Finally some Parkour classes in Seattle! Check out the space:

And check out -the details-

Be sure to come this Saturday at 12 noon to check it out and learn some stuff!

I feel bad for not bringing my camera along on Saturday, I had no idea how beautiful Chicago is. Wandering around downtown with 70 traceurs next to the river surrounded by huge skyscrapers is quite the experience. Not that many amazing spots downtown that I could see, but the college campus we were at beforehand (UIC) was fricken awesome and we only saw a small portion of it.

Yesterday wasn’t particularly hard, but I just wasn’t feeling the energy for today at all and am looking forward to finally coming home tomorrow. We attempted to some parkour this morning before heading to the beach, but it ended up torrentially raining on us when we got there and we found ourselves surrounded and blocked out from the outside by the gay pride parade. After taking more than an hour to get the few miles back home, we just went and watched WALL-E Which is an awesome movie! Since I’m sitting next to Zac whose working on a writeup as well I’ll just leave it at that…

It was then when a miracle was performed – the likes of which have never been seen at a Parkour event since the beginning of time. Not only did (almost) everyone get in bed before Midnight, but everyone was up by 6:30, and ready to go by 7:30. That’s right. 7:30. In the morning. AM. Ante Meridiem. Janine and Zac got up a bit early to make about sixty banana filled pancakes to serve to people as they woke up, and then the whole group of 25+ people got out the door and to the train station earlier than scheduled. Everyone split into two at the World Trade subway station, with one group of traceurs navigating their way through Central Park, and another exploring Roosevelt Island.

Zac’s writeup of PKNY is up on APK, his video and my thoughts after the gap.

First of all if you didn’t notice, Jesse’s backyard is awesome. And him and his parents hosting everyone with an included barbecue was incredible.

Secondly, Zac pretty much covered everything except the reason we got kicked out of Chinatown: “It’s not an exercise park, it’s a children’s park.” And he missed the conditioning group with Jesse in Central Park (before the night conditioning session) which was awesome, nuff said.

Well, I didn’t get the projects I was hoping to finish done before returning to the blog, but it looks like I’m going to have a bit of time to work on them on the various plane rides this month… Check out my schedule with the Tribe for March:

• 4th-8th in San Francisco
• 9th-11th in LA
• 12th and 13th back in Seattle (with a live interview on the 13th with KOMO)
• 14th-28th in Las Vegas
• 19th-20th in Dallas
• 21st-25th hopefully in San Antonio
• 26th-27th in Houston
• 28th and 29th in Seattle (conditioning jam anyone?)
• 30th-31st in Miami

Busy!

Things are getting busy! It goes without saying though that I’ll be updating this blog will all the juicy details as they become known. If you are in any of those cities, toss me a shout so we can go training and come to the performances/workshops at these Universities:

• University of San Francisco March 6th 10am to 4pm
• University of Southern California (Los Angeles) March 11th 10am to 4 pm
• Southern Methodist University (Dallas) March 19th 10am to 4 pm
• University of Houston March 27th 10am to 4pm
• Florida International University (Miami) March 31st 10am to 4pm

And if you came to one of the jams I was at this last week, keep up that conditioning and train hard!

For everyone who couldn’t make it out to NY last week for PKGen’s visit…you missed out big time! Dan Edwardes, Stephane Vigroux, Chris Keighley, and Julie Angel came over from the UK for an open training day in Central Park. Over 80 traceurs showed from all over the US and Canada, Ohio drove up a van full of 10 guys, Ottawa made a showing, and I flew all the way from Seattle to be there. Click through for the full story and media!

The day started with a brief introduction and a jump straight into the “warmup” (warmup and warmdown are codenames for heavy conditioning in PKGen apparently). We jogged, did a lot of QM, a bunch of jumping exercises, some interesting QM variations (sideways monkeys are great), and a large amount of push up variations. Everything was done very dynamically with just a few small rests in between. To say that it was challenging is a huge understatement, we basically got our asses kicked…

From there we went through some precision basics from Stephane and went through a challenging follow the leader course. After some jamming around the huge rocks of Central Park we broke up into groups and headed out for more specific movement training.

Unfortunately the park was not prepared at all for us to be there, and we kept getting kicked out of everywhere we went after about 30 minutes (the warmup itself ended up having to be done in three different locations). That didn’t stop us however, and we ended up training well into the night, probably about 7 or 8 hours total.

All in all it was an amazing (and tiring) day with a great deal of information absorbed. Some of the Parkour Generations guys have been training hard for over 20 years as well as teaching countless numbers of students and they didn’t hold back any of that experience in teaching us or answering our questions. I’d like to thank them personally for emphasizing conditioning the body for the basics first and foremost, and raising the bar for the intensity of conditioning needed. If you want to still be practicing parkour in ten years time, you need to listen to experienced traceurs like these and focus on strengthening your body as you are progressing through the various techniques (and Don’t Be Dumb).

Keep a look out for Julie’s video of the event on her site, and until then check out some of these:

Dave from Ithaca’s footage from the event:

A few photos I snapped:

http://flickr.com/photos/undaunted/tags/nygenerationsjam/

And some more random things from nyparkour:

http://nyparkour.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=12538#12538

Plus some more from our forums:

http://www.americanparkour.com/smf/index.php?topic=7949.60

Happy training!

-Tyson

This weekend marks the time of this month’s traditional gym jammage and a WAPK first, two gym jams at the same time! One down south in Auburn on the 17th, and one up north in Burlington on the 18th (Seattle will come eventually I swear). To help everyone choose, we are focusing the Auburn jam as beginner-centric with a half of the time dedicated to various workshops. The Burlington jam will stay in its traditional format with an additional Methode Naturelle jam the day before in one of the great parks up there.

Click through for more details and pictures from the last gym jam!

Auburn Jammage

The Auburn jam will be our first time at Harts Gymnastics, a large gym with tons of equipment. We’re looking to spend a full hour and half on in depth instructional workshops, with the remaining hour and a half dedicated to free time (there is going to be a lot of time available, three hours is a long time). The jam will run from 5pm to 8pm and you can find directions -here-

I don’t think I’ll be up for going to both, so I’ll be teaching at this one.

Check -this thread- on WAPK for more info and to arrange carpools

Bellingham Jammage

The Bham jam is going on over the whole weekend with one of Rafe’s methode naturelle training sessions happening on the 17th, followed by the gym jam at Mt. Baker Gymnastics on the 18th. The gym jam will go from 1:30pm to 4:30pm and you can find directions -here-

Check -this thread- on WAPK for more info and to arrange carpools

New Photos

My dad actually shot these when I dragged brought my parents up to the last gym jam in Burlington The lighting is pretty crappy up there so they are pretty blurry, but here are the best ones (you can step through them with the left and right directional keys):

I’m still here and alive! Haven’t been updating very recently, but have gotten some great training in and I’m working on a few exciting projects for the future. No stunt jobs though, in a bit of a lull for those, but that just gives me more time to prepare.

Mt Baker Gym Jam

Which brings me to this month’s gym jam! Once a month the Washington Parkour community rents out a whole gymnastics gym up north in Burlington where we run a beginner’s workshop, a martial arts workshop (sometimes), and a bunch of free time / challenges. It’s a great way to get introduced to parkour in a safe environment, and it’s generally just a hell of a lot of fun

This month it’s happening this Saturday at 6pm and Rafe is also hosting a jam the next day in one of the beautiful parks up there. Check out -this thread- for more info on both jams (and to catch a ride up)!