By Lala Gasanova, APA Instructor
Location: Melbourne. Australia
The day started with some worrying weather and I began to make plans for indoors training, but closer to the afternoon the sun had shown up and it became nice, shiny and warm.
Girls started arriving at the Melbourne Museum ruins at about 2:50 – 3:10pm but even though some were late it didn’t affect the class and great mood, quiet the opposite, the girls looked enthusiastic and ready to GO!
The goal was to train together to increase communication, trust and confidence levels to be able to train with both females and males and also to give me an idea about organising the next class.
There were 14 girls in total ranging in age from 16 to 40 and it was pretty impressive to see how attentive and serious they were during the training session, they worked pretty hard, there was no bludging or winging (which would be pretty understandable, because nearly every girl was an absolute beginner).
We started with introducing everyone to each other, followed by a general talk about Parkour and Freerunning and the differences between the two, how more and more girls are joining the Parkour community, then covered such topics as fears, risks, physical abilities and strength, brought up the website www.girlsparkour.com, then moved on to the warm up. During the lesson we practiced landings, precisions, rolls on concrete (impressively nobody went to roll on the grass, even though they had this option), climb-ups and cat passes.
Following techniques was strength and conditioning where we worked the whole body with a focus on the upper body and core. The class concluded with a stretch down and general chat where the girls were able to ask questions, talk about the class and ones to follow. The spirit and enthusiasm was so good that we ended going about half an hour over time making the class about two and a half hours long.
It was great to see girls pushing really hard and doing their best. I personally enjoyed training the girls and hope that they liked the class too. I am Looking forward to doing it again soon, trying different locations, practicing different techniques and getting more and more girls involved and eventually creating one big Melbourne Female Parkour community.
The Australian Parkour Association (APA) runs weekly classes in Melbourne and in many Australian cities. For more information about classes in your area, check out www.parkour.asn.au/
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