The early 2000s sport of the moment is having its resurgence in the region as PCYC Launceston begins offering 'parkour' classes for the first time.
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The youth organisation began teaching the fundamentals of the sport to aspiring athletes of all ages at its Newstead gymnasium on Friday, May 26.
The popularity of parkour, where participants attempt to get from one point to another in the fastest and most efficient way possible, usually in urban environments, spiked during the COVID pandemic.
PCYC Gymnastics coach Nathaniel Suidgeest leads the new classes and said until now, there was nowhere in Launceston an aspiring parkour athlete could practise their craft.
"This will be an environment that supports safety and structure around learning the skills of parkour," Mr Suidgeest said.
"But it's a different way of moving, of thinking, not just getting from one place to another and doing somersaults on a bar or flipping on a trampoline.
"There's a great degree of freedom in parkour."
Parkour gained a reputation as an extreme sport in which its athletes vault over railings and jump across building gaps but has more recently taken to more controlled indoor environments like the AAPES gym in Sydney.
In the PCYC parkour classes, safety will be one of the significant priorities for those wanting to take on what is "a pretty awesome" sport.
"It's a good environment for learning those things without going somewhere like a trampoline park and sustaining an injury," Mr Suidgeest said.
"It's an area to lay out the basics of how to safely fall and jump over things, to do all of the different stuff you see in parkour without hurting yourself."
Parkour is known for pushing its participants' physical and mental limits to their extremes.
"You're going to be taking falls from height, you're going to be jumping across gaps, and there's a real mental side to that," Mr Suidgeest said.
"You're pushing yourself through being frightened of something and conquering that.
"It's okay to be scared, and it's about what you do with that which defines your achievements in the sport."
The parkour classes are available to anyone over 12, and more information can be found on Launceston PCYC's website.
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