Parkour — A Fun Sport for Kids

My older two kids went to parkour camp. It was a day camp — and they absolutely LOVED it!  We heard about parkour because their cousin out in California has been doing it for some time. My son described it this morning as “doing amazing things without dying.”  Imagine climbing and jumping over obstacles, climbing up metal bars, running up the wall and doing flips, swinging from ring to ring, jumping on a tumble track and/or trampoline. That’s parkour in a nutshell!  You can search on youtube for some amazing athletic feats (this originated in France and you should see the things they do!). For my kids (7 and 9) it didn’t entail leaping from building to building… by the end they felt like true ninja warriors.

Although I’ve never seen the show, parkour is similar to the TV show American Ninja Warriors.

At the end, the kids all did a complicated obstacle course, then the coaches put t-shirts on the kids  so they looked like ninjas!

DD — jumping off the platform and going right into a roll:

A few other parkour moves:

Here’s LD learning to run up against a wall, push off and flip over.

My kids can’t get enough of this sport. We’ve been going once a week or so since March and they jumped at the chance to do a parkour day-camp.  DD loves all the games they play (werewolf tag and all kinds of other things). Keep your eye out for a gym near you! It’s really fantastic!