Madparkour of Madison, WI has been working for the past year to develop some community outreach programs around the city. Using Jump Westminster as their guide and inspiration, they examined various organizations around the city that might be interested in parkour. They hooked up with Fit City which led them to work with Girls, Inc. a national non-profit youth organization dedicated to educating American girls. The training and conditioning sessions were very successful and MadPK will continue to working with Girls Inc this week.
Madparkour of Madison, WI has been working for the past year to develop some community outreach programs around the city. Using Jump Westminster as their guide and inspiration, in late 2007, they examined various organizations around the city that might be interested in parkour, starting with the city of Madison's website, and the Madison mayor's website. That search took them to Fity City Madison, a mayoral initiative to get Madisonians out moving, eating better, and in touch with important health information and preventative practices. Fit City is run by a board of directors, comprised of various health-care professionals, restaurant owners, fitness professionals, and educators around the city. It looked like a good starting point, so Madpk sent an email to the contact person listed on the website, with a brief explanation of parkour and a message that basically said, "We're here and we want to be useful. What will you have us do?"
Due to various people within Fit City being on leave, and the holidays, it took a few months for Fit City and Madpk to connect. But with perseverance and lots of "email tag," they finally had a face-to-face meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to introduce Fit City to parkour, and to explore ways in which the two organizations could work together. Madparkour created a simple but professional-looking flyer explaining parkour and also identifying Madparkour as an organization. It included the organization's mission and values statements, and contact information. Madparkour cited the success of Jump Westminster and also the educational programs underway in Colorado (led by Ryan Ford and COPK), and Seattle (led by Tyson Cecka of PNWPA) as evidence for the viability of a parkour program for youth in Madison.
Because Fit City is focused primarily on providing free or reduced-price fitness and health programs to people in the community who otherwise would not have access, Madparkour's "sales pitch" of parkour being a type of exercise that can be done anywhere, by anyone, regardless of age, gender, race, or income, was very compelling. In addition, their willingness to provide workshops free of charge (or for a small donation) was also alluring.
Fit City's goal is to bring people and organizations together to provide broad access to fitness resources throughout the community. So by approaching Fit City, Madparkour gained access to a lot of various contacts throughout the city. The big question, now that Fit City was excited about parkour, was where to best put the Madpk traceurs to use. One of the organizations that Fit City partners with is Girls, Inc. a "...national nonprofit youth organization dedicated to inspiring all girls to be strong, smart, and bold. With roots dating to 1864, Girls Inc has provided vital educational programs to millions of American girls, particularly those in high-risk, underserved areas..." (from the Girls, Inc. website). The Fit City contact, Kathy, felt that a Girls, Inc. summer program would be a good fit for Madparkour to start with.
Given the small number of women in parkour, the opportunity to work with a Girls, Inc. group was really exciting, especially for Madpk's Muse_of_Fire, a traceuse and middle/high school teacher. Kathy worked to "sell" parkour to the Girls, Inc. program directors in Madison, even going so far as sending them links to Jump Westminster videos and other resources. Kathy was easily as enthusiastic about parkour as any traceur, so Madpk felt lucky having her as an advocate. After several weeks of wrangling schedules, a meeting was finally set up with the Girls, Inc. leaders. They were not interested in just hearing about parkour, they wanted to experience a training session, to see what it would be like!
The group met at a local teen center with a skate ramp out back, and Madparkour led the Girls, Inc. program directors through a basic training session, including a short conditioning warm-up, QM, landing and balance drills, rolling, and cat hangs/traverses on the sides of the skate ramp. Basic vaults were also on the agenda, but time ran short. Before the training session was over, the Girls, Inc. leaders were already asking, "When can you start?" Contact information and tentative schedules were exchanged, and Madpk seemed set to start leading workshops for girls in the city.
Madparkour had its first session with the girls at a community center in July. The community center is attached to a HUD housing development, so the girls are from a variety of different backgrounds. The director of that center also asked Madparkour to provide training for their boys' group during alternating weeks, which was another exciting opportunity to work with youth in the community. For the first week with the girls, Madparkour met at the center a little early to scope out the playground area and make some decisions about how to structure the workshop. The girls group consisted of 8 girls, all of them 5th-8th graders. Madpk was fortunate enough to have Zac "happydud" Cohn visiting that week, so he joined in the training and did an excellent job!
The session started with the Madparkour trainers, Alissa (Muse_of_Fire) and Chad, as well as Zac, introducing themselves. Then they played a short "name game" to break the ice and learn everyone's name in the group. Alissa asked the girls if they had ever heard of parkour. Seeing no hands, she asked the girls if they had ever played on a playground before, and a brief discussion followed about what kinds of things a person can do on a playground. Then they showed the girls a brief clip of "Jump Westminster;" probably the first 5 minutes or so, in which Julie describes parkour in a voice-over played over various clips of parkour footage. The girls seemed a little wowed by it all. The trainers explained that the girls would be learning the basics of parkour, and a brief discussion of safety followed.
The girls were somewhat reluctant, but a quick follow-the-leader style warm-up, in a lighthearted style, got them moving and laughing out on the playground. They learned how to use QM to get around, and got a chance to practice with a game of QM "Red Light/Green Light" led by Zac. Afterwards, the group headed to a split-rail fence outside the center to work on balancing. The girls practiced walking along the fence railing with a partner acting as a spotter. This was very challenging for some of the girls--one girl was nervous about even getting up on the fence! However she gave it an honest try and vowed to attack it again the following week. All the girls by this point seemed to be having fun and also seemed to really be buying into doing the hard work inherent in parkour, even if only for the duration of the workshop sessions (but hopefully for longer!). Chad led the girls in a few partner activities to practice balance, based on some martial arts drills, and the girls had a lot of fun with that.
After a water break, the session moved on to precisions and landing technique. The girls worked on landing quietly, and then practiced precisions, first on sidewalk cracks and later on lines drawn in the sand at the volleyball court. Not very much time was spent on landing technique because the session was running short on time, but Madparkour plans to review landings some more in the next session (along with rolls), and give the girls a chance to practice more, before moving on to other things.
By now the girls were very into it and were having a lot of fun. Similar to the Women's Jam at Primal, all of the girls demonstrated a high level of commitment: none of them gave up, and even when one girl was "singled out" to do pushups as a result of 'The Game,' she did them without complaining, and finished them all, even though she clearly felt self-conscious about it. A few of the girls looked as if they would not be in physical condition to be successful at the workshop, but every single girl did every single activity and exercise, which was impressive. Some of the girls modified some things, but no one sat out or opted out of any activities.
The session finished up with a game of PDQ, and then a brief explanation of the term "traceuse." Chad pointed out that "traceuse" has 8 letters, and there were 8 girls at the session, so the session ended with a little "T-R-A-C-E-U-S-E! Whoa, traceuse!" cheer. The girls seemed pretty pumped about parkour, and were looking forward to the next session.
The following week, the trainers met with the boys' group. Several of the girls were very excited to see the Madparkour trainers and were asking about the next girls' session, so it was good to see them still enthused. They had a lot of questions: "Are you going to teach the boys the same things you taught us?" and the like. They also asked a lot about Zac, and if he was coming back. Apparently he was the favorite of the group.
The boys' training session was similar to the girls', with a few changes. The video choice was "Dispersion" instead of Jump Westminster, primarily because the voice-over on Jump Westminster seemed to distract from the parkour, at least in terms of how an adolescent mind would view it. The boys had heard of parkour from the girls, but they really weren't sure how to conceptualize it. They did go nuts over "Dispersion," though, and a couple of them had seen Levi on Ninja Warrior, so all of that was very motivating for them. As such, the discussion on safety was emphasized a lot more with the boys. They were raring to go by the time the group headed outside to get started.
They likely didn't expect the conditioning to be so hard, though. Many of the boys "sat one out" during the warm-up, or opted out of certain activities/exercises. That was a little disappointing, but they still seemed to have fun. There was time with the boys to teach rolls, so after QM practice and teaching rolls, the group played a game of QM tag to practice their new skills in a fun way and also get some extra conditioning in. They really enjoyed that.
It was interesting to observe the differences in training styles between the boys and the girls. The boys seemed to get competitive right away, which probably led to a lot of the "I'm gonna sit this one out, I have a cramp," type behaviors. The girls, on the other hand, took on a more cooperative approach, which seemed to enhance their willingness to give everything a try and stick with things.
Along that same note, the boys really got into the martial arts-based balance drills with a partner that Chad taught. They involved trying to get one's partner off-balance, and it seemed the boys really were motivated by the prospect of one-upping eachother. They had a blast with that and even though the environment felt a little more competitive, it was still fun and lighthearted.
Next week will be Madparkour's second session with the girls. The group will re-visit landings and precisions, and also progress some of their balance drills up in difficulty. They will also learn and practice rolls, and learn basic vaulting techniques (the safety vault and, if there's time, the speed vault). The following week will be the boys' second session and will mirror the girls' program closely. The program is scheduled to last 6 weeks; Madparkour hopes to work with the kids on cats and climb-ups, other vaults, and some "flow"/obstacle coursing work so the kids can practice stringing their skills together to navigate an environment. Woven throughout all of this will be discussions of parkour philosophy (Safety, the traceur's relationship to fear, Leave No Trace, respect for the body and training environment, respect for authority, perseverance, community/cooperation, and hard work), as well as a sampling of clips from various videos (Jump Westminster, Dispersion, Go, Pilgrimage, David Belle footage, E:60, etc.).
Madparkour hopes to continue its working relationship with the kids at the community center, and others like it in the city, beyond the scope of its summer session.
Beyond this, Madparkour is working with Fit City to get involved with law enforcement agencies and city departments, including Madison's mayor, Dave Cieslewicz (that's "chess-LEV-itch", usually referred to simply as "Mayor Dave"). Recent meetings with the Madison Police Department have been stymied by schedule conflicts, but with such an enthusiastic Fit City contact advocating for Madparkour, it's only a matter of time.
For now, the reward of working with kids, and getting them excited about parkour and movement, is more than enough.
Users' Comments
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1.
07-14-2008 18:02
Three Cheers!!!
2.
07-14-2008 18:17
Woot!
3.
07-14-2008 18:55
Most excellent. I'm excited to hear about this firsthand at the midwest jam.
4.
07-14-2008 20:12
You're doing awesome work. Keep it up, and promise the girls that "Zac'll be back... one day."
5.
07-14-2008 23:40
I'm really glad more people are spearheading this type of work, go MadPK!
6.
07-15-2008 05:18
Sounds awesome, way to take some initiative. MadPk is kicking but! Do you think you could post up a copy of your curriculum (if you have written copy) for others use?
7.
07-15-2008 05:53
Thank you very much for your kind words, guys.
Right now the curriculum is kind of in my head; but maybe once it gets more formalized I can have some documentation to share. I'd be glad to provide that sort of thing.
Thanks again for the kind comments. They are much appreciated.
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