American Parkour

Hopefully if my dad buys this big strip of land, I'm going to build a jungle gym. I already built a vault box, but there's no room.

Are you the same Ryan Courtney that got on here like a year ago and talked about tornado kicking a mugger in the face and running for like a mile to evade the others?

That was Ryan Drake. Looks like Ryans are more prone to muggings than anyone.

No forests are restricted to the public...the Earth is our birthright.

There's a few herds of deer living there; I'm guessing it's a tiny preservation park. Also inside that is a former waste dump site.

What, my positive karma jumped from +5 to +10..........

WHY DO YOU PEOPLE HATE ME SO MUCH?!?!

if you click the negitive, itll take away the - and add it to the + count.

Wow, thanks. It worked.

Yep, again. I just +1'd Adam, and it give him extra negative karma.

Thanks for your input. I did not know England was that similar to the US. I'm glad you were able to finding good training ground.

We should be more involved in our local authority bodies, because if anybody is bringing any meaningful change, it will be those who want it.

Here's a video of some of my friends Free Running in a suburb with no parkour spots, and making the best of it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_3OSY4vq5w
Maybe you can find one of these set ups in your town

Thanks for the share. However, that is a pretty damn good setup they got, compared to what I have. My neighborhood is literally just houses in the middle of fields, a forest (which is restricted to the public), and generally private property. The nearest school is 2 miles away, and I'm not under 18 so I won't get off with a warning for trespassing. But thanks though.

@Hazim. That was my question. Is there a faster way over them? Considering I live near a suburban area I think I'm going to figure out a faster way over. I already know that the gate vault works for the vinyl fences, but not always with the chain link.

Ryan, there really isn't any other way other than hopping as high as you can, and do the muscle-up motion. Any other technique would just break through it (which may be faster, lol).

Meh, I wouldn't say that the US has that many amazing trickers...I don't watch too many tricking videos though, so I might just be oblivious to it.

@OP, obviously cities are a better environment to train in, architecture-wise, but that doesn't mean that we should just blame our lack of good training on our unlucky area. I don't think we need to change our architecture or build an obscene amount of parkour parks...

Can you elaborate a little bit more on what you mean about how driving to a training spot isn't the spirit of parkour?

As for the trickers, I think tricking is pretty widespread around the world, it's just that tricking is "cool", so most American trickers only do tricking, while the Russians with all their insane flip skills also do parkour along with it, same with the British.

As for the driving part....well you live in America. You literally cannot reach a place of interest without a car. The nearest park to me is 5 minutes away in a car. Everything around here is structured and "specialized".
For example, one day I feel really bored. I'm bored of the videogames and youtube, and decide to head out side and do some parkour. It's my stress reliever. To me, it's supposed to be a spontaneous activity that I enjoy to blow steam off. Now my problem is, there is no wall around to practice on. All I have is a tree branch which I can do muscle ups on. The privacy fences around here are too flimsy they will break. I train some precisions on two pieces of wood, but it gets boring. I walk outside the neighborhood, and the road that takes me to downtown is 2 miles long, only fields on each side. The neighbor's fence is plastic and not even attached to the ground right. There's a neat concrete complex nearby, but it's fenced with spikes on top. There's a small concrete bridge, but the street is too busy to be training on that.

So in general, if there are obstacles at all in the Suburbs, they are made out of material too fragile to handle a traceur. It's like everything is made out of cookies and cheap plastic.

Also, since I'm at it: I have a younger brother, he's 13, so he can't drive. The nearest park is 5 minutes away with a car, and everybody's too busy to drive him there. His friends are just like him, lazy asses in front of videogames all day. The only solution I see to that is if there's a playground where he can walk to. And there is none. Kids can't go outside and play on their own anymore. By the time they're old enough, they'll be too old to play tag or hide and seek.



Of course, in the end, that might be just my situation since we live relatively far away from downtown, but you get the idea.

I disagree, I think you can find places in the suburbs, its just requires a lot more work and a change of mindset. I'm not saying that its any better than the city, but you can always find places.

I know, but if you put more water in a desert, more life will be created.

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html

If you live in Suburbia, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
"I want to learn parkour, but there's no where to train."
We usually respond to those people with, "You just have to look better." I don't think that's fulfilling enough. I don't believe a person driving to a viable training spot is the spirit of parkour. That's almost as "free" as going to an indoors, structured climbing gym and climbing "the way it should be".

So what can we do? Do we build parkour parks all around Suburbia (like we see in some PK Russian videos), or should we change our architecture to have less space between houses, less conformity, and more outdoors human interaction?


I'm sorry, this is just something I've been raging about for a long time. Thanks for reading.