American Parkour

Founder's Park.  This very day.  2:30 in the afternoon.

Welcome to the boards!  Like Andrew said, you're welcome to join us on Saturday mornings, and I know there are plenty of us who would love to do parkour more often.

However, since we're all in this together, make sure you stay out of places you shouldn't be.  Founders park closes at night, and I don't want to see parkour get a bad rap in Springfield.

Hey Jesse, whether or not I'm going to be able to go is still up in the air, but I'm sure SOME people from Springfield are going, and if so then you could drive here and then carpool the rest of the way.

Hello Faithj3, and welcome to the forums!  We haven't met much over the winter (because there has been too much snow and ice), but when we do meet we always warm up with the basics, which means some pushups and crawling around to limber up, then landing, rolling, and jumping.  Founders park isn't the best place to practice vaults, so sometimes we never even get to that, but everything else we try to cover.  Hope to see you there!

P.S. - We meet on Saturday mornings at 10am.

Last year I went through most of the Winter, but this year things have been harder.  The snow and weather in general has been pretty inconvenient, so most of us haven't been showing up.  Officially there are still jams on Saturdays at 10am, but I wouldn't count on people showing up unless the terrain would be clear and dry enough to be safe.

How old are you, and what's your parkour experience so far?

.::EDIT::.  Sorry!  I just saw your post over in the membership thread.  Welcome to the forums!  Salem's a pretty far drive from Springfield, but we'd love to have you come over sometime!

Religious thread?

Hey!  I don't know how to do them, but maybe someone else around here can help you.  I DO know how to do butterfly kicks, but that's about it.

I remember seeing first hearing about this movie on here a few months ago, and I wanted to make sure everyone saw the new trailer.  Pretty impressive stuff!

Ninja Assassin trailer

Is this Kody?  Regardless, then welcome to the forums!  As for increasing your coordination, you might think about taking a dancing class at college.  You won't see improvement immediately, but if you stick with it you'll get better soon enough.  Alternatively, you can just keep drilling the basic movements.  One of the basics you NEED TO MASTER to get better coordination is quadrupedal movement (or QM).  It's literally just crawling around on your hands and feet.

Here's a good QM progression:

Step 1: Begin with a simple bear crawl motion.  Continue this until you're comfortable, let's say until you can do it for 1 minute without getting winded.  Think about moving gracefully, and try to keep your torso parallel with the ground.

Step 2: This is basically the same idea (graceful movement, torso parallel to the ground) except it's faster and at a different angle.  Rather than going in a straight line, you body will be at a 45 degree angle according to the direction of your movement.  Again, practice this movement until you're comfortable doing it for 1:00

Step 3: This is much harder to do, and it's recommended that you have a lot of experience with steps 1 and 2 before moving onto this.  This is identical to a kong vault, except you're on flat ground.  Explode outward, then bunch up to land on your feet, then explode outward again.

Step 4:  This is my new favorite warmup.  Once you have the basics of QM down, you can beging to string them together a la this video.  Let yourself be creative, and try to flow gracefully from one direction or body movement into the next.  Once you get to the point where you can begin training in this way (probably after MONTHS of work), you will see your coordination increase exponentially.

I hope this helps!  Keep at it.

Thankee kindly, sir.  I only ask because I know that while 1 person training in a place regularly can be okay, sometimes 15 people training in the same place can be not okay.