This past week my editor, Bianca, and I decided to meet up for some coffee on campus. Not long into our conversation, we noticed a group of men jumping from ledges to handrails and everywhere in between. It wasn’t long before these flying men drew a crowd of curious passersby. Bianca and I were quick to join the crowd and find answers to our questions. We managed to introduce ourselves and have a quick chat about what exactly they were doing so high up on those ledges. Tony Roth, the president of SoFlo Movement, took the time to answer a few of our questions.
Courtesy: SoFlo Movement
Her Campus (HC): What is Parkour?
Tony Roth (TR): Parkour is basically a bunch of basic movements like vaults, flips, jumps, basic jumps, and landings, rolls, and precision landings. Trying to stick a landing on the rails is more parkour. Freerunning is basically parkour but there are more flips incorporated in the movements.
HC: Do you train for competitions or do you just perform?
TR: Currently, why we are here right now is because we are filming videos. Our group does a lot within the Florida community. Tallahassee is a good spot for it. There’s not a big parkour community here but we wanted to showcase its [ideal parkour] spots.
We personally train for more just for ourselves because we think it’s fun. It’s challenging. All of us have done competitions but we don’t necessarily train for them. The competition aspect is more for fun and to meet new people. It allows you to travel, meet new people and different brands, and just have fun with everyone.
Doing parkour in itself here is more so for ourselves.
Recently we have been getting into more video work. Soflo Movement is sponsored by Bang Energy and now they hire us to make videos for them to showcase on our social media so now we are getting more into the business work side of it. Bang Energy is an energy drink based out of South Florida.
Sometimes we have to film for work. We do [a] whole round of it [filming and parkour].
HC: Were you trained for this? Are there coaches or are you self-taught?
TR: It’s a mixture. I think a lot of us are self-taught, most of us here have been training for at least six years.
When we got started there was a huge community but it died out and there were not a lot of teachers.
(Tony then explained to us that one of the men named Tyler actually is a parkour instructor down in Weston, Florida.)
He actually teaches kids on basic rolls and in a safe environment that has mats. A place where they won’t get hurt.
We know all the basic movements and teach ourselves.
You learn from people who are better than you. There’s not usually a designated teacher unless you are really getting started.
When you get to a higher skill level you don’t really take the classes anymore.
Once you understand proper technique it’s more about pushing your boundaries. Parkour is about exploring yourself. Every athlete isn’t the same. It’s more about yourself and your boundaries and trying to push those and you can’t always do that in a teaching scenario.
HC: What made this area on campus stick out to you? Are there certain elements you look for when picking an area to train?
TR: We have trained in this spot before.
We look for the ledges, the rails…there’s a specific architecture, it’s hard to point out, once you’ve been training for a while you see the different things that equal movements. So I don’t just see a rail and a wall there.
[Once we see] anything that has really cool architecture our mind just starts humming. A parkour playground.
HC: Is there any significance to the billowing pants? Is it a stylistic choice or a necessity?
TR: A stylistic choice.
That’s funny because they [the team] get asked that all the time. Where he is from in Spain that’s actually all they wear. A lot of people think it restricts your movement but it doesn’t. Your legs can move wherever you want.
It’s part style and it’s part culture. A lot of the teams over there in Spain wear baggy pants. The communities that followed after them kind of took after that. They would get these sweatpants and they would basically sit in the sweatpants to try to make them baggier. For certain shots, they do look nice because they flow in the wind.
But it’s more so for culture and style.
HC: Is there anything that you want to explain about Parkour that you don’t think is well understood? Is there anything you would like to add?
TR: A lot of the dangerous stuff is practiced time and time again.
Mainstream media, especially Fail Army, like [to feature] parkour fails in a sense and Parkour for some reason has this stigma that all the big stuff is really dangerous. All of us have had at least six years of experience where we have practiced everything we are doing here at ground level at first. If I can’t do a jump, I do whatever I can to make the jump as safe as possible and then I go at it and then once I’m comfortable with it, I take it outside.
We were in UF the other day and a lady came by and expressed that she hoped that luck was on our side. It’s not said to be mean, it’s based out of concern but for us, we do this as work and because we love to do it. We aren’t just hooligans throwing ourselves at walls. It’s all precision timing.
That’s pretty much the only stigma I want to address. OH! Also the Office, that saying is not annoying but we hear it all the time. That saying “Hardcore, Parkour!”, it’s funny and all but we have heard it a thousand times. That’s a media stigma.
Thank you, Tony, for taking the time to talk to us and clear up a few misconceptions around Parkour.
If you’re interested in learning more about Parkour or just want to show the SoFlo Movement a little love then head on over to their Instagram and check them out!