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My name’s Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing parkour since 2007. My first day of training was with David Bell in the New Yorker Festival and since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. I now am back in New York City and today I’m here to talk to you about parkour.

Age doesn’t matter when it comes to parkour. You can train, you know, if you’re 3 years old, when you’re starting to crawl around and walk–you can train when you’re 60 years old. It really doesn’t matter. Um, I’ve trained with with grandparents who were training with their grandchildren before. It’s about finding your level and then progressing and improving from there. It doesn’t matter if, you know, you are 15 years old and not athletic, it doesn’t matter if you’re 60 years old and not athletic, anybody can do it.

If you are a little bit younger, um, definitely ask your parents and, and tell them about parkour. What I did–I was still a teenager when I started training–um, I actually made, you know, DVD and gave it to my parents, did like a little presentation on, you know, exactly what I was going to be doing, who I was going to be with, why I wanted to train. And I think it’s important to ask yourself these questions–don’t make it a rebellious thing, um, that, you know, your parents are going to, you know, they’re going to be worried about you so definitely just brief them on everything you’re doing, the reasons why and assure them that you’re not going to jump off of rooftops. Because you’re not.

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My name’s Ann Kaczka and I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day of training was with David Belle in the Inner New Yorker Festival and since then I’ve trained solo climbing trees in Thailand. Um, here in New York City is where I make my home and I’ve also been to Paris and London to train. I like meeting other people, did see um Parkour for the first time in the media, in films, on Youtube um. But my interest was really spiked when I did notice there was a lack of female representation at the time that I did start training, so that was sort of an extra incentive for me to get into the scene, try and help other girls to feel like they can train, create a comforting environment and atmosphere where they are able to train, and that was really my main motivation in starting Parkour. Andrew Wood, who will be assisting me today, is a Parkour practitioner of 6 years and also a personal coach and a Parkour coach. And today, I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour. What is a vault? A vault, you’re pretty much using your body to get over an obstacle, whether it be a wall, a railing, a bancha box, whatever’s in your way. So, you’re going to be using your hands and your feet, sometimes together, sometimes not, to get over the obstacle. In a simple vault, you’re going to be using, probably both of your hands and both of your feet just to get over the obstacle, no matter which way you can. A speed vault is going to be a vault where you use one hand and no feet to get over. So, if you’re using your left hand, then your feet are going to go up and to the right, over the wall without touching. If you’re using your right hand, then it’s going to be the opposite and your feet are going to be over the left and not touching. In a feet vault, you’re going to approach the obstacle from the diagonal, as opposed to most other vaults where you’re approaching head on. You’re going to plant the hand closest to the obstacle on, swing your legs up and over, and follow through by pushing off with your opposite hand.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.

How do you Parkour like David Belle? Maybe the first question that pops into your head is “Who is David Belle?” David Belle is one of the pioneers and is a very important figure in the history of Parkour. And my answers to how to train or how to be like David Belle is don’t because, you won’t. Just like you won’t be like me or you won’t be like your training partners. Parkour is very distinct, it’s something thats very personalized and I feel like if you try and train to be like someone else, your never going to achieve that goal. So the best thing is, do as much research as you can about the history of Parkour, how to train correctly, I say completely yeah; reach out to other people in your area, reach out to people online, reach out to you know, You Tube videos and watch as much as you can and then completely forget it all. Forget every other figure you’ve seen and just discover your own movement at your own pace, in your own way because, if you always have that picture of David Belle in your head as thats who you wanna strive and attain to, then your never going to reach that goal and all of your training is going to be in vain. And like I said, one of the number one things about Parkour is that we train to be strong and to be useful and if your training to be like somebody else, then thats not useful at all.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.

So climb-ups and muscle-ups. A climb up is utilized when your pretty much training in the cap position with a wall in front of you and your going to use both wall and your arms in order to get you up and over the obstacle. So your pulling from a hanging position, your up and over and then you jump over the wall. And the first progression were going to do is a stagger climb-up so its not going to be too fluid. Your going to get one arm up, rotate it, then rotate the other one and then finally push up so that your now leaning on the wall.

The next progression from the stagger climb-up would be a pop-up. So your gonna be hanging on the wall and then pop-up so that your hands are flat on top of the wall, and then extend fully so that your arms are straight in front of you.

A muscle-up is from the hanging position so your in a dead hang on a rail and you don’t have anything in front of you to put your feet on so your unable to kick up as you would with the climb-up. Your going to be utilizing sort-of the skills and the muscles that you would in a pull-up and in a dip just, combined in one move. So from a dead hang, your hanging, pull into a pull-up, rotate your arms and then push up, and thats your muscle-up.

So a muscle-up is a really difficult move to achieve and maybe you won’t be able to do one right away. If you can, congratulations; if not, don’t feel bad, don’t get discouraged. As with any move in Parkour, there are always progressions that you can do. Pull-ups and dips are 2 of them since your combining those moves in a muscle-up. And again, if you can’t do dips and pull-ups straight away, Parkour is all about progression so just start from the bottom and work your way up. Another good way to achieve your muscle-ups is also is, you do negatives. So you start out from above the bar and you slowly reverse into the hanging position. It’s another good way to sort-of build up your muscles.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour. A turn vault is a vault best used when you don’t fully want to commit to jumping over the wall or railing, possibly because you’re not certain of the drop on the other side. When you’re approaching the wall or railing, if you want to jump to your right, mean you swing your legs over to the right, you’re going to grab, with your left palm facing out, right palm facing in. Jump over, swinging your legs to the right, release with your right hand, and grab on, palm facing way so that you’re grabbing on to the opposite goal, both palms away.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.

So a precision jump is kind of what is sounds like. It’s a jump from one object, or a line, to another. And you’re going to try to stick your landing as precisely and controlled as possible. You’re going to land on the ball of your foot not the arch or the heel of your foot. It’s very important for stability and also, um, just for your own safety. The ball of the foot is the best place to absorb the impact.

A running precision would be a precision jump where you start off running. And when you do the jump you’re going to stick your landing and end up standing stationary.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.
So, what is a wall run? Pretty much you’re going to be running at the wall, and kicking up in order to get up and over the wall. With a wall run, obviously, you’re using it not to get over a wall that you can easily vault over. So, it’s pretty much going to be above chest height.
A tic tac, you’re going to run at the wall and kick off of it in order to redirect to another spot, whether it’s over a rail or over another wall.
Progressions in the tic tac, you can just start small. Kick off the wall, redirect your motion and just see generally if you put a little bit more power and energy into it, where could you go?

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.

When looking for a really good spot to train, try and keep in mind all of the obstacles that your able to overcome. You can look for trees, railings, walls, benches, pretty much anywhere that you can see yourself training. The beauty of Parkour is that your always progressing. So no matter what area you go to, no matter how many times you visit, there’s always going to be something new for you to try.

Great places to check out obviously would be public parks. If you find yourself in a public space and somebody does ask you to move on, just be respectful. You don’t want to overtake the entire area training and just use it for your own personal benefit. There are tons of other people who use that public space; just be mindful of where children are, be mindful of where people are walking. You don’t want to get in the way too much and if somebody does ask you to move on, be very polite and just simply move on.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.

Well, obviously you should stay away from fast-food, frozen food and things like that. And try to stick towards a more healthy diet obviously; lots of fruits, lots of vegetables, meat, eggs, things like that. Its really going to help you in recovery as well as be better fuel for your body as a whole. While Mcdonald’s after training and your really hungry, might be cost efficient and tempting, you have to be strong and just try to stay away. Its like putting really cheap fuel in your car. Your car is not going to be feeling too good- its not going to last you very long if you keep putting the cheapest fuel into it. So you might have to spend a little more money to have the fruits, vegetables, meats and things like that but, its definitely worth it. Your going to feel better, your training is going to benefit from it and your going to have shorter recovery periods because of it.

We try and stick towards a more Paleo-esque diet. The Paleo diet involves eating nuts, fruits, vegetables, meat and things like that; pretty much anything except for wheats and grains. To be honest, after a long training session, you might need some carbohydrates in order to recover faster. So eating a sweet potato or some rice, might not be the end of the world and it might assist you in a better training recovery period.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.

Warming up as well as stretching for parkour is absolutely something that you should not ignore, you should definitely warm up before every training session, so that your body isn’t cold when you start training. If you warm up properly before every training session then you’ll find you won’t be getting as many stretch or strain injuries. Again goes along with starting small and repetition. When you are warming up, I would try to stay away from static stretching because your muscles are cold if you, you know, just walk off the streets and you haven’t done any physical activity that day. So try to get warming up in a very dynamic manner, so you’re not going to be doing jumps or anything like that but just do small displacement and movements to warm your body up. When warming up, some activities that you’ll do are light jogs, you can do quantum pedal movement, which is moving out on fours, there are tones of variations of quantum pedal movement that you can also do to activate all the muscles in your body. After every training session, a couple of hours later, you should generally have a stretching session, the importance of stretching is paramount in parkour because you need to maintain flexibility in order to do all of the movements. Every time that you exercise, you are doing damage to your muscles and the muscles rebuild stronger, so you don’t want your muscles to be rebuilt shorter. You want to have long knee muscles and be able to carry up to movement and you have to have flexibility to do so.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour. So, a monkey vault, you’re going to be approaching the obstacle from head on. Going to jump. Plant both of your hands, probably a little more than hip distance apart. Jump through, tucking your legs to your chest and push off, finally, to get over the obstacle. The difference between a monkey vault and a cat pass, pretty much, is that the monkey vault is more of a progression into the cat pass. With a cat pass, you’re going to get much more height and distance out of it. You’re almost diving at the obstacle. With the monkey vault, you’re going to be starting closer to the obstacle. You’re going to plant both of your hands onto it, a little bit more than hip distance apart, and jump, bringing your knees to your chest. Push off with your hands. You’re going to be up and over. So, to approach doing a cat pass, there’s a bit of a progression that we can show you. You’re going to approach the wall, place both hands, palm down on the wall about hip distance apart, and just hop up and try and put one foot on top of the wall. Next, you can try and put both feet on top of the wall. And then, finally, attempt going over the wall once you feel comfortable with those two progressions.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.

One thing to do would definitely be to take a look at videos online,take a look at tutorials and check out all the videos that you can just to see the basic movements and what would be the best, most sufficient way to train and get started. A tip would be just to find out how strong you are because allot of people don’t actually know; Try a couple push-ups, try some pull-ups,try doing a couple little vaults/ precisions just to see how far you can jump. This doesn’t mean going for your maximum, this does not mean jumping off of rubes- its just generally, find out how strong you are.

The number one thing is don’t get discouraged. If you don’t have a perfect pull-up or push-up, if you can’t squat a million times in a day, don’t get discouraged-its OK. The point of Parkour is to recognize where you are, build upon that base and progress.

If you wanted to try and find local communities in your area where people are already practicing, you can certainly do so. Do a Google search and try and find out maybe, if there is a community near you that is already established,has a couple people who have been training for a few years and they might be able to teach you, maybe show you some training spots and things like that.

One thing to always do especially, if your younger, first of all:Tell your parents exactly what your doing,inform them of your decision to train and always just be mindful; take your parents along if your younger just so that they can meet who you are training with and keep an eye on you because, if your a teenager, as independent as you are, your parents should always fully be aware of what your up to.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour. So how to prevent parkour accidents from happening? One thing to always do, especially when you first start training, please start small. You never know what you’re capable of, but if you gradually build up your skills, you’re going to find yourself hesitating a lot less, you’re going to be a lot more confident and you won’t have as many injuries. It’s always better to start small than to start big and fail and have to reverse and start small again. Another thing to keep in mind is repetition. If you repeat small jumps that you know you can do over and over again, it’s going to enhance your skills and you’re going to be a lot less hesitant and you’re going to reinforce the skills you already have while building new ones. The third thing would be strength conditioning. This is something I always recommend, no matter what your ability or skill set is. If you don’t strength condition then you might have a lot more trouble with stress and strain injuries. Obviously, if you strength condition, you’re going to be a lot stronger. It’s also going to help your body handle the impact from the movement you’re doing. It’s always a good idea to warm up and stretch and that’s probably the best way to prevent parkour accidents.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour. The Cat Leap is pretty much when you jump from a um, from an object onto a wall or a wall with a railing on top. And your going to catch with your hands on the top of the wall or railing, with your feet planted on the side. Um, and then use a, sort of climb up, or a muscle up to get over it.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.

So what to wear when your training Parkour: It does depend and vary from person to person. Some people feel comfortable exercising in really baggy sweatpants while, others like myself, I do prefer to exercise in sort-of tights, spandex bottoms and tight tops just so that it doesn’t snag on things. But It does vary, wear whats right for you and what works for you.

Ladies, please just do yourself a favor and buy a really good sports bra. The importance is so paramount; those tissues stretch and they do not stretch back. So try and find one with molded cups that’s going to support you, thats made for a high impact activity like running or horse-back riding-Spend a little bit of extra money, replace it every six-twelve months. Your going to find, the investment is so worth it. Stay away from low-impact Yoga tops. Stay away from regular sports bra’s that won’t support you as much as you need. Jump around in the fitting room, go try a whole bunch on; make it into a day-wide adventure. It doesn’t really matter but, just buy one that really fits and don’t wear a normal bra when training. Its going to completely destroy the bra and its not going to give you as much support as you need.

As far as shoes go again, buy what works for you. There have been a lot of shoes out on the market lately that are specifically marketed and tailored towards people who are training Parkour but like I said, find what works for you. Generally, you want to find something thats pretty flexible, you want to find something thats light fit-obviously something that fits your foot and something thats grippy as well.

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My name’s Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing parkour since 2007. My first day of training was with David Belle in the New Yorker Festival, and since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris, and now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about parkour.

So how do you strength train for parkour. There’s a really big debate amongst the global parkour community of whether you should stick with just body-weight exercises or if you should enhance your training using additional weights in a cross-fit gym, things like that, as well. I say whatever works best for you works best for you, and you should continue on your path.

I know that when I first started training I really wasn’t capable of doing things like pull-ups and push-ups, and I had to generally progress just to master those moves. If you find that doing those movements doesn’t progress you as much as it once did when you first began training, you could certainly try adding on additional weights, things like that. If you wanted to squat, dead lift, I know that that has worked for me in increasing my jump as well as stabilizing my landing. Doing upper body exercises with a lot of weights generally isn’t as functional or as useful in parkour training, but if you wanted to try something like adding weights to your pull-ups and dips, things like that, it might certainly help. If you don’t have access to a cross-fit gym, then pick up a big rock, pick up a log, pick up a person; obviously within reason, you want to build-up to this like I said. But you don’t have to access a $400 a month gym in order to enhance your training using weights.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.So, a landing roll and a diving roll. A landing roll is pretty much a roll that you’re going to utilise when you’re jumping up and you can’t quite stick the landing or when the impact is just too much to take straight on. When you’re rolling, you’re going to roll from one of your shoulders to your opposite hip. So, I prefer rolling onto my left. I’m going to roll on my left shoulder and come out rolling onto my right hip. A diving roll you’re going to be using the same motion as the landing roll, you’re rolling from opposite shoulder to opposite hip except, with the diving roll you’re using it in order to get over an obstacle.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.

Parkour is a method of training where you strengthen your body as well as your mind by overcoming obstacles, physical obstacles and mental obstacles as well. Parkour’s origins were widely debated upon by its practitioners. Climbing trees is back to France, the actual word parkour is an alternative take on the phrase parkour de Comberton which is a military obstacle training course. From there at some point in France it did become more of a recreational method of training and almost a discipline art of form. We do see parkour in moving of children, the way that they play and interact with such curiosity in their environments. While parkour is extremely fun to practice, that’s not the only reason why we do it, we try to be strong to be useful weather it’s assisting your grand mother with groceries or rescuing someone from a burning building. We use our strength to help everyone around us, it’s not just for ourselves.

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My name is Ann Kaczka, I’ve been practicing Parkour since 2007. My first day training was with David Belle at the New Yorker festival. And since then I’ve trained solo in Thailand, climbing trees on the streets of London and Paris. And now I’m back in New York City. And today I’m here to talk to you about Parkour.. How do you do balance? Well, the first thing would be to start balancing on something. You could try a rounded rail like this, but if you know, if you have something else in your area, a thin wall, or a flat wooden rail, you could certainly use that as well. Um, I’ve even used 2x4s in my backyard to practice balancing. So you don’t have to have you know, a metal rail um, and concrete somewhere near you in order to practice balancing. You can try walking forwards, backwards, you can try closing your eyes. Obviously if your cautious enough and you are confident enough in your balancing skills. Another thing you can also do is turn and balance on the balls of your feet and do squats. That’s a variation that would certainly um, you know, build up your jump. You can gain muscle from doing the squats as well as practicing your balancing skills at the same time.