NY Parkour (Encompassing both New York and New Jersey) held their annual NYPK Jam this past weekend, Friday June 20th through Sunday June 22nd. Over 50 traceurs came out to jam over the course of the week, but at any given time there was at least 25 people together. Read more for pictures and a detailed, event by event, description of the weekend.
Jesse “HardcoreTraceur” organized the event, and for the third year in a row offered his house to anyone and everyone who wanted to stay there. People began arriving as early as the Sunday before. By Thursday, the day before the jam, Jereme Sanders (Texas), Zachary Cohn (Maryland), Levi Meeuwenberg (Michigan), Tyson Cecka (Washington), Janine Cundy (Washington), Joe and Casey (sorry guys, I don't remember your last names) were all crashing in Jesse's attic. For Friday night, add another 20 people to that.
People arrived throughout the day, and everyone spent the afternoon in Jesse's backyard, doing some light training and some heavy BBQ-ing. A campfire got started pretty soon everyone was making S'mores (out of Reece's peanut butter cups instead of Hershey's. Try it sometime, it's great!).
It was then when a miracle was performed – the likes of which have never been seen at a Parkour event since the beginning of time. Not only did (almost) everyone get in bed before Midnight, but everyone was up by 6:30, and ready to go by 7:30. That's right. 7:30. In the morning. AM. Ante Meridiem. Janine and Zac got up a bit early to make about sixty banana filled pancakes to serve to people as they woke up, and then the whole group of 25+ people got out the door and to the train station earlier than scheduled. Everyone split into two at the World Trade subway station, with one group of traceurs navigating their way through Central Park, and another exploring Roosevelt Island.
For those who have never been there, Central Park is a great place for Nature Parkour. There are huge rocks and boulders to climb, forests to run through, and fallen trees to balance on. Central Park offers a huge variety of natural obstacles to overcome, and because it is alive, it is also constantly changing. Roosevelt Island contained a lot of very interestingly designed apartment buildings, playgrounds, and a giant Styrofoam block that Levi and Chris pulled out of the river. Both locations were solid training areas, and the two groups eventually left and met back up for lunch and more training at Chinatown Park.
For the first time anyone can remember, we were asked to leave Chinatown Park after only an hour or so. We made our way to Brooklyn Banks, a skate/BMX park near the Brooklyn Bridge, but found it overcrowded with hundreds of skaters (apparently it was Skate-Day). We decided to let them have the park and leave, so we hit up a lot of New York City scaffolding on our way to a great little ice cream shop in Chinatown and then back to World Trade to go back to Jesse's house in New Jersey.
We gave everyone an hour or so to rest and relax- it had been a long day – and then Jesse led everyone out to a local high school for a conditioning session. In order to get to the school, we had to balance forwards, backwards, and QM for about a mile down abandoned railroad tracks and over bridges. Several people had to conquer their fear of heights and find a way across the bridges, which were often missing several boards and had gaps between the boards that were there. But everybody overcame their fear heights and falling and made it across to the high school. By this point, it was about 10:30pm. We started off climbing rails, QM-ing across baseball fields, and twenty minutes finding different ways to traverse a football tackling trainer.
At that point, Miles, Tyson Cecka, Charles Moreland, and Jereme Sanders led a station each in the football stadium. Miles led quadrupedal motion drills on the stairs. People climbed forward, backward, sideways, up, and down. They added challenges like doing it blind, skipping steps, and a traceuse from New Jersey named Ann did everything without her left arm. Tyson led a climb-up drill on a wall with a railing on top. People were doing dynos (jumping from the wall to the rail, or vice versa), traversing left and right, climbing up and down, and doing turn vaults to the other side of the wall. Jereme Sanders led a partner conditioning session, with people back to back and doing squats, dragging and carrying their partner across the field, and leap frogging over and crawling between people's legs. Charles Moreland ran a running station, teaching correct form and going over ways to increase power. Each station lasted between 15 and 20 minutes, with about 5 minutes of rest and transition between each station.
We finished the four stations at 12:30, jogged a mile and a half, and then had a thirty minute cool down stretching session. We stopped at a local 24-hour convenience store for some post-workout snacks, and then made our way back to Jesse's house. By the time we got back, it was 3:30am and we were smoked.
The original plan was to have a group wake up early on Sunday and go to Newark, and then meet up with everyone else at 1PM. Because we got home as the sun was rising however, we ended up getting to Newark at 2pm. There was light training throughout the day, a lot of railwork and circuits on scaffolding, and an incident involving an old drunk guy, a knife, and 20 SWAT members. It started pouring rain as NYPK wound down, and we went back to Jesse's house to do some miscellaneous training in his back yard.
Jereme and Zac left that night on a 15 hour bus trip to Columbus, Ohio, where Jereme will tag along with Zac to Ann Arbor, Michigan and then to Illinois for the big Chicago jam.
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