Topic: My husband is scared for me to do Parkour

[dilet2e]

I didn't realize this at first. But we were on vacation in Colorado a few weeks ago, and while he fished I was working with this boulder.

First I thought I would just try jumping up onto its sloped side. After doing that a few times, I thought, I could do a safety vault over this, it's not too thick. [btw I'm still quite new at this, don't have too many skills yet] Sure enough, I could!

I was really excited and when my husband came away from the lake I said "Watch me, I can vault this boulder!"

He said, "I don't want to watch, I'm afraid you'll get hurt."

I said "aw come on, it's a SAFETY vault!" Then he watched.

But later I asked him, "you're really worried about me doing parkour, aren't you?"

I can't say I blame him, I have been known to be a klutz at times... did a face plant last spring just running across a street! (I wasn't picking my feet up)


I told him I would do my best to train safely. He's not asking me not to do it, but--have any of you out there run into this?

Thanks, Terri

[Timothy Chen Allen]

I told him I would do my best to train safely. He's not asking me not to do it, but--have any of you out there run into this?

My wife does the same thing-- a lot of it really had to do with her insecurities around me practicing a sport in which she would never involve herself and differences in our levels of physical fitness.  I also think she had some legitimate concerns about me hurting myself.  It helped some that I took her and my son to a big jam and let them meet some of the other traceurs.  My son also got to learn some (he's seven!)

I think my wife was calmer about this once she saw that my interest in parkour was not going to interrupt her life.  I think my parkour training time interferes less than when I got on an ultramarathoning kick last year and I was training four-six hours ever Saturday!

[dilet2e]

I do think part of it with my husband is the common confusion between parkour & freerunning. I tried to explain the difference and that I'm only interested in pure parkour--not in doing flips and acrobatics. I don't know if it helped.

I did NOT show him my scraped right shoulder the other day... I was practicing rolls in the grass wearing a tank top. Obviously my form isn't very good yet, I shouldn't be scraping my shoulder! It's not that bad, my shins are much worse from picking raspberries over the weekend! But I don't want to borrow trouble.

If only he knew... already the "overcoming fear" component of parkour training is big with me... I'm not likely to try something I'm not ready for.