Hop, skip and jump

BENGALURU: A few months ago, 29-year-old Vinay Bhupal, an IT professional, was going through various videos on freestyle movement when he came across a bunch of people making extreme fluid movements. Bhupal found the style interesting and after further research, found out that the movement is called parkour. Parkour is an athletic training where practitioners attempt to get from point A to point B in the most fluid way either by jumping, climbing or rolling.

Watching that video reminded Bhupal of a scene from any action movie. “The people in the video were so swift. They were jumping from one building to another in a certain way. It looked like a scene straight out of an action movie. But the movement didn’t look like something I’d ever seen. There was a certain technique they were following,” says Bhupal, adding that he has been practising parkour now for the past three months.

The popularity of this training style has gone up among Bengalureans, after tinseltown actors Akshay Kumar and Tiger Shroff have taken to it. Delson Joy D’Souza, who is one of the instructors at the Chaos Faktory, a training centre, says it’s a special training that many actors opt for when they take up projects. “For certain roles, actors need to not just be fit but also agile.

So this training works as one of the best routines. Not just actors, even dancers who are into free movement also prefer this,” says D’Souza, who has trained actors like Yuva Rajkumar, Raghavendra Rajkumar’s son. D’Souza takes weekday and weekend classes, charging Rs 4,000 per month. “The minimum duration of the training is two months. We keep this duration as it takes that much time for changes to be seen on the body,” explains D’Souza, adding that usually for parkour training, one needs an open space rather than gym equipment.

Another reason for the popularity of this training method, as D’Souza mentions, is its ability to break the monotony of regular workout routines. Supriya Shenoy, a practitioner, could not agree more. “Parkour is quite popular abroad. Sometimes you get inspired from someone or you see some influencer doing it, because it looks very appealing. I wanted to improve my form and increase my strength and tried parkour from videos on Instagram,” says Shenoy, an IT professional. A fitness-lover herself, she always wanted to learn it two years ago, but due to Covid, had to postpone her plans and started being coached from March this year.

Deepu MP, who has been practising parkour for the past 10 years and has also started coaching others, feels that people have tried this at one point or the other. “As children, we have crossed fences, hopped and done some climbing. But there was no technique to it. The best part is you have fun while doing it, and fitness becomes a byproduct,” explains Deepu, adding that this routine also gives one a sense of 
overcoming obstacles.