Number 20 Video of the week is by Aral Roca and labeled 'Summer 2011 - El Leñador'

Aral Roca demonstrates the ability to have fluidity, finesse and control even when performing movements which require strength and power.

Posted by Leon 'Rock' Lawrence.

The PKG Affiliate team and PKMAX Parkour (http://tinyurl.com/YamakBR2) from Brazil will hold their 5th Minas Gerais Parkour Meeting on the 10th and 11th of September. To make it happen, they have created a crowd-funding project to raise the event money and they need you to be involved.

This week we have a coaching team in Cardiff teaching workshops for the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, as part of a dance summer school for professional dancers to learn new skills. Funded by the Arts Council of Wales and Ballet Cymru, the event lasts from August 15-26 and the parkour workshops are running on 25/26 August.

For more information and a full schedule, go to www.summerinspirations.co.uk

This week London's Evening Standard newspaper is running a piece talking to 6 creative Londoners in the wake of the recent riots about what the city means to them. The journalists managed to catch up with Dan for a few words, and you can see the piece online here.

This month's Off the Wall jam in London is the Summer Finale Jam, to round off the season of sunshine and usher in the Autumn training phase. The Jam will kick off at 12.45pm on Sunday August 28th at the Archway training area in North London, and anyone attending should meet outside Archway tube station for that time. Come ready to train, explore the area and have a whole lot of fun...

Our brand new parkour training facility in the heart of London, L.E.A.P (London Experience of Art du deplacement and Parkour), built in conjunction with the City of Westminster and Parkour UK, is now in the final stages of the build. As you can see from this photo taken on site, the park is going to be quite a sizeable structure, and is solid as a rock.

Number 19 video of the week is from youtube user 'Baityk' and titled 'One Day, One Place'.

A short, but well put together video that has been one of my favourites for a while now. Some simple, but big movements executed well.

Enjoy!

At the end of this month we will be running another week-long Parkour Camp for young people on behalf of the City of Westminster. The sessions will be held at our new L.E.A.P. training facility, at the Academy Sports Centre, from the 30th Aug - 2nd Sept and will run every day from Tuesday-Friday between 10am-1pm.

 In addition to leading open training sessions over Labor Day Weekend, we will also be leading the third United States Level 1 ADAPT Qualification from August 30 to September 1 with the requisite coaching hours being earned at the event on September 3 and 4.

Today saw the last day of this year's international gathering, Rendezvous 2011, and what a weekend it was. Fantastic energy from everyone involved, right to the end, with both coaches and participants giving their all throughout. We were blessed with amazing sunshine the whole day, which is always an added bonus! 

Rendezvous 2011 is now in full swing, with the first day almost complete. The Night Training session is just starting, then everyone gets a chance to sleep before another full day of training tomorrow. Amazing energy from everyone at the event, coaches and participants, leaving everyone with smiles all round.

Even though we have our Rendezvous 2011 event this weekend we still have a small two-man team heading out to the deepest depths of Barnswood, Staffordshire to deliver daily workshops for the kids at the 'Just So Festival'.

The year's largest and longest running international gathering, Rendezvous 2011, is right aroudn the corner and kicks off on the morning of Saturday August 20th: this weekend!

All those who have managed to buy, borrow, steal, bite, bribe or kick their way to securing a ticket should have received the welcome email with all the information - but if not, here is the bare bones of the info you will need: 

This past weekend saw several of our coaching team in Glasgow to teach at the annual Roots of Movement training weekend. Quite a few from the London collective - including Dan, Brian, Andy, Yao, Chris, Dom, Alex, Kristian, Fizz and Joe - travelled up to coach, and the weekend was a great success. A good turnout with every participant bringing bags of enthusiasm and energy, providing much evidence that the Scottish parkour community is thriving and growing. Great to see. 

For the next few months we have affiliates / bloggers / ADAPT Qualified / Long-time Parkour practitioners Steve Moss and Leon Lawrence handling the Video of the Week section and highlighting some of the best parkour films on the web.

Their first selection is from YouTuber 'SobVinStudio' and is titled 'Misha Summer 2011'.

Check out the video below and enjoy!

There will be no academy classes from Friday 19th until Sunday 21st due to the whole team being on hand at this year's Rendezvous 2011 event!

The classes that have been cancelled are:

We're proud to announce that a recent photoshoot we undertook with photographic studio Palmer&Pawel has won the International Photography Award in the Sports Professional Editorial category. 

We're happy to announce the addition of 3 new A.D.A.P.T. qualified Affiliate Coaches to our collective - Albert Kong and Ryan Fulmer of the USA and Jackson Turner of the UK. 

Today saw the first airing on national TV of Channel 4's Concrete Circus - a look at the spectacular side of various 'urban' disciplines including skating, urban trial riding and, of course, parkour.

Tomorrow several members of the team will be heading north to coach at Glasgow's Roots of Movement parkour training event, organised by Glasgow Parkour Coaching. This is the second year of the event, which is always great fun and good training. It's great to see how far the Glasgow community has come over the past few years, and we hope Roots goes from strength to strength!

For more details, hit the link above. 

Next week between 15-19th August we willl be running daily workshops for ICAN, the International Cultural Arts Network, in Northern Ireland. The aim of ICAN is to facilitate the exchange of skills and knowledge between international and local community arts practitioners who use The Arts, in all its form, as the neutral vehicle to bridge barriers between current and formerly conflicted areas world-wide.

As with every second Sunday of the month, this weekend will see London's Women's Jam occuring at Westbourne Park. Details below:

Sunday 14th August 2011 - 1.30pm - WESTBOURNE PARK

TWENTY new global communities have been inducted into our global community project today. With teams from Saudi-Arabia to Mexico, it's fantastic to see such a blossoming community within the parkour world. If you wish to add your team / group / community to the map and list then head over to the submission form HERE and post your details to us.

Check out these very cool designs for the exclusive RDV2011 T-Shirts that will be on sale for £10 at the event on August 20 and 21st. There will be a limited number available, so make sure you get there early on the day to register and buy your tee!

Next month Parkour Generations will be running a Parkour Course in conjunction with Lee Valley Park’s Sports Development Team for twelve weeks. The course starts from September 14th to November 30th 2011 on Wednesdays from 19:30 to 21:00.  All ages and levels are welcome and it cost £79 for all 12 weeks.

For more details, check the PDF Flyer HERE.

Unfortunately, due to many members of the team being away at other seminars, projects and events over the weekend, the Saturday August 13th Fitness class has been cancelled.

There will also be no class on the 20th August due to some small event named RDV2011 happening that weekend.. ;)

This little edit is a behind the scenes look at a small demonstration we put on in July, 2011 as part of the London Olympics '1 Year To Go' celebration event at Trafalgar Square.

Here's a nice little video and photographic summary of the Ecce Parkour event we ran in Rome in May, with Team Members Forrest, Alli and Chris leading the workshops throughout - great weather, great people, hard training and lots of fun. Click here to watch the video.

This year's residential training camp in Morzine in the French Alps has just finished, and the week has proven to be probably the best camp yet. We took 24 on the camp this year, including people from the USA, UK, France, Switzerland, Germany and other countries, and everyone put their heart and soul in to what is always an intensive training experience. 

We now have photos of the final version of the launch by Decathlon UK, in conjunction with Parkour UK, of the new/classic parkour shoe. Yet to be named, the shoe will hit the UK stores in December 2011 and will retail at only £16.99. We have improved on the old design by keeping the sole intact but strengthening the shoe's upper and adding stronger rubber to the front/toes of the shoe, as well as improving the ankle support a little. 

Today saw the first stages of construction for the L.E.A.P. (London Experience for Art du Deplacement & Parkour) Park in Westminster Academy, London. The building process is firmly underway and as you can see from the little photo above, the first concrete walls have been placed and cemented in. It's rock solid and this is only a small segment of what the finished facility will be.

The seventeenth video of the week is filmed and produced by our very own Julie Angel at last years European Gathering in Gerlev, Denmark.

Titled ' Eat, Sleep, Train', it's an excellent insight into what happens once a year at the fantastic camp with the Streetmovement guys (http://www.streetmovement.dk/) . This years camp is fully underway this week with most of the team away, so it felt appropriate to show you guys this video!