Now that my Junior year of college is over and I’ve taken a week to chill, I’ve decided to talk about a new activity I’ve been enjoying — Parkour. Parkour involves moving quickly and efficiently through your environment but also encourages self improvement both physically and mentally.

For 2 hours every Saturday in the past 6 weeks, I’ve been taking a Parkour Fundamentals class with a training group in Chapel Hill, North Carolina called Fifth Ape that also teaches martial arts and other movement classes. Colin Pistell is owner and head trainer of Fifth Ape and he was my teacher for most of the course.

During these 6 weeks, I learned how to approach, vault, climb, balance on, and descend from walls, rails, and other structures. There was also crawling in dirt, childhood games, and a myriad of other movements one doesn’t typically see on their college campus.

Each week of the fundamentals class we worked on new skills that built upon one another with the program culminating on the 6th session into a long form run—an extremely physically and mentally demanding venture where teacher and students go out and run for about an hour and go over obstacles as they encounter them.

In this post I’ve summarized what I learned each week and at the very end is a reflections section with some of my thoughts on parkour after having finished the course.

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