Last Saturday (January 5th) I closed a deal with a local Rochester gymnastics gym, Zenieth. Basically, we pay them a bit of money on a weekly basis, and they let us go to their gym for an hour and a half on Saturday afternoons. Today was the first time we went, and we had a blast.

People from Gymnastics Club and Parkour came, as well as other people we’ve come across who are interested in gymnastics and/or tricking. I didn’t end up getting a final count, but I would estimate about twenty people. The best part is there are even more people who want to show up (regularly, too!) who just already had plans for this weekend and couldn’t make it. Everyone had a great time, and it seemed like Amy and Neil - the owners of the gym - enjoyed having us there. The two coaches (who are both Olympic level coaches… yeah. wow.) both seemed like they had a great time teaching and watching us.

We started off in a big circle and ran through some warmups and stretches. After that, everyone just scattered. People worked on backtucks (and other things) on the trampoline, tumbling on the floor, cartwheels, roundoffs, 540 and butterfly kicks, layouts, and then we even set up some padding on the wall and worked on wallflips. When I started to put it against the wall, the male coach came over and said “Flips off the wall?” and I just smiled. DJ and Andrew came over to join me, and the three of us were doing one, two, and Andrew even attempted (and landed!) a three step wallflip. We even had some of the nine year olds that were there (not with us) there, and they nailed some pretty awesome flips. Artem came over and tried (which was pretty funny. His still needs some work..), and I’m a lot more comfortable with them now. I’m going to move to a less padded wall in the wrestling room here at school and drill them there for a bit, but I think I’m close to the point where I can try them outside. Just a few more sessions of drilling to make sure.

We gave a brief Parkour demonstration to the owners of the gym. I think they were a little bit wary, but I gave them a pretty good description of what was going on, and what Parkour was all about, and I think with a bit of time we can win them over and get them to really understand what Parkour is all about.

There were a few pictures taken, and I’ll edit this post and put them up when I get ahold of them, but I mostly just didn’t have time to take any. Too busy doing everything else! Everyone had a great time, and we will definitely be back in force next Saturday.