I moved to New Orleans in Jan of '99.  Over the years, I kept watching people who could fly over the tops of walls with envy...always resigning myself to start trying to learn how to climb walls better.  I grew up in the High Sierras of California, and spent a good portion of my time outside exploring everything around me.  The natural world is like home to me.  Urban areas built of concrete and re-bar are still quite a foreign concept to me.  The giant oak trees that dot the city were familiar to me and I would climb them every time I was around them...but the stone walls of the amphitheatre on the back side of Jackson Square were always just big stone boxes that were in my way more often than not.  Now that I know parkour, obstacles have a different purpose in my life.  Challenges.  And there is no challenge too large!

Parkour From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Parkour (sometimes also abbreviated to PK) or l'art du déplacement (English: the art of movement) is a discipline, more similar to a martial art than to a sport, focused on moving from one point to another as smoothly, efficiently and quickly as possible using the abilities of the human body. It is built on the philosophical premise that any obstacle, physical or mental, can be surpassed.  Parkour practitioners are often called traceurs, or traceuses for females.

A Traceur performs an équilibre de chat (cat balance).

There is nothing more free in the world...to me at least...than when you are not trapped by your urban environment the way it traps others.  To be able to find apparently insurmountable obstacles and overcome them with ease lends a sense of freedom to my life.  Walls and fences that once were meant to keep people out or away only get me thinking...not about how to get over them...but how many ways can I overcome them.  This is what parkour vision does to you.  Shows you how a simple wheel chair access ramp can become hours and hours of training and fun.

Parkour also holds another value to me.  Parkour in it's philosophy, entices the traceur to be cooperative with the other traceurs, as competition for sports sake is looked down upon.  We are not trying to be better than each other, but as good as each other.  Ask any traceur and you will mostly get the same response.  Show me more!  Once the parkour vision begins working, then it's a matter of training with as many different people as you possibly can, because each person has something they do right and something they do wrong to offer.  Some have more experience than others, while even more have more of a natural athletic talent.  If you want to learn parkour, it does not take athletic talent.  All it takes is a desire to become more used to your human body, and the multitude of ways that it can be used to overcome obstacles.  If you start training parkour, as you progress, so will your skill.  It takes dedication.  It takes conditioning.  It takes repetition.  LOTS of repetition.  We encourage training continuously, diligently, smartly and most of all...SAFELY. 

Parkour is winding it's way around the world through the media that saturates our Internet.  Each video is usually passed on to friends so that they can all watch the guy do a back flip off the second story of a building, land flawlessly and roll backwards, negating the force of impacting with the ground by directing it in a different direction.  What most people don't see, are all the mistakes, and failed attempts that are the hallmark of any good traceur.  Success is not built upon the back of success, rather it's built upon failure after failure...until you get it right.  What you don't see...are the Kongs to Face, the visual aid of your friends shins which have been battered and bruised through many long hours of running at a wall.  These are why traceurs insist on always training safely, and with other traceurs...just in case.  We also like to spend time teaching those around us lots of proper techniques, warmups, beginning and advanced alike, as well as ways to compliment not only your health, but your training.

As a health regime, parkour leads one to eat better and more efficiently in order to build up the proper stores of energy so that we don't injure ourselves through overuse or misuse.  It helps the body get an average to extreme cardio workout, but in frequent short bursts of all out fun.  These short bursts and conditioning exercises are meant to build up your strength as well as agility.  An hour or two each morning can become the best part of breakfast for some, helping one to wake up and introduce a little bit of oxygen to the blood...burning out things that are not supposed to be there.  Along with the increased oxygen supply, there is also the sweating.  Sweating is an extremely healthy thing for the human body to do...taking with it lots of toxins and other waste materials from your body, leaving you feeling refreshed and accomplished all the time.  Remember though...the more you sweat, the more minerals, vitamins, salts and sugars you sweat out...the more you need to replace.  V8 and yogurt and other healthy types of raw foods will help to replenish these in your body, along with lots and lots of water.

As a mind training, parkour keeps you fast and agile, encouraging you to think quickly on your feet.  It keeps you searching for other avenues of approach and alternate methods of overcoming the obstacles that you find to challenge yourself with.  We never just give up on something that seems so difficult that we turn away and stop.  We may put it on hold for a while, but a good traceur will always return to the scene of a lost challenge, and continue to challenge themselves until the obstacle is overcome.

While I will have some tutorials up on the site in the future, I would point you to any of the many external links in the menu, as each of these sites has their own resources, training guides, forums and members.  All of us forming a large Tribe that moves in and out of itself with the skill and grace that comes with many long fruitful hours of socialising and athletic activities.

I have put this site together as simply a beginning to a united parkour community in New Orleans and the surrounding areas.  Please bear with the lack of content, as it is the forums I offer that will let you get in touch with other traceurs from your area and more so that you can constantly meet new people, and learn new ways to overcome obstacles.  Remember, when you can effortlessly scale a 9+ foot wall...final exams won't seem so daunting.

If you have't already, please register with the link at the top of the page.  This will give you access to the forums of Chimera Red Line.