The Takeoff | A Parkour Podcast

Hey y'all, I hope you are managing to make it through what has been an incredibly rough week here in the parkour community. I address all of the recent revelations regarding Callum a bit in the intro (and have shared on Instagram as well) but want to let viewers know there may be mentions of him or his book in this and the following episode, which were both recorded before this information about Callum was known.

On a lighter note, this episode with Camila was a joy to record and I hope you enjoy it. You may notice a few pauses or cuts - Camila was having some storage issues during the recording and I had to splice around it once or twice.

My apologies to anyone that finds it distracting and I hope it doesn't stop you from finding this episode as fun and informative as I did!

If you aren't already, go show Camila some love on socials: ⁨@CamilaStefaniu⁩

Camila's Recommendation: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

Thanks as always for listening and I'll catch you next week! - Max

On this week's episode we have Kevin Franzen (@kevinfranzen01) of ⁨@KIPAMAGAZINE⁩ fame. This may be my favorite conversation I've had so far on the podcast and it's one that has the potential to totally shift the way you look at training.

If you're not familiar with Kevin, he is a phenomenal competitive parkour athlete and regularly in the conversation of the sport's top innovators. He blends top level power and technicality with a unique vision...and in this episode, we dive into how he developed that vision and how he tries to empower others to develop their own authentic style by embracing the reality of failure.

We could have gone on for another hour or more on this one, so if you'd like another episode with Kevin let me know in the comments and we'll make it happen.

As always, thanks for listening! - Max

This week, we are catching up with Lynn Jung ( @LynnJungAthlete ) - one of the most influential female athletes in the history of our sport and a lovely human being/friend.

Lynn has recently stepped away from the athlete lifestyle to take on new challenges in athlete management and marketing, and I wanted to chat with her about her professional experiences - both in front of and behind the camera - and how she's seen the community grow over the past 15ish years, particularly in the realm of female competition and overall involvement.

It was honestly so fun to just catch up with Lynn, so this one may feel a bit more casual than some other episodes, but I think we also dig into some very interesting shifts and new directions the sport appears to be going in that coaches and content creators may find particularly interesting.

As always, thanks so much for watching and I hope you enjoy this episode!

Lynn's Recommendations: The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

Silence: In the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge

In today's episode, we have parkour athlete and movement mentalist Flynn Disney on to chat about the relationship between our training, our emotions, and our internal narratives.

Despite nearly 1.5 hours of runtime I feel like we barely scratched the surface of Flynn's training insights and I think more than anything it indicates how much attention to detail he puts into his coaching, guidance, and overall framework for development.

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did, and I can't recommend enough checking the links below to get even more depth on Flynn's perspective!

Follow Flynn here: @flynndisney

Substack: https://flynndisney.substack.com

Flynn's Recommendation: https://youtu.be/66aCaw_27Oo?si=C98nS_wnPUVV5Cla

Recommendation Accompanying Text: https://web.archive.org/web/20190820003834/https://eightyeightdays.com/human-writes/parkour-re-establishing-context-and-the-introduction-of-the-superstimulus/

On this week's episode, I have Ihab Yassin (@little.parkour.hulk) on to chat about accessibility in parkour and his mission to help raise visibility for athletes with disabilities in the parkour community.

Ihab has been training parkour in Germany for over a decade and achieved an incredibly high level. He also has dwarfism - and has used his platform to advocate for more education, accessibility, and understanding when it comes to disability within parkour.

In this episode, we dive into how parkour has affected his life, concrete ways that the parkour community can continue to make the sport's narrative and education/competitive structures more welcoming for people with disabilities, and why visibility is so important in parkour - not just for athletes with disabilities but for everyone.

As always thanks for watching and drop some love for Ihab in the comments! - Max

On today's episode of The Takeoff we have Davis Vasconcellos - one of my best friends in the sport and "Uncle Davis" to my daughter. Davis, Sean, and I spent the past 3+ years shooting the next long format piece for Point A...which I have been working a ton on over the past month.

With that in mind, I wanted to bring Davis on to talk about what the process of filming was like for him and get some hot takes on how his relationship to parkour and the community has changed since we started shooting in 2023.

As always, I hope you enjoy this one! If you haven't seen it yet - or it's been a while - you can check out the trailer for Davis's piece "Still Here" on @pointaparkour

- Max

Today, we've got Denali Siruno ( @denali.siruno ) on to chat about style, aesthetics, expression, and how we define novelty and creativity in parkour.

Denali has an insanely technical style that draws heavily from tricking and has competed in most major style comps, including SPL and KOTC. He is also known for being willing to share some good-natured hot takes online regarding style in parkour and how the concept of style in our sport is constantly being reassessed and pushed by the next generation.

In this episode, I wanted to give him space to share his thoughts on what "style" in parkour even means - if anything - and how we can constructively judge, compare, and talk about it from his perspective. I definitely came away from this episode with some fresh thoughts on style comps, judging, and general expression in the parkour scene. Curious to hear if y'all do as well!

- Max

This week, I'm chatting with Sam Coppack - lead coach at Nova City and early days UK practitioner - about the recent Project Underground 13 comp, his perspective on the UK's growing gym/youth parkour scene, and what we may be neglecting when it comes to delivering the best possible parkour experience to the next generation of practitioners.

This conversation was an absolute pleasure and (as you probably can tell) involved quite a bit of off-the-cuff brainstorming that may lead to some interesting and implementable places for coaches, gym owners, and community leaders down the line. I'm very curious to hear what your thoughts are on this one, particularly regarding the whole non-competitive youth events question I brought up. Does your gym do any inter-facility youth events that aren't competition specific? Let me know! And as always thanks so much for taking the time to listen.

- Max

After a short hiatus, we’re back with a big one - a brief (ish) dive into parkour’s history with Callum Powell, nerd supreme of all things parkour. Callum just released his first book, “What is Parkour?” which covers parkour’s culture, history, and practice through hilarious anecdotes from his own training and adventures alongside STORROR.

I had the privilege to proof-read quite a decent chunk of it over the past few months and I have to say…I didn’t think I’d ever laugh out loud at parkour non-fiction but here we are. In this episode, we cover the development of parkour - from the founding Yamakasi group to the modern day - in broad strokes, and try to leave references for an interested listener to dive deeper into anything we skip over. Hope you enjoy it and check out the links below for some of the key reference points we make throughout the episode!

Callum Powell, “What is Parkour?”: https://www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk/products/what-is-parkour-the-sport-with-an-identity-crisis?_pos=1&_sid=5a6f0b197&_ss=r&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMjU2MjgxMDQwNTU4AAGnREnSf2HlzEHcHlfxq1nOFWLVexrvtMHRTEPjU1OIAoPADks2yrDrn3CmODU_aem_94H_DUiBXAGopJKACLm51A

Julie Angel’s “Breaking the Jump”: https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Jump-secret-Parkours-rebellion/dp/178131554X

Jump Britain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TJurAP9l-Q&t=1234s J

ason Paul’s Russian Parkour video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2flqoWkVM0&t=1294s Matthias Mayer’s Eastern Parkour video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSziShdcEmY&t=5286s

New Year’s Eve Eve Jam Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpA61Cty6fI

On this week’s episode, we have Jimmy Davidson - owner of Freedom of Motion in California and one of the minds behind Motion Mentors.

He is also the author of Million Dollar Parkour Gym, a book that aims to help parkour gym owners create a space that is not only fun and authentic but also runs on all cylinders as a thriving business. Whether you own a parkour gym or not, I think you’ll find this episode really insightful.

We dive into some of the biggest problems gym owners face today (with some simple and actionable solutions) and talk through where the sport may be going next - particularly as the current generation of young kids training parkour in gyms around the world grow into teens and young adults.

Links for this episode:Motion Mentors website - https://www.motionmentors.org/

Million Dollar Parkour Gym book - https://www.motionmentors.org/book

Motion Mentors Podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/0BouhCqyFAkLvvnyH8a9vS