By Hayley.
Photo by Hayley.
If you haven’t already heard I left NZ for Sweden on the 6th of Jan and I am currently living in Stockholm. I thought I would give you guys a few updates on my impression of the Swedish Parkour scene thus far.
So first of all there is a lot of snow, so I feel my first outdoor training is going to be pretty epic. Can’t wait. (and by a lot of snow, I mean more than in the picture of me handstanding on a bench in the middle of the Dunedin winter) I plan to go to an outdoor training in the city later this week.
So far I have been to one training session just of of Stockholm in a place called Uppsala. The training was held in a sort of school gym so we used all sorts of equipment (can’t say I had ever done a wall climb up a mat before…at least it made it easier). Anyway at the beginning of the training there were about 30 people including about 8 girls (now this is not a big place…probably similar to Dunedin) I was stunned. We warmed up as a group…running, conditioning, stretching.
After warm up we split into 6 groups and there were 6 leaders that would take us around 6 stations. 1) wall climb (well almost a pop vault…it was a mat lashed to a bar, so you get a bit of a bonus bounce).2) foot placement…connected lazys to opp vault to underbars and stuff (I killed my ankle here…but I managed to get back on my feet)3) Flow (yes a daring use of the word) three boxes just above my waist height in a line, for konging and such.4) Rolls (that explains itself really)5) Cat balance on a skinny wooden thing about 1m off the ground ( I also added a little variation with the hand hand foot technique…which proved to be quite a challenge on this particular wooden thing)6) Precision practice…from a box to a rail onto a higher box…or the other way around.
After each group had done each one we had an open gym for a bit. Then we did some conditioning.
I think we probably started at around 2pm and finished at 6pm. It was a super awesome training with some great Traceurs…Every one was really nice and they even spoke English most of the time because there were a number of people that did not speak Swedish.
The way they train in Sweden is a bit different. In NZ especially the South Island our trainings were usually about warming up and hitting some spots together to work on certain techniques and so on, with no teachers or leaders as such…It was strange to go to such an organised training. In Sweden Parkour is run like a sports club (they actually call it a club…in Uppsala it is like ‘the Uppsala Parkour club’, and in Stockholm it is a ‘parkour academy’…I think you actually pay subs and stuff) It seems the idea of Parkour is changing as it becomes more mainstream. Especially where there are a lot more people involved. My experience so far has lead me to re-question the definition of Parkour…It also reminds me of that great nz vid by Physical graffiti ‘Parkour is’
here is the site for Stockholm’s Academy: (the information is not avalible in English but it works on google translate…it is interesting to read)http://parkouracademy.se/
It is great to have some structure and growth within the Parkour community, but how much is too much…and to what expense? For those people working on the Association development this I think is something to consider.
I’ll keep you posted, as I find my feet in Sweden.All the best
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