By Hayley.
Czech Republic July 2010
The sun goes down in Brno around 9.30pm, Which is precisely when I arrived to greet a room full of adolescent boys in the heart of the Czech Republic. (of course I should have arrived a few hours prior to this, however I was otherwise engaged stranded on a train somewhere near the bottom of the Czech Republic with two Irish girls and one American who were having difficulty coping with the loss of air conditioning due to the train apparently not functioning as it should. I on the other hand had already come to terms with the fact that I am not really going to be clean for a couple of weeks, and was perfectly ok with the current sweat situation…I’m not saying it was pleasant or anything just tolerable.) Eventually we reached the station at which I was supposed to transfer to another train (which of course had left some hrs earlier). Eventually I found a promising train leaving in a few minutes and climbed on board and stuck my head out the window the entire remainder of the trip to Brno. I was met at the train station by one of the instructor\leaders of the camp, who took me on a mystery tram ride from the city to the recreation centre being used as a base for the camp. As we approach the building I was informed that “this is the gate…we don’t have the keys”, and so the pop vault instantly becomes one of the entry requirements of the camp! After vaulting on over the fence we rounded a corner to meet one of the other instructor\leaders on his hands, at this point I had no idea what to expect, I walked into the building to see a room full of teenage boys watching a parkour doco and fighting the mosquitos, the lights turned on and I was introduced to the group (made up of 5 instructors, a couple of other personnel and around 40 or more boys between the ages of 11 and 18.) Of course not being able to speak the same language was indeed interesting…you have to wonder what gets lost in translation sometimes…After my introduction there were a few hours of mucking about (a few handstands may have been executed…) we went to bed (bed being the floor, of course, I hadn’t really slept in an actual bed for about two weeks by this stage already).
The next morning I got a good look at where I was, the building was perfect, I wish we had more places like this back home. The funny thing about it is that it couldn’t be all that difficult to achieve, a few big relatively empty rooms with a kitchen and some bathroom facilities. The fact of the matter is that this not a place to make money. Which is precisely why it is such a great place to hold a parkour camp. The place made me smile. You can imagine all the great time kids have had at this place…eating cereal out of cups. The heat situation was a bit horrific…at 7am it was already well over 20C. The rooms upstairs were painted black and most of the windows by this stage had been jammed open with some sort of empty water holding vessel, not that opening the windows helped much. Smelly clothes drenched in Sweat from the previous days training hung in the open windows my sink rinsed clothes soon added to the array. In the morning we had a run in the woods nearby which was really nice although a bit fast for me (running barefoot takes slightly more caution, of course I had to try to explain why I trained barefoot which nobody really understood, but they seemed to respect the imitative which was nice…everyone is kind of used to me not wearing shoes in Stockholm). After the run we had a stretch on the lawn outside the building, it was nice to have soo much time dedicated to warming up usually at training its a big rush to get into it. After warm up it was breakfast time, which wasn’t as mad as I’d expected having soo many boys.
After breakfast we split into groups and did some training around the lawn and inside the building. I went out and did some conditioning with about 7 other people, we did some locomotion’s and then some other body weight conditioning. By this stage it was almost impossible to stand in direct sunlight and I had to put on my shoes because the ground had become ridiculously hot sweat was pouring off everyone. I drunk a lot of water (hot water) many of the guys were drinking suspicious coloured water which reminded me of my days as an Air Force Cadet back in NZ. But I figure it was probably a good idea to get a bit of sugar and fluid at the same time. Now this is something that took me awhile to notice…There is nothing I hate more than needing to pee while doing parkour (stay with me here, I do have a point) and well usually I pee a lot so I try not to drink so much also I don’t really like drinking while training but here well I just had to, I must have drunk more water in one day than I ever had in my life..I swear…but the amazing thing was I never needed to pee not once that whole time at camp did I ever really need to pee, I don’t usually sweat very much (maybe that’s why I always need to pee) but I was losing that liquid no question.
Most days followed a similar format, stretch, breakfast, group training, parkour spot, parkour doco watching…One of the days we went to a pool (when we eventually managed to find it that was) Needless to say I ended up in the water with my clothes on, with small boys attempting to drown me. I took a lot away from the camp, and have been inspired to create opportunities like this one for kids in Stockholm and New Zealand to learn about movement and the special community surrounding the world of parkour and natural movement. The camp was amazing and I applaud the initiative and all the effort and dedication put into organising and running the camp by the guys.A big shout out to you all, hope to see you again in the future,
All the best 
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