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.

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.

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.

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

Wrong.

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.