The Parkour Phenomenon
Parkour gyms have seen increased demand as the training protocol has been featured more and more in films and commercials. The increasing popularity of American Ninja Warrior also helps, observes Ryan Ford, cofounder of APEX Movement, which now has five locations.
โThis yearโs American Ninja Warrior was the most popular season yet, so itโs not uncommon that new people come through our door and ask if we have things like a salmon ladder [a popular โobstacleโ featured on the television competition]. ANW has generated quite a buzz.โ
Ford has been in the parkour gym game since 2006, when he opened his first location, which at the time was one of only three worldwide. He now has a number of gyms in Colorado: in Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins, and a satellite program in
Colorado Springs. He opened a gym near San Francisco about a year ago, and San Diego is next on his list.
UP FROM โTHE UNDERGROUNDโ
โIโve been training in parkour since late 2002, when it was a fledgling discipline and very underground,โ recalls Dan Edwardes, cofounder of Parkour Generations in the United Kingdom. โBack then there was no teaching, no access and only a handful of people on the planet who knew what it was. But it grabbed me as soon as I encountered it, and Iโve been training ever since. Along with several other pioneers and early practitioners from France and the U.K., Iโve ended up building what is now the worldโs largest professional parkour organization.โ
He helped found Parkour Generations in 2005 and went on to open The Chainstore Parkour Gym in London. He describes the facility as โraw, functional and simple.โ
โ[It] isnโt your standard gym with rows of useless treadmills, TV screens to distract you from the present moment of what you are doing, etc. The place changes and grows organically all the time, with the parkour zone being modular so that it can be altered every few weeks to present new challenges and training tasks. So you have to adapt all the time, which again is what your body has evolved to do.โ
Alongside the rails, walls and ramps commonly found in parkour gyms, The Chainstore houses squat racks, lifting platforms, kettlebells, tractor tires, Prowlersยฎ, sledgehammers and more.
Edwardes adds that the space isnโt designed to be a soft, comfortable zone, because he believes that physical improvement comes from overcoming difficulty.
โThink of it as a circle of sand for boxers or fighters. Itโs not designed for comfort; itโs designed to challenge you and make you the best you can be.โ
To learn more about the rising fitness trend of specialty gyms, please see โThinking Outside the Gym Boxโ in the online IDEA Library or in the February 2015 print issue of IDEA Fitness Journal. If you cannot access the full article and would like to, please contact the IDEA Inspired Service Team at (800) 999-4332, ext. 7.