By Hayley.
On Saturday morning parkour family Stockholm squashed into the little white car, and once the transition between togs and undies had officially been established, we arrived to our ominously wet destination. Uppsala Sweden. Uppsala is slightly north of Stockholm and is home to many students and a very positive and enthusiastic training group known as Uppsala Parkour (the organizers of the gathering). The growing numbers of female practitioners in Uppsala inspired the idea to hold a gathering in 2010. Girls came from many different cities from all over Sweden, there were also some international participants including myself of course and a girl from Czech Republic.
As soon as we hit Uppsala the windscreen wipers were turned on, we found a car park and us girls went off to find a toilet (because we all know that there is nothing worse that training when you need to pee). We headed over to the train station to meet the girls and start the day. Everyone was really enthusiastic and energetic, it was also nice catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a long time, the other girls from Stockholm were shocked to see so many girls, it was weird because it has always just been us three. We were divided into three groups; fortunately us three from Stockholm ended up working together.
All 42 of us participating girls (and of course the inevitable gaggle of tag-along boys) headed over to some undercover stairs to begin the day, Therese (Uppsala Parkour) welcomed us to the event and introduced the instructors for the weekend. We also learnt the phrase ‘start together’ ‘finish together’ (Börja tillsammans, Svensk tillsammans…just because we aren’t in Finland) must be completed in unison.
We were fortunate enough to have Dan Edwardes from Parkour Generations lead the warm up. The warm up involved first working through the major muscles and joints and then we worked on basic quad movements. It was great to have such an experienced instructor and I was immediately taken by the energy of his movement, even when demonstrating quad movement variations. It reminded me of the energy I feel sometimes when I jump with no shoes. We worked on our techniques while simultaneously trying not to get hit by a bicycle, which proved to be no easy task considering that the cycle path had not been painted in a straight line.
After warm up we split into groups to work on some movement techniques involving rails. It was great to get the chance to work with Naomi of PKG, she had a lot of technique knowledge which was great and she had a lot of encouragement for us girls, whether we were new to parkour or more experienced I think we gained a lot. Of course by this point we were all rather wet (especially after the suspicious first butterfly’esk ‘ vaulting maneuver, where one’s stomach greeted the wet rail). We did our best to keep warm, which of course in Sweden involves, a lot of jumping, singing, shouting and dancing (all simultaneously of course). The rain continued to get heaver and heaver and a decision was made to move the remainder of the day’s activities inside. Of course by the time we made it to the gym we were as wet as humanly possible without actually being submerged in water. (Of course most people took the bus, but we were just too hardcore), it was also a good chance to get to know some of the other participants…there’s nothing like bonding over extreme weather conditions.
In the gym we first worked on different vaults, Dan encouraged us not to get hung up on specific techniques and rather focus on moving efficiently over the obstacle. Some of the obstacles were quite high for us shorties and our vaults ended up getting rather extreme, (including a wonderful variation of a vault by one of us from Stockholm that involved dangling from one leg and an elbow with one’s head directly above the ground. ) Needless to say she was slightly traumatized and happy to be alive. After the vaults we split into groups to work on some techniques, Cat leaps, running precision, rolls, and other vaults and movements. After another hour or so, we did a warm down with Annty from PKG, which was very comprehensive and I definitely learnt a couple of new stretches. After warm down training was over for the first day. We found that we missed training with our boys more than we thought, and were happy when we were finally reunited.
After a short break we listened to a talk about injuries which by this stage we were all extremely tired and wanting to catch up with the rest of our group, so we were all a bit agitated and found it difficult to concentrate, (especially for me since I had pretty much done the same lesson with all my fifth grade classes 2 weeks earlier.) Soon after this the boys burst into the gym in their usual ‘full-on’ fashion (not that we couldn’t hear them coming from 2 blocks away) and began tearing around. Some of us went down to get some food and ended meeting some other girls at the restaurant and had a great time just hanging out and meeting new people. I think the ‘ParKul’ (parkour tag) and general energetic randomness probably continued until about 11pm after which a sensible Stockholm Parkour Academy representative encouraged sleep. So we all settled into our makeshift gym mat beds for the night. In the morning we headed back to the train station for day 2.
Day 2 Sunday
Day two involved both the boys and the girls and we were a group of around 100. Dan led the warm up and some brutal conditioning involving a lot of quads up and down the stairs, which was exactly what I needed. After the warm up, I was approached by a woman for an interview (who was stoked by the fact that us girls were just as strong as the boys.) which ended up being quite amusing when the rest of the Stockholm family got involved, and tried to explain the concept of the ‘cork press’. We were divided into mixed groups and went to a spot to train. We must have been about 20-30 people. Annty showed us a great parkour game which was really fun (but we had to cheat with rubbish bins). We had to get in a line and follow the leader, the leader had to create a path for the rest of us, by passing obstacles without touching the ground, if they fell they had to go to the back of the line, and there was a new leader.
We went back to the train station and concluded the official part of the gathering with epic conditioning and stretching once again led by Dan of PKG. After warm down we went to get some lunch before the free jam, at this point it started to once again bucket down, and after many tribulations the stockholmians being all out of rain enthusiasm decided to pack it in, and return home, tired and satisfied after an amazing weekend of parkour and friends.
A big thanks to Therese the organizers of the event and the rest of Uppsala Parkour for hosting the great event. Thanks to the Parkour Generations instructors, Dan Edwardes, Annty Marais and Naomi Honey, thank you for inspiring us with your skill and passion for parkour And of course a big thank you to my parkour family who I would truly be lost without. I love you all so much.
Photo by Therese Gunnarsson
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