness and a community of legitimite practitioners, then you haven't been paying attention. The workouts I post here are a bodyweight-only assimilation of Crossfit protocol, and I suggest their diet, recovery and fitness information to anybody who cares to ask.
So on that level, you might understand my excitement when I was asked not only to give a presentation to the 150 trainers and trainees at the recent Crossfit certification seminar, but also to contribute information about Parkour to their monthly e-zine, the Crossfit Journal.
