IF YOU’VE EVER stumbled upon a video of someone balancing themselves on the top of a building, or skipping across walls in an urban area, then you’ve probably discovered the sporting phenomenon that is Parkour.
It’s often referred to as Freerunning, so a distinction between the two burgeoning pursuits is needed.
Parkour involves travelling from point A to point B in the most efficient and quickest way possible, by running, swinging, jumping, and climbing over obstacles.
Freerunning is a similar activity but it also incorporates flips, stunts and other tricks along the way.
London native Katie McDonnell has been practising Parkour since 2010. She flew into Dublin this week to launch Lucozade Sport’s ‘Made to Move Sessions.’
As part of her visit, she performed a sequence of Parkour moves that allowed her to take in some of the scenery.
Her route brought her by some of the city’s most iconic landmarks including the Guinness Storehouse, Grand Canal Dock and The Ha’penny Bridge.
The origins of McDonnell’s association with the sport stretches back to her university days. After doing some aerobic gymnastics in her younger years, she progressed into cheerleading while studying for a maths degree in Southampton.
She happened upon a group of Freerunners at an open gymnastics session, and was intrigued by what she saw.
“They showed me what they were doing, they showed me all the basic vaults. They showed me some of the Freerunning style flips that I wasn’t doing in my training. So, things like wall flips and flips from the bars.
“That was where I started out,” she explains to The42.
In one of her first experiences of outdoor Freerunning, a friend of McDonnell’s took her up to the roofs of buildings overlooking the city centre.
She doesn’t frequent the rooftops as much as she used to, but she still appreciates the solitude that can be found up there.
I do love the feeling of being on a rooftop when everything down below is really busy and you can kind of hear the hustle and bustle down below, but it’s kind of muffled and you’re in this more peaceful environment just above everything else. That’s quite cool.”
“I still do (rooftops) from time to time but, it’s just my personal preference of the kind of things I train where you don’t need to be up on a roof.
“The spots that I enjoy training at just happen to not be on rooftops. It’s not a thing of ‘I don’t agree with that.’”
Some Parkour athletes prefer to use their skills to finish their route in the quickest time possible. That speed element of the sport doesn’t really appeal to McDonnell.
She’s more interested in using the sport as a form of self-innovation, to perform stunts and tricks of her own making.
And any mistakes made during a routine can be converted “into something creative.”
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Marc O'Sullivan
Marc O'Sullivan
“I’m more about doing more stylised moves and trying to come up with individual lines that are more creative.
“Sometimes you’ll be training at a spot that you’ve been to a hundred times and you’ll get someone who’s come over from another country and you’ve shown them this spot.
“They’ll suddenly see it in a completely different light to you and they’ll start doing something completely different, and you’re like, “oh I never thought that this spot could be used like that,” so that’s quite cool.
“Fresh eyes always helps, so if you go and train at a spot with someone who’s never been there before it’s really cool to try and see what they come up with.”
Parkour is a sport with a language that is understood all over the world.
Even when McDonnell arrives in a place where English isn’t the first language, she knows that communicating with the local Parkour enthusiasts won’t be a problem once they get outdoors.
“Sometimes, you’ll go to a place and the people you’re with all day might not speak any English but it doesn’t seem to really matter because you can get by with communicating with your hands and helping each other to vaguely understand what you want.
“The rest of the time you’re training, and what’s nice is you can be laughing with those people and feel like you’re having full-on conversations but actually you’re just training.
“You can set a challenge that you’re all training and it’s like you’re all doing something together even though you don’t speak the same language.”
Understandably, the early stages of mastering Parkour, are carried out in a safe-setting on ground level.
Marc O'Sullivan
Marc O'Sullivan
McDonnell discusses the level of care she takes during her training and stresses that she never takes any risks with her stunts.
“Often people see people jumping between rooftops and think, ‘Oh, my God, that looks so dangerous.’”
“You train all this foot placement stuff on a ground level first, so your body knows exactly what it’s doing before you go and take that up a level.
“You don’t even need to be in a gym to practise something like foot placement. You’ve got so many curbs outside, or something that’s not very high off the ground, and you just practise jumping to it so that you can land exactly where you want every time.
She continues:
“Being able to land with your feet at a certain point isn’t so difficult. I guess it’s just a case of repeating it over and over again at that ground level where it’s not dangerous and then you’re able to go and do that between walls.”
Unless I’m sure I know what I’m doing and I feel confident in my ability to do that, I won’t do something. I don’t take risks in this sport and that’s not what this sport is about.
“I don’t consider this to be an adrenaline junkie sport. This is something where athletes train their bodies to be able to do exactly what they want it to do. It’s not like I’m gonna take a risk and see if I make it.”
McDonnell draws inspiration for her moves from wherever she can. Routines performed by high performance athletes offers her targets to aim for, but equally, newcomers to Parkour bring new ideas that she can flesh out.
“I know that there have been times where I’ve trained with some of the really elite level athletes and I’ve seen the stuff that they’re doing and I think, “that’s really cool, I want to try and incorporate that.”
“Then there are other times where you could be out and there could be a beginner who’s just playing with something on a wall, and you can take what they’re doing and turn it into something else.”
Initially, Parkour was just a hobbie for McDonnell and one she engaged with once or twice a week. It wasn’t until 2013, that she considered pursuing the sport at a professional level.
She knew there was a risk involved in trying to secure settled employment in the industry but, with a degree in maths and a masters in Medical Statistics behind her, she had a contingency plan in place.
The gamble was worth taking in the end. In addition to uploading videos of her skills to her own Youtube channel, Parkour has taken McDonnell to movie sets where she landed roles in productions such as ‘Assassin’s Creed’ and ‘Resident Evil.’
She also stood in as Ellie Goulding’s body double for a Nike advert.
On a competitive level, the 26-year-old has used her Parkour skills to participate in the TV show ‘Ninja Warrior UK.’ She’s the only competitor to feature in the 2015, 2016 and 2017 series.
Show participants are required to complete a physically testing obstacle course that demands high levels of upper body strength.
Prior to competing, McDonnell already had a respectable baseline in this regard, but she knew she would have to tweak her training before taking to the stage.
“When Ninja Warrior was coming up, I knew I was going to have to work on my grip strength a lot because, as a Freerunner, my upper body strength is pretty good because we use a lot of upper body all the time, we don’t use our grip strength as much.”
“We do some stuff on bars, but it’s not like we ever have to hang on a bar for a prolonged period of time which you do have to do with Ninja Warrior.
“When I was training for that, I was literally just hanging on a bar for as long as I could. In my normal strength training, I do a lot of pull-ups and some dips.”
In the coming weeks, McDonnell is departing for LA for a commercial shoot and then Hong Kong for a music video before moving on again to Las Vegas.
But she’s keen to come back to Dublin in the future, and has already made arrangements with some local Freerunners for her next visit.
“I really wanna come back now and I’ve spoken to a couple of local Freerunners here and I’ve told them that I’ll come back and they can show me a few of the good training spots.”
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Flips, tricks and technique: An insight into Parkour and Freerunning
IF YOU’VE EVER stumbled upon a video of someone balancing themselves on the top of a building, or skipping across walls in an urban area, then you’ve probably discovered the sporting phenomenon that is Parkour.
It’s often referred to as Freerunning, so a distinction between the two burgeoning pursuits is needed.
Parkour involves travelling from point A to point B in the most efficient and quickest way possible, by running, swinging, jumping, and climbing over obstacles.
Freerunning is a similar activity but it also incorporates flips, stunts and other tricks along the way.
London native Katie McDonnell has been practising Parkour since 2010. She flew into Dublin this week to launch Lucozade Sport’s ‘Made to Move Sessions.’
As part of her visit, she performed a sequence of Parkour moves that allowed her to take in some of the scenery.
Her route brought her by some of the city’s most iconic landmarks including the Guinness Storehouse, Grand Canal Dock and The Ha’penny Bridge.
The origins of McDonnell’s association with the sport stretches back to her university days. After doing some aerobic gymnastics in her younger years, she progressed into cheerleading while studying for a maths degree in Southampton.
She happened upon a group of Freerunners at an open gymnastics session, and was intrigued by what she saw.
“They showed me what they were doing, they showed me all the basic vaults. They showed me some of the Freerunning style flips that I wasn’t doing in my training. So, things like wall flips and flips from the bars.
“That was where I started out,” she explains to The42.
In one of her first experiences of outdoor Freerunning, a friend of McDonnell’s took her up to the roofs of buildings overlooking the city centre.
She doesn’t frequent the rooftops as much as she used to, but she still appreciates the solitude that can be found up there.
“I still do (rooftops) from time to time but, it’s just my personal preference of the kind of things I train where you don’t need to be up on a roof.
“The spots that I enjoy training at just happen to not be on rooftops. It’s not a thing of ‘I don’t agree with that.’”
Some Parkour athletes prefer to use their skills to finish their route in the quickest time possible. That speed element of the sport doesn’t really appeal to McDonnell.
She’s more interested in using the sport as a form of self-innovation, to perform stunts and tricks of her own making.
And any mistakes made during a routine can be converted “into something creative.”
“I’m more about doing more stylised moves and trying to come up with individual lines that are more creative.
“Sometimes you’ll be training at a spot that you’ve been to a hundred times and you’ll get someone who’s come over from another country and you’ve shown them this spot.
“They’ll suddenly see it in a completely different light to you and they’ll start doing something completely different, and you’re like, “oh I never thought that this spot could be used like that,” so that’s quite cool.
“Fresh eyes always helps, so if you go and train at a spot with someone who’s never been there before it’s really cool to try and see what they come up with.”
Parkour is a sport with a language that is understood all over the world.
Even when McDonnell arrives in a place where English isn’t the first language, she knows that communicating with the local Parkour enthusiasts won’t be a problem once they get outdoors.
“Sometimes, you’ll go to a place and the people you’re with all day might not speak any English but it doesn’t seem to really matter because you can get by with communicating with your hands and helping each other to vaguely understand what you want.
“The rest of the time you’re training, and what’s nice is you can be laughing with those people and feel like you’re having full-on conversations but actually you’re just training.
“You can set a challenge that you’re all training and it’s like you’re all doing something together even though you don’t speak the same language.”
Understandably, the early stages of mastering Parkour, are carried out in a safe-setting on ground level.
McDonnell discusses the level of care she takes during her training and stresses that she never takes any risks with her stunts.
“Often people see people jumping between rooftops and think, ‘Oh, my God, that looks so dangerous.’”
“You train all this foot placement stuff on a ground level first, so your body knows exactly what it’s doing before you go and take that up a level.
“You don’t even need to be in a gym to practise something like foot placement. You’ve got so many curbs outside, or something that’s not very high off the ground, and you just practise jumping to it so that you can land exactly where you want every time.
She continues:
“Being able to land with your feet at a certain point isn’t so difficult. I guess it’s just a case of repeating it over and over again at that ground level where it’s not dangerous and then you’re able to go and do that between walls.”
“I don’t consider this to be an adrenaline junkie sport. This is something where athletes train their bodies to be able to do exactly what they want it to do. It’s not like I’m gonna take a risk and see if I make it.”
McDonnell draws inspiration for her moves from wherever she can. Routines performed by high performance athletes offers her targets to aim for, but equally, newcomers to Parkour bring new ideas that she can flesh out.
“I know that there have been times where I’ve trained with some of the really elite level athletes and I’ve seen the stuff that they’re doing and I think, “that’s really cool, I want to try and incorporate that.”
“Then there are other times where you could be out and there could be a beginner who’s just playing with something on a wall, and you can take what they’re doing and turn it into something else.”
Initially, Parkour was just a hobbie for McDonnell and one she engaged with once or twice a week. It wasn’t until 2013, that she considered pursuing the sport at a professional level.
She knew there was a risk involved in trying to secure settled employment in the industry but, with a degree in maths and a masters in Medical Statistics behind her, she had a contingency plan in place.
The gamble was worth taking in the end. In addition to uploading videos of her skills to her own Youtube channel, Parkour has taken McDonnell to movie sets where she landed roles in productions such as ‘Assassin’s Creed’ and ‘Resident Evil.’
She also stood in as Ellie Goulding’s body double for a Nike advert.
On a competitive level, the 26-year-old has used her Parkour skills to participate in the TV show ‘Ninja Warrior UK.’ She’s the only competitor to feature in the 2015, 2016 and 2017 series.
Show participants are required to complete a physically testing obstacle course that demands high levels of upper body strength.
Prior to competing, McDonnell already had a respectable baseline in this regard, but she knew she would have to tweak her training before taking to the stage.
“When Ninja Warrior was coming up, I knew I was going to have to work on my grip strength a lot because, as a Freerunner, my upper body strength is pretty good because we use a lot of upper body all the time, we don’t use our grip strength as much.”
“We do some stuff on bars, but it’s not like we ever have to hang on a bar for a prolonged period of time which you do have to do with Ninja Warrior.
“When I was training for that, I was literally just hanging on a bar for as long as I could. In my normal strength training, I do a lot of pull-ups and some dips.”
In the coming weeks, McDonnell is departing for LA for a commercial shoot and then Hong Kong for a music video before moving on again to Las Vegas.
But she’s keen to come back to Dublin in the future, and has already made arrangements with some local Freerunners for her next visit.
“I really wanna come back now and I’ve spoken to a couple of local Freerunners here and I’ve told them that I’ll come back and they can show me a few of the good training spots.”
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