American Parkour

Quote from: Christopher G. on September 03, 2009, 07:15:57 PM

you make it sound boering. you dont wanna make it seem bland at the beggening.Then people just want to quit. Rolls are important even though he said they cant take drops . I take drops on concrete with a good roll and feel no pain. dont stress it to much these are ultimate goals begginers set. If you cant do what you want you dont want to do anything.

A few things that he should realistically consider when leading these classes...

1. Boring is better than someone getting seriously injured and potentially suing him.
2. People quitting is preferable to training in a way that will cause harm to practitioners.
3. Just because you don't feel pain when you take a drop does not mean you are not doing harm to your joints. The forces of repeated impact will add up over time and catch up to you.

(Sorry, I don't want to seem like I'm comin down on you but I just wanted to point out a few things I've learned through leading parkour training at a university.)

I think the first post has good ideas. I'm sorta restating some of that stuff, but here's my advice:

1. Keep things simply and at ground level.
2. Build a good relationship with campus authorities and campus security.
3. Keep things VERY structured. Like I said, if someone gets seriously injured you could potentially be held liable.
4. This seems counter intuitive, but don't go out and get people. Make sure they can find you, but they need to understand that when they train with you, they came to you on your own terms. When you do this they will be much more willing to listen to your directions when training.
5. Do lots of conditioning. A strong body is the foundation of parkour training.

hope this thread is still alive, i know i'm a couple of months late. I live pretty close to sunset park too, I actually just learned about parkour..so i don't really know much about it....sounds fun though, wonderin' if anybody would be willing to maybe teach a newbie some of the basics.