Getting from here -- oof! -- to there
THE first rule of parkour is you do not talk about parkour. OK, that’s not quite right. The first rule of parkour -- under instructor Cliff Kravit, anyway -- is you do not talk about parkour with a journalist until you have established that he is worthy of parkour via a pop quiz by telephone:
Do you know that parkour is not something normally done indoors? “Of course.” Do you know that parkour is not a sport? “Uh yeah, no, not a sport.” Do you know it is strictly noncompetitive? “Uh-huh.” Are you familiar with my website, www.pkcali.com? “Well” -- pause for typing, loading -- “as a matter of fact . . . yes.”
Cleared for takeoff despite some dilatory responses to Kravit’s queries, it was time for a question of my own: “What exactly is parkour?”
Developed by Frenchman David Belle in the late ‘80s, parkour is “the discipline of moving from point A to point B through any environment, be it urban or rural, as quickly, fluidly, efficiently, intelligently and safely as possible.” That’s the theory anyway. As anyone who’s seen Belle’s breakout 2004 film “Banlieu 13” (“District B13”) can tell you, the practice seems to be more about death-defying leaps from one building to another and impossible-looking scurrying up walls and drainpipes.
Of course, that’s where new practitioners get into trouble and one of the reasons Kravit, a 27-year-old ex-gymnast, teaches the basic concepts on Thursdays in the controlled environment of the L.A. School of Gymnastics.
The 90-minute workouts typically focus on one of four basic utilities: vaults, rolls (i.e., how not to break your ankles when you land), climbing and precision jumping, which was the appropriate jumping-off point for me and my compatriots, a dozen or so kids, teens and young adults, not a woman in the bunch.
Class began with repeated standing jumps on and off a soft, padded cube, then progressed to standing jumps across a series of balance beams, and finally to running jumps between heavy mats slowly spaced farther apart. These were no easy feats. But with a little instruction -- lower your center of gravity as you leap, bend your knees as you land -- I was able to stick my landings like a regular Nadia Comaneci.
By the end of this rather successful first workout, I was on cloud nine, a superhero able to leap tall gym equipment in a single bound. Then came the next morning, and a lesson I hadn’t entirely anticipated -- the second, even more secret rule of parkour: Bring IcyHot.
-- Liam.Gowing@latimes.com
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PARKOUR CLASS
WHERE: L.A. School of Gymnastics, 8450 Higuera St., Culver City
WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursdays
PRICE: $15
INFO: www.pkcali.com