Hip rolls across public plazas. Leaping over rows of bicycle racks with “double kongs” — so named because of the gorilla-like forward thrusts with both arms. “Chimney slides” down the sides of apartment buildings. And somersaulting “roll bombs” off street-side walls.
These are some of the many daredevil moves in parkour, a unique art of movement that combines acrobatics with running, jumping and climbing and is often practiced in urban settings.
It was first developed in France by David Belle, who was inspired by his father, a French Special Forces veteran who had trained on an obstacle course known as “parcours du combattant.” But many people got their first glimpse of parkour in the 2006 James Bond film “Casino Royale” — and as a pop culture phenomenon, it’s had its up, downs and gainer flips ever since.
In the Bay Area, the practice — part artistic expression, part demonstration of athletic prowess and all efficiency, agility and coordination — continues to grow and evolve in new ways.
At San Jose’s 12,000-square-foot Sessions Academy of Movement, enthusiasts practice a classic version of the sport while pushing the boundaries of what can be done. That parkour-focused gym was founded by owner Angel Abiang as a way for him to support his son Ryan, who’s been obsessed with the sport since he was 4 years old — and is today, at 17, a competitive world-class parkour athlete.
From the time he saw a YouTube video about parkour, “That was the only thing he wanted to do,” Abiang recalls. “Nothing else mattered.”
But finding someone to train his young son in the art of parkour was trickier. He traveled to parkour jams around the Bay Area — sometimes in not-so-kid-friendly industrial neighborhoods — and started asking around to try to find people who would privately teach him. Eventually, about 10 years ago, he decided to sublease a Cross-Fit gym and find other students to join in the classes to create a program that could cover the costs for his son while benefiting the community. Within about a month, he says, the program had expanded from three children to around 40 or 50.
The activity seems to resonate widely with kids because it offers something many other organized sports don’t, Abiang says. In parkour, kids don’t have to deal with team politics, or being benched while the superstar gets all the playing time. They’re freer to move without being told what to do or critiqued on their form, he explains.
“Parkour relates to what a lot of kids want,” Abiang says. “It’s this freeform but still technical form of athletic expression.”
Still, the sport has remained somewhat niche, due to the lack of public spaces that encourage these forms of movement — liability is a big concern for many property owners — and the perception that parkour is risky. But there are many benefits to the practice, from boosting confidence to developing a greater range of functional movement skills, to building patterns of grit and resilience, Abiang says. He’s seen the impact on his own son, now a two-time US Parkour national freestyle champion.
“It has been, outside of family, the greatest thing that could’ve happened to him,” Abiang says.
And while Abiang’s gym represents a more traditional version of parkour — one in which there’s no padding — other spinoffs on the sport have developed in recent years that do rely on a more cushioned, yet still quite intense approach.
Part of that’s due to the expanded popularity of TV’s American Ninja Warrior, according to Raul Piscoya, a longtime Bay Area parkour practitioner and teacher. In the early days of the series, there was more crossover between parkour athletes and participation in the competition, but the sports have grown more separate over the years, he says. Gyms have sprung up nationally with training facilities for these specific Ninja Warrior challenges.
And there are even more riffs on the concept. A gym just a few miles from Sessions is taking a newer approach to parkour, using it as just one piece of a broader curriculum.
In an industrial office park in San Jose’s Japantown, the Praxeum combines parkour with MMA training. There, several times a week, a gym full of children and young adults hosts workouts with flips, wrestling and obstacle courses on padded gym mats and equipment, kind of like IRL video game characters — or superheroes.
Participants go through a series of challenges as their coach Condor Nguyen tells them to think of the objects in their paths as accessories, not obstacles — and how to use them to their advantage.
Nguyen, who owns the gym, grew up wanting to be a superhero, but when he pursued martial arts to work toward that goal, he found it lacking, he says. Many programs taught self-defense, but it was rarer to see a focus on defending and helping others. After working with Native American mentors, he developed a curriculum described as “guardian arts,” focused on concepts of care and teamwork — while also building skills that make kids feel like superheroes. In 2014, he left his bioengineering job to develop Praxeum full-time, he says. The students, it would seem, are fans of the combination.
Shreya Das, 8, says she likes the teamwork games, because they often require “crazy solutions.” “I like the crazy solutions,” she says.
Julie Francisco says she brings her son Tyler to the program because he “loves it so much.” He’s not only learned to “flip off of anything” but also how to encourage and protect his peers, she says.
“The sparring encourages you to work with your partner,” says Hannah Chiu, 14. “Communication is really important here.”
“Nothing is as exciting,” says Gael Gonzalez, 15. “I take the hardest hits here. I go for big flips and fight bigger people. I push hard, but it’s the best thing.”
So where is parkour headed in the future? “It’s going to keep evolving,” Piscoya says. “It’s just movement. We all love movement.”
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