“I would say the hardest thing to do in parkour is to look at something and know that you can do it and do it, even though that scares you,” said freshman Liam Wood.
Wood has been doing parkour his whole life. About two years ago is when he got serious about it and decided that’s what he wanted to do as a sport. Not many people know about parkour, but it is a growing sport.
Parkour consists of climbing, jumping over things, running, doing flips and more. It is kind of like “American Ninja Warrior” but also very different. “American Ninja Warrior is a little bit different, but it’s relatively the same,” said Wood. “How it was explained to me is American Ninja Warrior would be endurance running; so parkour you do sprinting, and you jump over things. It’s climbing, but faster with flips.”
Parkour is not easy to master because of all the flips, jumping and running all in one sport. It is important to have good technique and be in shape. It is also possible for it to help you get stronger and grow more muscle.
“Actually, I stopped for a while before I really went into it [parkour], and when I stopped, and then I came back when I was just doing the stuff that I normally did, I could barely walk the next day from how sore I was because I didn’t use those muscles,” said Wood.
Competitions for this sport are all over the world. There are specific gyms for parkour and only parkour. Most of the gyms are in England. In these gyms they teach you more ways to move your body through a complex environment.
“There are gyms all over the US and all over the world,” said Wood. “They’re really particularly in Europe because they have places that you can just go to look outside. But the gym closest to Brownsburg would be The Flow Space in Avon.”
