Intermediate Parkour!

Evan has been taking parkour lessons for about two years now.  I'm sure some of you are asking, what on earth is parkour!  If Evan hasn't explained it to you by now, I'm getting pretty good at it.  First, I ask people if they've seen American Ninja Warrior on TV.  If they have, problem solved-that's what parkour is.  If not, I ask them if they've seen the first Daniel Craig James Bond movie.  In the opening scene James Bond chases someone through a city jumping and flipping and doing some pretty nice parkour.  If they've seen neither, then I just explain it to them that it's gymnastics without the gym or skateboarding without the skateboard, or basically just running, jumping and doing a bunch of flips out in a park or the real world somewhere.

So, that's what Evan's been doing for the past few years, and he LOVES it!  There were definitely times over the past few years when I've wondered if he was actually making progress or if he was just sitting in the gym getting distracted or goofing off.  However, he was actually putting in lots of good hard work over the past few years in between a few spurts of silliness, and as a result he's learned a lot.

About six weeks before we moved, they did assessments in Evan's parkour class.  They had Evan and the other kids do a bunch of skills and tested to see how far they'd come.  Since we had to take a few weeks off for Ben's swim lessons, Evan had to make up some of the assessment after class with Coach Jay.  They were in there for quite a while, and when they came out, Evan was holding the little assessment checklist in his hand and had the biggest smile on his face!  He had qualified to move up to intermediate parkour!  I was so proud of him.

Then, I went into the office to look at scheduling for the intermediate class.  Now, we would only be there for about six more weeks, but I wanted him to have the chance to do some intermediate classes.  I had the option of signing him up for a class that met at a similar time in the evening but was with a different coach.  Or, I could sign him up for one that didn't start till 7 in the evening but was with Coach Jay.  Since it was only for six weeks, I decided we could do the late night classes, just for that long.  He really wanted to stay with his coach.

So, we went to six weeks of intermediate parkour and had a ball!  Plus, I think he learned a lot from the more advanced kids.  We were really sad to have to leave parkour and Coach Jay in Durham, but hopefully we will find an equally good spot in St. Louis!

(Evan shows off his parkour assessment!)

(Evan practices his back handspring in intermediate parkour.)

(intermediate parkour at its best)