The training course on your own doorstep

Parkour was once regarded as a madcap, antiestablishment activity performed by anarchic young Frenchmen. But in the past 25 years, the discipline also known as “freerunning” has changed. Now, instead of marvelling from a distance at the skill and grace of freerunners, such as in the opening scenes of Bond movie Casino Royale, we can take classes in stuntman moves. One of the best places to do this is the Academy of Freerunning, a warehouse space called The Chainstore, hidden deep in London’s Docklands. Classes take place amid crash mats and scaffolding inside and among concrete obstacles outside. My instructor Dan Edwardes, who runs training company Parkour Generations, leads me to a nearby area with a view across the River Thames. It’s the kind of environment often used for tuition, he explains, and similar to that in which parkour began, among the bollards, benches and steps of a Paris suburb. After a quick warm-up we start with jumping – two-legged jumps on and off the steps. I am told to land quietly and stick: do not move too far forward or back. Next we move across to a low wall, about my hip height, and Dan demonstrates a graceful scissoring move over it. I manage to mimic this. Just. But when I try on the other leg it is even messier, and my back foot scrapes against the wall. Never mind – we do it over and over until I’m proficient. Next, we try horizontal railings. Dan demonstrates the twisting corkscrew movement I need to pass between the bars. He looks like he is swimming through them, whereas when I try, I get tangled up and whine. But, slowly, slowly, I improve. Next, we try bars where there is a central vertical rail that makes the two horizontal railings all the more difficult to twist through. “Traditionally, people might suggest this isn’t an ideal place to do this move because of that central railing,” Dan says casually. “But in parkour we say, ‘No, it’s all the more ideal because that’s there.’ It’s about adapting to the environment we find ourselves in, rather than the other way around.” We try again. By the 10th attempt my mental commentary (“this is stupid/why am I here?/how does he do that?”) has quietened. It’s replaced by a steady focus, the railing and me involved in a strange but compelling urban synchrony. These types of movements, which involve passing through natural or urban obstacles, are called “passant”, Dan explains. Mastery of this is a crucial part of parkour, where the ultimate goal is to move across any landscape