"Humans are meant to move": parkour at Mac

Tomi Milos
Features Editor

The most some McMaster students will interact with their surroundings is when they are running late for a lecture on the other side of campus. Fuelled by a mixture of adrenaline and caffeine, they may err on the side of formality and opt for the adventurous choice in cutting across the marshy bog that is the BSB lawn, not caring if they came out with their outfit sullied. Others may be less rash and simply take the stairs two at a time.

One thing remains true in all cases: in those few, anxious minutes spent traversing a sea of bodies milling around, everyone is forced to reconsider an environment they’re used to socializing in as an obstruction to their goal of getting from Point A to Point B.

For those looking to experience that thrill again and again without the awkwardness of stepping into class late, the McMaster Parkour Club offers a more appropriate means of being physically active while not conflicting with school time. The club was founded in 2008, capitalizing on the discipline’s steady rise in fame.

The movement is widely considered to have originated in France through the efforts of David Belle, who was born in 1973 to a Parisian firefighter. Prior to beginning his career as a firefighter, Belle’s father had busied himself in his adolescence at a military orphanage by rigorously training on the obstacle courses there. David himself was not very gifted academically or athletically and quickly grew disenchanted with school and organized sports. When he learned of how his father’s training had improved him as a person, David realized that he had found something worthwhile. Along with his cousins, Belle threw away all his other commitments and applied himself to training in a fashion that emphasized surpassing obstacles found in the urban environment through running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping and rolling.

Today, parkour enjoys widespread popularity. Although practitioners normally shirk away from efforts to turn parkour into a competitive sport, as it inhibits the goal of self-development, Red Bull has taken to holding an event in Santorini called “Art of Motion”, which pits 18 of the world’s most adept parkour tracers against each other. Ryan Doyle, the “winner” of the first-ever “Art of Motion” event, insists that those taking part are doing just that, saying, “there are no losers.”

In a bid to better understand the intrigue, The Silhouette sat down with two prominent members of the club. Ethan Greenberg is a fourth-year Life Sciences student as well as club president who has been training for four years, while Muhammed Aydin is a second-year Life Sciences student who acts as vice-president and has been training since before he entered university.

Even at McMaster, where clubs compete with each other for members, the discipline enjoys a steady amount of growth. Greenberg emphasized that the group maintains a “come when you want” mentality that means the number of people at any given meet-up can vary.

“We have a bunch of people that sign up at the beginning of the year, but don’t show up later on. Sometimes we pick people up off the street just because they’re watching us.”

That being said, Aydin highlighted the fact that a core group of “15 to 20 people” exists. Of those diehard members, he noted that “most of them are male” but that they encourage anyone to come out and try their hand. At the moment, there are three girls who round out that core group.

For those interested in joining, the group meets on Tuesdays (12:30 p.m.), Thursdays (3:30 p.m.), and Saturdays (3:30 p.m.) outside of the Museum of Art. Though they begin there, Aydin said that they usually branch off and are open to taking their acrobatics anywhere.

“Popular spots that we like to  frequent include Hamilton Hall, Togo Salmon Hall, Chester New Hall, and the DeGroote School of Business.”

To avoid legal disputes should an injury occur, members are required to sign a waiver that exempts the club from any blame for an injury.

“It’s a policy we maintain because it’s a physically active buy viagra soft tabs sport.”

But because the group preaches a safety-first approach and makes sure novices take their time in progressing to more advanced moves, they say that injuries are extremely rare.

One of those cases occurred as a result of a complete newcomer rashly attempting to emulate Greenberg who was doing backflips off the wall in the gymnastics gym.

“This member wasn’t really familiar with parkour technique and couldn’t even do a standing backflip, while what I was doing was more complicated. The former member went for it recklessly and opened up in mid-flight which stopped their rotation and caused them to land on their head.”

The member in question suffered vertebrae fractures, but has since recovered. With this in mind, Greenberg again emphasized that they do not encourage anyone to attempt a difficult move that they aren’t physically ready for.

“The worst injuries we get now are just little cuts and bruises,” he said.

Occasionally, the club will opt for a “change of scenery” and head to downtown Hamilton where they spend some time at Jackson Square and attract the attention of some who would like to join.

Although parkour necessitates training in public space, Greenberg and Aydin stressed that it differs from sports like skateboarding where skater wax besmirches public monuments as it concerns itself with keeping the practicing environment in good shape. In their experience, they have rarely been asked to pick up their things and move.

Asked what parkour means to them and what in turn made them join, Greenberg and Aydin had similar responses. Greenberg said, “First of all, it’s very fun and can sometimes help in real-life situations. For example, one of our members is training to be a police officer and the physical and mental skills he develops through parkour are very applicable to that job. I enjoy the freedom of being in the air and also how it gets more challenging when you add complexity — whether that’s depth, height, or a drop.”

Aydin followed by saying, “Personally, I gravitated towards the self-improvement aspect. Other sports didn’t really interest me as much because I wanted to train for myself. I feel more confident and safer knowing that I could use my newly developed skills if I were ever to be in a precarious situation like being mugged, for example.”

Academically, both maintain that parkour has helped them hone their time management skills. They’ve seen the hyper-efficiency learned from parkour help them juggle their busy courseloads. Aydin said that the ability to transcend barriers that is the backbone of parkour translates well to schoolwork, because the knowledge that he can scale walls assists him when confronted with a metaphorical wall of sorts like a tough assignment.

At the end of the day, both were reluctant to consider parkour a counter-cultural movement. “[It is] essentially re-establishing something that we all should have,” said Aydin. “Humans are meant to move, but we set up constricting rules that tell us how to move. We’re exploring different types of movement by adapting to our environment. It’s more of a means of promoting individual expression than a rebellious act.”

 Correction: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of club member Muhammed Aydin's name.