Alex has been interested in parkour since he saw some videos of my friend’s son practicing... What is it? Parkour can be described as the ability to navigate your environment functionally, confidently, and safely in a variety of situations.

I found out a gym built especially for parkour, Tempest Freerunning Academy was opened recently near my in-laws home in Northridge, so I enrolled Alex in a class to try it out. He enjoyed it, needless to say - too bad we were traveling around visiting friends and relatives otherwise he could have taken more classes!

Started off by doing some stretches and warm-ups like precision jump practice and straight landing and roll. Later they worked on one-handed speed vaulting, cat leap, wall run and pop vault. The aim of the class is to learn and perfect technique. One kid around Alex’s age was previously into gymnastics and that interest morphed into parkour – Alex, too, has also taken gymnastics classes...

From parkour class at Tempest Academy

There was a section built to look like a Mario Bros game - fun! So here's Alex pretending to be Mario...

Jumping in a warp tube!

Coming out of the warp tube!

One-handed vaulting practice - both ways, to use both right and left hands...