Like all good tales, there needs to be a backstory of motivation for the protagonist. So here’s mine.
I first learnt about the existence of parkour in, I think, 2010 or 2011? We were brainstorming for Point of Entry at that time, and the idea was to let Dynesh, the plucky guy of the team, be a parkour practicioner. I don’t think we actually specifically called it out during dialogue, but it was meant to be reflected in his stunts. Cue complaints from ADs.
So for “research”, I started watching videos and it was pretty awesome to see what could be done. I hesitate to say it’s like what the characters in Assassin’s Creed or Tracers did because, well, come on la, those are literally stunts that take a lot of training to execute. It’s not realistic to expect anyone to do that on a daily, repeatable basis. But traceurs (folk who do parkour for real) can navigate most obstacles more easily than the average person and that’s a pretty interesting and useful ability to have.
At that time, I could only find one parkour group and I ended up stalking most of them over Facebook for a while to see what exactly you would do in a less staged setting, mostly to get ideas for which to torture the Point of Entry production team with. Sorry again guys. But it was fun to do right? Right? (crickets)
So fast forward to the middle of 2016, when my editor showed me this article, more for the video actually. It had been a while since I thought about it, and so I started looking up videos again. I found there were several groups that held parkour classes (I don’t think I could find any in 2010-2011).
After a lot of Googling, comparisons, checking, hemming and hawing, I tried out a class with Move Academy, and here’s how it went!
The folk
I dropped my phone before the class started so I couldn’t take any photos (I really need to stop dropping my phone), so I came back a few days later with my Headmasters to take photos. This was at Bishan, if you’re really keen. I’m not sure if I should disclose the location but you could always email me to ask (or if you know me in real life you could just ask).
The coach who led the class looked like he does parkour regularly, which is a good sign. He also has a unique name and behaves like an alternate universe version of my best friend, but my entire Whatsapp group of guy friends disagrees that they are alike. Then again, nobody ever thinks that any of his clones (last count, I think there were 5, it’s like I meet one every year) look like him so maybe it’s just me.
He had two people helping out (I say so because they were also doing some admin stuff), one male and one female. There were about ten people there I think, so six or seven students? Most importantly, there was Mature Stocky Guy who will be important shortly.
Also, I am represented by Cerebros because he is the head of Fortress Maximus. I didn’t bring Fort Max out because he would be really out of place with the other Headmasters.
There were no tables and chairs and nobody sat on the floor (I point this out because if you don’t like sitting on the floor, which I don’t, you’ll be happy, since chairs are for sitting and floors are for standing). But when gathering around, you mostly have to squat. I can’t squat properly either but OK, it’s better than sitting on the floor.
Where
Most (or rather, the exciting part) of the class was outdoors, and I think the class is meant to be held mostly outdoors. But it was raining before we came and the ground was wet, so we went to the HDB void deck first.
So… we went here. There are tiles. If this were an RPG, you wouldn’t find any hidden potions here either.
Superman exercise
We had to do an exercise which would ultimately train us to do a hand stand. So we would have to go into a Superman pose. I’m not sure what it’s technically called.
It’s an exercise where you sucked in your stomach and sort of did a reverse pelvic thrust (which I’m only referencing because Fortress Maximus does epic pelvic thrusts and it’s sort of ironic that we had to do the reverse). It’s harder than it looks. Much harder.
Then later we had to do it with our arms off the floor, so only your chest and thighs are holding your upper body up. If you don’t have chest muscles or you aren’t a lady, I would say this is pretty difficult.
Anyway, this was supposed to train the muscles that you would really use in a hand stand. Not having done a hand stand before, I didn’t actually know what muscles were used.
When you have a belly and you lie facing the floor, no amount of pushing or arching will get your belly button to stop touching the floor. So while I grunted a lot, I think I was really still mostly touching the floor.
The picture above illustrates why I was touching the floor, if you want an anatomical explanation.
Very long ago my muscular friend told me his ideal body would look striated. I had no idea what that meant and even after looking at pictures, I didn’t really understand what something striated would look like. I tried to fit it into a script (“red striated soil”) but it also didn’t quite work.
Anyway, the point of this interlude is to say that the coach looks striated and I finally understood what my muscular friend meant.
Hand stand
So after that was hand stand time. The easier one is when you face the wall.
And the more difficult one is when you’re facing away from the wall and you have to sort of kick up to get against the wall.
Remember Mature Stocky Guy? While I was thinking to myself that I was really in over my head (hahaha geddit geddit), he did a handstand. Multiple times. For many seconds each time. Like it was nothing.
And then he did it again.
And then he did an unassisted handstand. For a demo. Wah.
The best I could do was jump up a bit (I couldn’t walk up) and erm, that’s all I did for this part of the class. I couldn’t do a hand stand la, not on my first try. And the last time we did a hand stand was the walking one, in Judo, when I would just take one step and then ok, collapse on the floor.
Precision jumping
After that we went to the amphitheatre and did precision jumping, where you learn to land on a specific spot. We used the steps.
I don’t jump a lot in real life so I spent most of the time staring at my feet and also staring at other people’s feet and legs and butts to see how they jumped. In hindsight, this might have been misconstrued as being rather pervy, since I was really squinting and focusing to see how they did it, but well, nobody said anything out loud to me.
And then, and then, and then the other male instructor did this two metre plus jump to show us the importance of precision jumping. If you’re crossing chasms, it’s important to land precisely where you want to go, otherwise you’ll end up like Mario in the hands of a five-year-old.
And he jumped more than once.
But yes, wow, he did it for real and in front of us and I’m 100% sure there were no wires and he did it multiple times. I later found out that he was also a stuntman for Point of Entry so hey, it sort of came full circle didn’t it?
The final jump
Our very last activity was to jump across this L-shaped structure, with the coaches and instructors all around helping us (and in my case, encouraging us too).
I really did not want to do this because:
– I did not want to sia suay
– I did not want to miss and fall off and be in excruciating pain
– I did not want to piss my pants
But they persuaded me to give it a try, and the coach and instructors were there for safety. In the end, yes, I tried it without any of the aforementioned things happening.
The caveat, of course, was that I could have just stepped over the length that I jumped.
But I jumped it thrice. I’m Super Mario! Or at the very least, Princess Toadstool.
Also, female instructor taught me some two new facts.
“Breaking the jump” means that you’ve done a jump that you were previously afraid of or couldn’t do.
You have to make the jump three times because the first might be beginner’s luck, and the next two are to confirm that yes, you can jump it.
So I did it! It was two hours long (it didn’t feel that long though) and I didn’t ache the next day, but the day after. I’ve signed up to do this every Wednesday too.
They also have a curriculum but I didn’t ask to see the SOW, because I honestly wouldn’t know what half of the terms there mean. But it sounds like how I would scaffold a lesson so hey, centralised curriculum is good.
Most importantly (as with all tuition/enrichment centres too), the instructors were good in what they did, and encouraging when it came to a new student who did not know what was going on most of the time.
If you want to get technical about it (with reference to feedback forms), the coach:
– showed subject matter expertise
– explained concepts clearly (and demonstrated it)
– delivered it at the right pace
– was enthusiastic about the class
Offhand I can’t remember what else is on that teacher feedback form that I give out though. So yay it’s time to be a student again!
So for everyone who asked about it and gave me advice and suggestions, thank you! It’s paid off and I hope to be doing it regularly now.
Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter. He’s also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. He Tweets/Instagrams at Optimarcus and writes at marcusgohmarcusgoh.com.
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