My Parkour Journey

Parkour and the community of people it attracts helped me learn invaluable skills that I still use every day almost a decade later. As a rambunctious child, my parents had me in many after-school and after-after-school activities. Gymnastics, basketball, fencing, boxing, soccer, dance, you name it, I probably tried it at least once as a kid. My parents thought the things most parents think: these were all scholarship-earning opportunities. For the most part, though, I thought these were fun after-school activities.

Competition never really motivated me. I enjoyed the progress and improvement that came with working hard at these activities. However, it was the thought of besting myself rather than the next person that really motivated me. Parkour tapped into that motivation in a way that no other sport or activity could. The only person I was in competition with was myself, leaving me open to communing with everyone else around me.

The parkour community was incredibly inclusive, particularly at the Movement Creative. As a recently teenaged boy, I can’t remember wanting to feel anything more than respected despite my youth, and the parkour community gave me exactly that. They taught me how to embrace agency, decision-making, risk assessment, and responsibility. They taught me to trust myself. They made me feel like I was capable of doing things on my own (albeit under the watchful eye of highly trained instructors who guarded my safety at every turn). Gradually, they handed me more responsibility, always just enough to make me feel like I was progressing but not enough to feel in over my head.

Eventually, I became an instructor. I learned the basics of professionalism, how to engage with all different kinds of people, and how to handle a variety of delicate situations. These experiences contributed heavily to constructing my philosophies surrounding work, professionalism, teaching, learning, leadership, community, and personal growth. Those philosophies found their way into my academic life. They allowed me to reframe my previously fraught relationship with school and start earning academic scholarships. I can easily say that I would not be the young man I am today without the embrace and guidance of the parkour community.

-Luca Methot

Luca is a former coach, lifelong mover, and currently finishing his undergraduate degree at Oberlin College