By Adam Doherty
UL Parkour is one of the few Parkour clubs in Irish universities. However this is increasing so this shows that parkour is finally growing as a sport and is just not something you see on the internet and wish you could do. So because of this I want the parkour community to flourish, expand and be recognised.
We hold weekly and bi weekly workshops every week with the most common being spending time at the JumpLanes, which is an indoor trampoline centre. We practice at the jump lanes so our members can learn more advanced moves and the less advanced can practice in a safe environment. We also do “swap” days with other clubs like Trampolining or Krav Maga. This gives our members a taste of other disciplines and allows for good inter club relations.
How are our classes structured? Our Tuesday session is held indoors, where we focus on technique and learning more advanced movements in a safe environment. On Thursdays class is held outdoors and this session focuses on implementing the moves learned on Tuesday.
Both the Tuesday and Thursday classes include all the necessary warm ups, warm downs and stretches. We also have a Monday morning class which is held in the UL Arena. This class focuses mainly on strength and fitness, a key component of Parkour.
As already said, Parkour is about more than movement we focus very strongly on strength and keeping yourself fit. As events manager I try to improve interclub relations and wish to travel to spread awareness on this rapidly growing sport. Because of this every year we do the “1000 reps challenge”. 1000 reps is where we all go to do a 1000 reps of either pull ups, crunches or squats in under 24 hours. This encourages healthy competition between members of the club.
One of our bigger events is a shared event with OPC to Glendalough and this occurs every year. This year we are also doing a Slave drive to raise funds for the society. The slave drive is an auction of club members to be slaves for the highest bidder for 24hrs. The auction takes place in a pub so it is a great social night out and the following 24 hours are good fun for the winners of the slaves and the slaves alike. Some of our members have shown interest in doing the ‘To Hell and Back’ challenge. We are looking in to making this another yearly event.
As a club we plan on going to schools and will teach classes to spread awareness of parkour as a sport and get the younger community involved parkour. We want to showcase how unique and cool it is. In joining parkour you will learn all about movement and how to use it to your advantage along with keeping yourself strong, fit and healthy. If you want to learn something you saw in an online viral video we’ll teach it!
Joe Drennan 
abkf 
Jack Hickey