Topic: So We Wanna Know...What Made You Start Doing Parkour/Freerunning?

[Conner McGillvray]

I heard a joke about parkour, something about how every time a person would do a simple vault, or a hop that the group would shout "PARKOUR." It was annoying, but it made me wonder how capable i was in doing it.  I was in good shape, so i didn't see why i couldn't do well.  I searched tutorials and became addicted.  In the months of training that followed, i realized there was much more than a joke, it was a passion. 

[Kevin]

I watched "Chose Not to Fall" from Matt63productions and Daniel Ilabaca and the way he talked made me do it.

[Joshua]

In my generation, there is alot of "Parkour" talk, which is mostly inaccurate, but the word is still thrown around. Anyway, one day I decided to find out what Parkour actually was. Instantly captivated, I watched David Belle do these amazing movements on Youtube. A few weeks later, after conquering the Kong Vault, I went back to school and explained to my friends what Parkour was, and started teaching some of them some basic techniques. Since then, I have taught about 7 friends about Parkour and train with them daily.

[Ninjatic Silver]

In my generation, there is alot of "Parkour" talk, which is mostly inaccurate, but the word is still thrown around. Anyway, one day I decided to find out what Parkour actually was. Instantly captivated, I watched David Belle do these amazing movements on Youtube. A few weeks later, after conquering the Kong Vault, I went back to school and explained to my friends what Parkour was, and started teaching some of them some basic techniques. Since then, I have taught about 7 friends about Parkour and train with them daily.

Interesting! I am still trying to rediscover my motivation to get up and around! D: All my friends stopped going out and doing things with me. All they wanna do is sit around my house and play video games. Not that it isn't fun, but my 8 pack turned into a 4. Not amused.

[Leah King]

To be perfectly honest, I was running late to class and ended up dashing over and around obstacles.  I saw a classmate who told me that class didn't start for another five minutes.  He then asked me if I knew parkour.  I told him "no" and he told me to look it up on YouTube.  I did, thought it looked awesome(it is) and began training as best as I could.  There's no really good place in Clearwater Florida.

[Tyler]

Two of my closest friends learned about it and trained while I was busy with wrestling. About 7 months later I was finally free and they were always asking me to come out so I did. In about a 2 hour session with one of them I learned how to kong, lazy, turn vault, and dash. I progressed quickly and ever since I have been interested in it. Unfortunately I have not practiced in a long time but I am trying to change that by slowly reintroducing myself back into it.

[Steven Boutcher]

I had no idea when I bought the game Mirror's Edge for PS3 that it was even about parkour and freerunning.  I beat the game before I even looked up information about the game out of curiosity, and that's when I first saw the word "parkour."  The novelty of the word interested me and I researched more into it and I found myself wanting to learn.  I remember the first thing I did was watch APK and 3Run tutorials among others to find the best explanation for how to do the parkour roll.  I only became more passionate and addicted to it with time ^_^

[Ryan Paul Rohrich]

Well I had discovered Parkour around a year or so ago but I did not take it very seriously and was preoccupied with other affairs. Despite those distractions Parkour had always stood out in my mind but I considered it another teenage "fad". Recently I had come to this site and reread some of the material and looked into the philosophy of Parkour and watched the videos of David Belle. Once I saw him put his philosophy into action I fell in love with the philosophy and application of Parkour. It is poetry in motion really. Flowing, endless, graceful in it's own essence. To me personally it transcends the "box" the world places itself in (Where everything "has no value beyond it's limited self-reference.") It pushes the boundaries of the social "norm" and uses it to it's advantage. Everything is interconnected especially when it comes to the body, mind, and spirit. I believe Parkour incorporates all three of those if you have the proper mind set for it. So I did not only start Parkour because it is fun, keeps yourself in amazing shape, and helps you get to where you are going faster, but to grow in my faith as well. 

[Marc McLeod]

I just recently got interested in Parkour because I wanted to be more acrobatic but the way i found out about parkour was pretty funny. So may 31 my mom's birthday I dislocated my kneecap and since my parents couldn't drive me they got an ambulance and while on this ambulance I asked the EMT stationed with me what was the most minor injury he had ever been called for he said it was a sprained ankle. I laughed and asked who would call for that and apparently the mother of a kid who watched some parkour video saw him doing some stuff and saw him limping and freaked out. I looked up Parkour found this website and the rest is a lot of reading and then handstands and rolls until my knee's better.

[Will]

Interesting to read how others got the Parkour bug!

For me, I always do bike rides as a form of fitness.  I would go out four or five times a week after I finish work.  The trouble is, where I live, in the winter times it tends to get dark over here at about 5 o clock, and doesn't give me enough time to get a good bike ride in! 
I was worried over the winter that I would lose my form through lack of exercise.  Thats why I took up running, you can get a good workout in a much shorter time compared to a bike ride. 
The problem is, running by itself is quite boring.

I found myself one night watching random youtube videos, and I found a couple by Ryan Doyle.  I guess you could say I was inspired   I searched for more videos of people training, and decided to try myself.  I have never looked back

I still go for a run every night after work, and while I'm out, I'll practice rolling etc and on my way back, instead of taking a break sitting on a picnic bench, I'll practice my kong vault over it.

Much more fun than running on its own! 

I do take it seriously though, I understand the dangers involved.  One of the reasons I registered here is to speak with more experienced traceurs and hopefuly learn a thing or two!

[Anton Mesmer]

I won't lie. I mostly started this because I saw guys on YouTube doing all the cool stuff that I saw action movie stars and power rangers do when I was younger... and then I realized that I could probably do it too if I tried. I used to crash tricks in the backyard when I was little not really thinking much of actually landing any of them. Then I learned to backflip. As I grew older I started to move away from show-offy movements and more towards practical movements. [enter Parkour]

Since then, I've been fully devoted to discovering all the different ways humans can achieve movement.

[Robert Lindstrom]

Here's a story for you guys.  It may be a little long.

I am 5'7", and I weigh about 315 lbs.  I've been heavy all my life, even as a kid.  What can I say?  I love to eat.  Now, 315 lbs. might be a lot (OK, it IS a lot), but also know I've lost 40 lbs. since the beginning of January 2012, and I am not stopping there.  I've been trying to get healthy for 5 years, with losses and gains, and this is the year that I finish what I started.  This is the year I shed all this weight, put on a little more muscle, and accomplish what every overweight individual wants most:  to be comfortable in my own skin.

But what made me want to train in parkour?

Around 2005 a couple of my friends saw some of the early parkour videos that had found their way onto youtube, and they were training hard.  They showed me the videos, and instantly I was hooked.  To overcome any obstacle, and see movement in a different way fascinated me.  Stairs were meant to be run, ledges were meant to be climbed, and the world had suddenly become a big playground.  That, and it looked like a lot of fun too. But back then I knew I was too heavy to do it, and it saddened me that I would never do a vault, or climb a wall.  Hell I can't even do a damn pull up.  It was depressing.  It still is.

Then one day I thought... "Why couldn't I?  What's really stopping me?"

And that's when I started looking at myself a whole lot more, and I didn't like what I saw.  Who I was didn't define what I was capable of, and since then I've been sweating a hell of a lot more, lifting heavy objects, and knowing the path that I want to walk.  And climb.  And run.  And jump.

That is what got me started training ladies and gentlemen.  To overcome not just obstacles in my environment, but also obstacles within myself.  To know that I am worth it, that I want something, to set my mind to it, and achieve it.  I know I have to take baby steps in learning, and that I can't do very much yet with all this extra weight on my body, but once I shed this fat like a second skin, I'm gonna run, climb, jump, and never look back. 

[austen]

I was wanting to become an assassin like in the games so i started training in the eyes of an assassin and i didnt know it wascalled Parkour so that is how i started.

[Stacia Renea Allen]

This is my first time ever posting anything, so bear with me! 
I started parkour about a week ago, and it has been the coolest thing I have ever done in my life! (Besides belly dancing...) I decided to try parkour while I was still in school a few weeks ago. (I just graduated) I have never had very many friends and I very rarely hung out with people. I have never felt like I belonged anywhere. I was the really quiet kid who always got good grades and got teased for being too smart. One day I overheard a bunch of kids gossiping about a group of people that called themselves the " Freedom Runners". I thought it sounded kind of silly at first, but then that very same day after school I actually saw them. They were a group of graduates who all did parkour together in the small town I went to school in.
    I was hanging out at the library after school and I happened to glance out the window, and there they were. It may sound corny, but it was one of those moments in your life where everything seems to happen in slow motion, you know? They were vaulting and jumping off of ledges and rolling and flipping... The looks on their faces while they did it showed me that they clearly experienced a freedom that other people don't. As shy and as silly as I felt, I found myself putting down my book and going outside before I could stop myself. They all kind of chuckled at me as I stood there staring like a moron.  I asked what they were doing and they broke it down for me. Now here I am, doing my best to learn and keep up with them. They are all older than me and I'm actually the youngest member of the group. Looking back, I try to imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't went outside that day.

[Edo]

I was doing a walk when a friend of mine began to run and he did a monkey...After I asked: What is this? and he answered: This is parkour! I'll train you if you want!....
At the beginning I wasn't sure of parkour but when I watched a parkour video from youtube (this video http://youtu.be/_YLSW1zxG2M  ) I excited of parkour!!!!!
And now, a year and 5 months later, i can do front,side,back,front 180 flip, cork, b-twist and all parkour moviments too.
I thank my friend for this...

[Mack Hartley]

I was bored one day and in my room, watching youtube, and one of the related videos was "How to jump of high things and not get hurt". So i watched it and thought that was cool, i didn't even know that was possible at the time, (it was simply doing rolls). And i look in the comments and there were alot of disslikes and people saying, Thats not a parkour roll, or, You will just hurt yourself that way. So i typed in, Parkour Roll, and Ryan Doyle's parkour roll came up. I watched it and tried to do a very simple roll in my bedroom (the type where you hold your foot). I finally succeed after 5 minutes and thought it was fun. So i continued to the normal roll, and found that this mysterious "parkour" thing was about doing vaults and ninja like moves. My goal was to get all of the basic movements down, and i have achieved that goal, thanks to a crappy and incorrect PK roll video =). I've been doing PK for about 9 months now and counting.

[Danny Hall]

Back when me and my friends were in elementary school and junior high, we had this addiction to looking up fail and win videos on Youtube. Of course, this led to us seeing people jumping from roof to roof of buildings and flipping off walls. We found out it was called parkour. We thought it was cool, but we really did nothing about it. Recently, in my last few years before graduating from high school, I have found a renewed interest in parkour. This was pushed on when one of my friends that I had had since elementary joined a gymnastics team and became a skilled tumbler. We both started doing parkour together. This is how I got into parkour. 

[RivQua]

My whole life I was the chubby, lazy kid who sat in the corner and read a book instead of running around and not being able to keep up with all the other kids on the playground

At some point I tried to learn different things, like breakdancing, hip hop, skateboarding, and the like, but I could never really find a group/teacher, and if i did, i felt like i didn't fit in.

Then, April 2011, I met my sister's friend's boyfriend, who did parkour. somehow my sister thought to ask if he would be willing to teach me, and he was more than happy to help.

Remember guys, ALWAYS be willing to help the newbies.

[Kylee Cleek]

Riv: I used to be the same way. I always had a small frame, but I was lazy as can be. Later in life I got into body building (which is incredibly hard for a female). It is still an interest of mine, but sitting around lifting weights has proved to feel the same: closer to an interest in fitness, but still inherently motionless. Once I started parkour, and got that intense cardio, my muscles are starting to pop more than they ever did just doing regular weighted workouts.

I really wish I had a trainer or even friend who did the sport (it would be a lot easier than trying to learn it all on my own from internet videos and reads). But once I am what I can all 'good' I would certainly love to take a younger person under my wing who wants to learn parkour. Training newbies is how you start a group in your area! Everyone should be on the lookout for those who need/ want help with it.

[kenchiro]

I want to be a police officer in order to keep the bandits.