Long after French actor and stunt coordinator David Belle popularised the physical discipline of parkour in 1980, it became vogue after being featured in various movies such as Casino Royale (2006), Prince of Persia (2010) and Bourne Legacy (2012) among others. Closer home, the members of Chennai Parkour, a team of parkour enthusiasts (who have been teaching parkour for over a decade) — Viswendran Dayakaran, Vishal Kumar, Vignesh Raghavan have opened the city’s first parkour gym, Parkour Pod, in Guindy.
“Parkour is not a martial art, although it looks like one. It is a movement art form in which people are trained to cross different types of obstacles in various possible ways using methods such as vaults, jumps and climbing,” says Vishal, an engineering graduate, who is one of the head instructors of this four-month-old gym.
At this 1,700 sq ft gym, the training course has been divided into three levels — beginners, intermediate and advanced. “In parkour, the motivation is always to achieve some kind of movement that requires a certain level of fitness so that whoever practices it will have to train themselves to achieve it,” shares Vishal, adding that apart from achieving fitness, the benefits of parkour include flexibility and spatial awareness.
The gym has an outdoor as well as indoor space. The indoor space is for the calisthenic workouts where the trainees learn handstands, lunges deadlift and such — all that are required to tackle the obstacles. The outdoor space has complex bar structure comprising of mats and vault boxes for the movement training.
“At the gym, the first thing anyone will learn is to balance themselves before moving on to the vaults, which is the most basic activity in parkour,” says Vishal, adding that there are no prerequisites or age restrictions for parkour training as long as the aspirants don’t have any serious medical conditions.
After having mastered balancing, the trainees are taught various landing techniques that will help them reduce the impact on their body as they land after a vault or a jump. “The complexity of the vaults increase as we move to the intermediate level after which advanced jumps and climbs are taught in the advanced level,” Vishal added. “People think parkour is a very risky activity. But after realising that we focus more on the exercise part than the obstacle training, they are more assured,” says Vishal, adding that they will be organising more activities and introducing more complex movements so that the trainees get to push
their limits.
Fee: `10,000 onwards.
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@fathiimaashraf