Advertise on podcast: The Takeoff | A Parkour Podcast

Season 2 of The Takeoff is here! Weekly episodes coming back your way and getting started with a big Q&A on precision jumps - both from a technical and strength perspective. I mention Jake Tuura (‪@jake_tuura‬) few times and wanted to make sure I link his YouTube. His podcast and recent book on tendons are both great resources for any equally nerdy parkour athletes out there looking to get actionable perspective on rehabbing tendon pain in jumpers. Additionally, this season of The Takeoff is brought to you by...me (or at least my programming). If you like getting stronger and faster - all while getting a diverse set of prompts and technical parkour drills - check out "Maximum Returns" on Train Heroic: https://marketplace.trainheroic.com/w... You can use the code "TAKEOFF10" to get 10% off your first month of programming plus a free 7-day trial...plus it helps support me and gives me the time and peace of mind to continue making content like this :) Thanks so much for listening and I'll catch you next week with special guest Wesley Yoshida!

Hey y'all, welcome back! After a week off, we've got a phenomenal chat with Chris Keighley (@charliepapazulu) - head of coaching at Parkour Generations and one of my favorite educators in the parkour space. This chat was prompted by a workshop that Chris gave at MoveNYC and subsequent conversations around the fine line coaches need to strike between freedom and exploration in parkour. It's a line I have often found myself on the "wrong" side of and one that I think Chris - more than many, many other coaches I've seen - has managed to master. My apologies for his audio on this one...not entirely sure what happened but it ended up getting a bit compressed and maaaay sound like you're talking to your grandma over the phone. Please don't let that distract from the episode because there are some absolute knowledge bombs in this one! Chris's Recommendation: Out of Time by Oleg Vorslav https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8qMB2K90ow Friday Night Madness 3 by Team Ryokou https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkitFN42aGI Have a great weekend and I'll see ya next week! - Max

Welcome back! This week, we have Georgia Donati Clarke (@strengthwithg) on to chat about her experience learning parkour from some of Laurent Piemontesi's first students, becoming a leader in the UK scene, and her recent release of "The Female Parkour Programme," an online training program tailored specifically for female practitioners. I found this one incredibly insightful from both a coaching and community building perspective. I really appreciate how passionate Georgia is about meeting people where they're at in their parkour journey and hope you enjoy that energy too! Georgia's Recommendations: "Daughter of a Good Man" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmsMcb7lsjU Odd Signals (@odd.signals) See y'all next week! - Max

This week's guest is Adam McClellan - a longtime friend and fantastic coach/gym owner from Lehigh Valley, PA. Adam has been a fixture in the US parkour community since the mid-2000's and brings a calm, professional vibe to the scene that I've always respected. His most recent project - Parkour Professionals - aims to help other parkour business owners find a working mix of stoke and professionalism that will help them connect better with students, parents, and their local communities...without sacrificing the values that make training parkour feel so empowering. I hope you enjoy this episode and get as much from it as I did! Find out more about Parkour Professionals here: www.parkourprofessionals.com Adam's Recommendation: The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter See y'all next week! - Max

On this week's episode we have Nico Vanhole of Leuven, Belgium chatting about life, the state of Hal 5's parkour scene, and why there may be no such thing as a bad spot. I finally got to meet Nico in person a few years back and since then he has been one of my absolute favorite people in the community to train or hang with. In addition to being one of the ultimate "parkour athlete's parkour athletes," he also manages the parkour program at Hal 5 - one of the most recognized and well-designed parkour facilities in the world. On this episode, I wanted to catch up with Nico and see where things are at in the Belgian scene, talk about some coaching and design tips, and dive into how he developed his unique vision for a style of parkour that is equal parts technical and creative. Follow Nico at ⁨@SPRINGSTOFParkour⁩ here on YouTube and @nicovanhole on IG...and make sure to check out Swings And Other Things if you can make it Belgium for the last weekend of August! See y'all next week - Max

Welcome back to The Takeoff! In this week's episode, we're digging into plyometrics with The Plyo Guy @mcinneswatson himself. It was such a cool experience to dive into all things plyos with Matt while coming at it from slightly adjacent angles - myself from (obviously) an extensive parkour background with a decade plus obsession with track/plyometrics and Matt being someone whose plyometric-specific content I have mined for years and incorporated into my training regularly. We cover the differences between plyometrics and parkour, trends we are seeing in the GPP space with how plyometrics and "parkour"/play are being incorporated, why it's important for athletes to create a clinical space to isolate plyometric work, and what parkour can ACTUALLY contribute to the broader fitness conversation. Check out Matt's work at https://www.plusplyos.com and follow him on socials at @mcinneswatson and @plusplyos Catch you next week! - Max

This week, we sit down with Dylan Polin - owner of @HUBPTC and one of the minds behind Sport Parkour League. Dylan has run the East Coast's most successful and influential parkour facility for almost a decade now, and after expanding into two new locations in the past year is making a run for the United States' top parkour facility. In this episode, we chat about creating a community that has helped produce phenomenal athletes like Brandon Hooper, Will Hess, James West, Z Zoromba, and others...all while making space for parkour to be a fulfilling hobby to many children and adults who don't want to make it their lifestyle. Dylan has a ton of great insight to add to the ongoing conversation around what a parkour gym should look like moving forward - particularly when it comes to embracing competition and integrating it in a healthy, positive way. I hope you enjoy this episode and thanks as always for tuning in! Dylan's Recommendation: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

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