Cueing

n. cue  1.a. A reminder or prompting. b. A hint or suggestion.    tr.v. cued, cu·ing, cue 1. To give a cue to; signal or prompt.

The Importance of Cueing

As our shoes are pretty much the only piece of ‘equipment’ we need for our discipline it comes as no surprise that there are continuous debates about which are the best to wear for Parkour. There have been trends along the way and no doubt someone will discover a new favourite soon, but I decided to do a little survey to find out what everyone is wearing now.

‘Can you lift this rock?’

‘Can you move this tree?’

‘Can you walk on all fours for miles?’

‘Can we run to Paris and back?’

‘Can you do the KongPre at Southbank?’

‘Can you film this for me?’

‘Did you get my t-shirt in the shot?’

‘Are you sponsored?’

The ongoing Personas project by team member and high-tech prodigy Andy Pearson gives a glimpse into the day-to-day training life of our friends in the Parkour community. What do they carry around when training? Water: check. Mobile: check. Oyster (travel) card: check.

It looks like parkour, sounds like parkour, is called parkour... it must be parkour, right?

Wrong.

As London gets set to host the Olympics this summer, I got thinking about the history of Olympic jumping. London has been the setting for two previous Olympic Games, in 1948 and way back in 1908. The 1908 games featured two events long since dropped from the Olympic schedule, but nonetheless relevant to the contemporary parkour practitioner – the standing high jump, and standing long jump.

Whenever I speak of my chosen discipline Parkour, I instantly get common responses of, "isn't that dangerous", "that's a risky sport", "how many injuries have you had", and such similarly concerned responses.

When I was introduced to Parkour almost five years ago I was drawn to the beauty of it, the strength, skill, and confidence involved, and the participants' will to excel.  In this time I've lost blood in very small doses, a little skin here and there and had a couple small fractures of my big toes.

Calluses are like good friendships; it takes time to form them, but they help you when you really need them and it hurts when they rip...off...but not if you moisturise them...well, ok the metaphor kinda failed there but you get the idea.

Over the past 8-weeks, I have been teaching a course at UCLA. There are two sessions per week, 1.5hr each. The course is the first of its kind in America (as far as I am aware). It mainly takes place in doors at UCLA’s large gymnastic gym; however, we have had the opportunity to head outside for three of the classes. The students have excelled and shown surprising steps in the 8-week period.