[exhales]
[giggling]
- Do it again!
- I did not know that you...
No, no, you're good, you don't have to do it again.
[intense orchestral music]
- My name's Jesse Danger.
I'm co-founder and director of The Movement Creative.
I've been training parkour for 15 years.
- My name's Mike Araujo.
I'm from Queens, New York.
I've been doing parkour for 14 years
and I'm currently the head coach for The Movement Creative.
- My name's Orlando Alicea.
I've been training parkour for ten years,
and I'm currently an instructor here at the Brooklyn Zoo.
- Hi, I'm Jeremy Gallant.
I've been doing parkour for about 15 years,
and I'm currently a parkour instructor here at Brooklyn Zoo.
- So the word parkour comes from parcours du combattant.
This is military obstacle training.
Before the French military adopted it,
we can trace the origin right to a volcanic eruption
in 1902, in Saint-Pierre, Martinique.
Georges Hebert was helping to
evacuate people from the island.
He noticed that the local people's way
of training and living was more effective
at preparing them for a natural disaster.
People were running, jumping, climbing, balancing, swimming.
And he compiled that and a few more movements,
so lifting, carrying, self-defense,
into methode naturelle.
And through that practice and through that adaption
of that practice, the French military developed
obstacle courses where you had to work on
all of those skills.
- My name is Sahara Gipson.
I've done gymnastics for about 12 years
and I was on the team at Temple University.
- My name's Michelle Amoresano.
I did gymnastics for about 15 years,
and I was on the gymnastics team at Rutgers University.
- My name is Ayana Lee, and I have been doing gymnastics
for about 15 plus years
and I was on the Rutgers gymnastics team.
- I'm a little nervous, but I'm also very excited
to learn parkour today.
Gymnastics can be very regimented
and I feel with parkour it might present a new opportunity
to run around and be a little bit more free
with the movement.
- So the first challenge we have for you
is to try to stick a jump.
For that, we'll be working on a technique
called the precision landing,
which is landing precisely on something
and being able to stop there.
Before you can connect movements really smoothly,
it's important that you have the control
to stop yourself wherever you are.
We're trying to land gently.
We're gonna be on the balls of our feet.
I wanna go into like, the precision landing
position a little bit, and you guys can try this now too.
- Okay.
- And here now I'm squatting down,
keeping that same tension in my posterior chain
while engaged Achilles, while engaged through my calves,
up through my butt muscles.
Just like that.
[intense jazz music]
One thing, it can be natural to try to balance
with your chest, but see if you can balance
with your knees and hips.
- You get more balance when you bend down,
but everything is closer to your center.
[intense jazz music]
- That went all right.
- Do I have to stick the landing?
- Yeah, yeah.
- The thing you're imagining right now
is that this like, 30 feet high,
so you have no option to just like step off
one direction or the other. - You'll fall off the building
- You need to be like, right on that edge.
You need to have control.
- Got it. - No pressure.
[intense jazz music]
- Was it good?
[clapping]
- Now that you've mastered all the experiments
that we tried on the ground,
we're gonna have you try to put your skills to the test
in a more of a real world environment.
[intense jazz music]
- Yes, nice.
- Great job. - That was awesome.
[laughing]
[muttering]
- Nice.
- You're off the building.
- I'm done.
- Nice.
- You're on the building!
- I feel like we were kind of taking it easy on them.
- Yeah.
- And they definitely impressed.
- I feel like they could do a railing.
- Even if they don't do a railing, it's impressive to see.
They definitely have the control for it,
and that's really nice for day one.
- Yeah.
- I was very nervous, but I think once you kind of just like
let the fear go away, you kind of just like jump.
And it works out how it's supposed to,
at least it did that time.
[intense jazz music]
- The second challenge we have for you
is a Kong vault, or a cat pass.
In gymnastics, I think this is closest to the hecht.
So this is a vault where we dive out,
place both of our hands up, and then hit ourselvelves
up and through so we can keep running.
- We do something similar when we like jump the beams,
but it was very fast and their feet went through their arms
so I'm not sure about that part, but we'll give it a try.
- I mean, I have short legs and I'm still nervous
to cut through this.
[intense jazz music]
- Yeah, nice.
- With the hips, you guys all got your hips up.
If I'm here, it's really hard to get my legs through.
I don't even know if I can.
So I have to get my hips up
to be able to get some space.
So now, this would be the next place you try.
- Okay.
[nervous laughter]
- I don't think I'm...
- If you're not comfortable, you go...
- And then you work on that clearance.
You just get over a little bit more.
- So a part that's scary is you guys worry about
clipping or falling, right?
- Yeah. - One thing that I like
to do is make sure that I'm pointing my toes up.
If I point my toes down, it like,
can laser guide my shin to this if that makes sense.
But if my toes are pointed up, even if I mess up,
the balls of my feet will hit this and I can bounce back
as opposed to just, toes down, and landing on this
and falling forward.
- See, that's not something we're used to.
- Guys. - Oh okay.
[laughter]
- I'm so scared.
- Yeah.
[laughing]
- Try to see if you can be really gentle on top,
really quick on top with your feet.
See how little you need your feet on top.
But they can still be there.
- So you watch them.
When they're coming out on the other side,
their arms are like behind them,
kind of in this like eagle position.
So just that little bit extra pull
will send your feet right over.
- Yay!
[clapping]
Yeah! [cheering]
- Now this kind of move especially,
there's so much of a fear factor involved with it
because a lot of people aren't used to going
into that position to lifting their hips up
and getting almost parallel with the obstacle.
But once they broke it down and just kept on
repeating everything, they picked it up
like they've been doing it for forever.
- Personally, I think the biggest thing for me
was the position of the exercise.
It kind of felt uncomfortable
and something that I'm not typically used to.
- When you see a certain skill, it looks complicated
and it looks like you're not gonna be able to do it.
And then when you actually do it,
you realize how much your body knows how do it.
- The third challenge we have for you today is the lache.
In French, lache means to let go,
and this will be a release from the bar.
To test our control, we'll be trying to release
into a precision landing.
So we get a bit of a swing going, and then we release.
Try to land with control.
- Similar to a dismount from gymnastics,
so I think we got this one. - Yeah.
- The only thing different is how in parkour,
it looks like they're twisting their shoulders
and that's not something we're used to, so.
- You'll be fine.
- Yeah, there we go.
[whistles]
- Nice.
- Yes!
[giggles]
- I feel like you all went past our taped line here,
so like, we can definitely move this block back
and you can do that.
- A bigger one I think.
- And that's one of the things in parkour.
I think there's less of this idea of like,
can you do it or not do it,
rather than like, closed skills, there's open skills.
There's always like another different lache.
You can be more technical with the landing
or more powerful with the technique.
[cheering]
Wow.
- And then she did this.
- You should be landing straight.
- Yeah, you wanna be like
landing in a ready to move position.
So here, rather than like here.
- Nice.
[cheering]
- That was pretty perfect.
- Usually, there's more apprehension
towards throwing yourself and letting go,
'cause you're afraid to land on your back.
- I think there was more apprehension on our part
of like, being ready for how ready they were.
It's like, "Wait, oh, no you're okay, you're fine."
- I think one of the things I was considering
is that they have a gymnastics background
and I've seen people from gymnastics trying parkour.
There's often a little bit of a stiffness in their swings
and in their landings,
and I feel like they were
like, really controlled, able to adapt,
able to push the distance a little bit more, land nicely.
- I think comparing the two sports together,
when it comes swinging specifically,
parkour has a little bit more of a raw style.
Gymnastics, often they're keeping their
shoulders and their hips like pretty square
as they do their movements.
For different reasons in parkour,
we're kind of usually letting our shoulders and our hips
come out of line for whatever reason it may be.
So it looked like they were a little uncomfortable with that
but after a few turns, they got more comfortable
and we were able to push the block back
and increase the distance and they were nailing it, yeah.
- I think the goal initially was to land on the black line
and I don't think any of us did that,
so that like, trying to aim for that was a little difficult,
but other than that it was a familiar motion.
- The mobility's a little different,
but the actual movement of dismounting from the bar
to the block was pretty similar.
- So the fourth challenge that we have for you today
is to be able to take some of the flips that you know
already and see if you can do it off of something.
We also do some flips a little bit differently,
so we're hoping to see you notice the differences
and try it our way.
So the movement we'll be working on today is the webster.
This is a back heel drive, so arms drive up, chest up,
and coming over in a front flip and landing.
- So in gymnastics, we do a very similar skill
on the balance beam called a front kickover,
where we land directly on the beam.
And this skill in parkour, the webster,
is a little bit different because you land off the mat.
[intense jazz music]
- So we all agree they did better than us?
[laughing]
- Yeah they killed it.
I had a feeling this one might be a easy challenge for them
since flipping's a big part of gymnastics,
but we were hoping that the different setup for the flip
and the environment, having to go off of a ledge,
and everything being made of wood around them,
wouldn't kind of like throw them for a loop
and I think there was a little bit of hesitation,
but ultimately I think they were in their element
pretty hard there.
So yeah, they killed it.
- What I really like about that,
and what you can see a lot in parkour in free running moves,
is you saw their style come into
what we decided to teach them.
Whether it be like break-dancing, skateboarding,
whatever art you come from initially,
you can see that translated through parkour.
So it was a lot of that gymnastic flair
in their websters as they were doing them.
Once they got their confidence levels up,
they got cleaner, they got smoother, they look cooler,
and they did them better than we did.
So that was really cool.
- I think they crushed it.
They looked like they were a lot more comfortable
than I feel doing it,
and I tried to pick up little technique notes
that I can work towards.
- I think that move is really fun.
We definitely were more comfortable with it,
'cause I think it was the most similar
to a gymnastics movement.
- This was my favorite like,
exercise or challenge of the day.
I think it was the closest thing to gymnastics
and what we're used to,
and I was really excited to just flip around
and be able to flip off the wall
and try to get back those landings again.
But overall, it was a really fun time.
[intense jazz music]
- Now that you've tried a bunch of the different techniques,
we're gonna see if we can put them all together into a line
and that line will be starting with a precision jump
going into a cat pass, then jumping into a swing,
trying to land that swing, right into a flip.
I think the way it's set up right now,
you might be able to do it better than us.
- Yes.
[clapping]
- That was awesome.
I'd love to see you add a cat pass into your run.
Here.
Or here.
That could be over, or onto the wall and continuing.
Okay? - Yep, cool.
[clapping]
- I think today went really well.
I think the gymnasts were all able to pick up
the technical details of all the skills.
I think the transitions between the movements
could be smoothed out a little bit.
- I thought today was super fun.
It's always a good time to share the skills and techniques
of parkour with people who enjoy movement.
Especially when it's a slightly different movement practice,
because they can take the skills and techniques
and use them in a slightly different way.
Probably a way that I wouldn't think of.
Yeah, the girls killed it today.
- I think oftentimes with gymnastics,
we're all trying to hit this like perfect 10
or hit this perfect routine
and oftentimes it does look similar.
The only times we really get to like
show our personality is like, through our dancing
or whether you're like a more technical gymnast
or a more rhythmic power gymnast.
But with parkour, no one will do a certain obstacle course
the same, so you kind of can see everyone's unique style
and rhythm when they go through the motion.
- It was fun to watch them like explore the environment
and kind of do it the way they think they should do it
instead of the way we're telling them to do it.
Because essentially that's what parkour is.
Like, you move through your environment
how you think it's safe and efficient.
So watching them explore that was the best part for me.
- I think my favorite move, or the coolest one,
was to see Mike swing from the different bars
and kind of incorporate the gymnastics moves that I know
into parkour, and it was really crazy to see him do that.
- It was really cool to see Mike do two skills
that we do in gymnastics and then
do this crazy jump over to another bar and land on it.
- And I think the easiest skill is probably the flipping
at the end, just because it was something that we know best.
- I really like the lache off the bar,
and then do the webster after it
and having it be like two distinct motions,
but able to do it together.
- Watching the way that they incorporated their style
into websters made me look at my techniques
and think, "Wow, I should probably clean myself up
"and make it maybe even look a little bit more gymnastic
"in its execution as well."
- I think the hardest might have been the cat pass,
just because the movements are so different
from gymnastics and the technique was different.
- The hardest part for me was the precision landing.
Just eyeing the spot that I have to land on
and then getting there in a safe manner
wasn't always so easy, but I think once we got
into the rhythm of it, it became a little bit easier.
- I think what was really reinforced for me today
is if you connect with the foundation of movement
that people have, that they're able to pick up the skills
that we're teaching them a lot easier.
- I think everyone should try it,
especially if you used to be a gymnast
or you wanna just try something new.
I think it's definitely something everyone should try.