Thursday, July 14, 2011

Parkour and Freerunning

I saw a video a while back of people practicing freerunning on super mario-esque blocks and stuff. Turns out it was from Tempest Freerunning Academy, which just opened this spring. Check out their promo trailer:


This also provides good contrast to the gym I just started going to in Seattle, Parkour Visions. Here's a sample video from them, taken during an obstacle course challenge they host every year:

First Sasuke at Parkour Visions from Tim Harding on Vimeo.

One of the guys there is from Tempest, funny enough. The difference between freerunning and parkour is pretty evident from these two videos. Tempest chooses to promote themselves by doing flips and spins and huge jumps and swings while Parkour Visions is a non-profit that focuses on the process of teaching parkour safely and effectively. Is one of them better? Can't say. But I like skiing more than snowboarding.

4 comments:

Nathan said...

awsome. how is training going matt?

mattbaranmickle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mattbaranmickle said...

It's good, I've been doing their Level 1 program which is a six-week intro course with a single week devoted to quadrapedal movement, vaults (two weeks for vaults), climbing, running, and "flight". I just moved up to level 2 though so I'll be doing level 1 and 2 back-to-back a few days a week. Level 2 runs on three-week macro cycles and this is the last week of the climbing cycle so I'm not sure what's next. Nice to have more a challenge though, my first level 2 was a climbing endurance course where we had to get through a course as many times as possible in ten minutes without resting. Really fun. Very sore

Nathan said...

Im so stoked/jealous that you get to do this...