Parkour Picking up Speed in Rochester

Participants move around by vaulting, rolling, running, climbing, and jumping over everything in their way.

The discipline was developed in France, and often seen in urban parks and playgrounds. There's also a Parkour group here in Rochester.

Charles Moreland is the manager at the Rochester Parkour Gym.

He said "In a sense it's a playful discipline. You learn how to interact with your environment using only the human body. Maybe by climbing up walls, balancing on rails, swinging through and under bars that kind of thing."

The gym opened just over a year ago.

It offers classes for every age group.

Participant Grant Higgins said "I can climb up a ten-foot wall and climb over all sorts of things."

Moreland added "The kids love it. Every kid who comes in here they feel so empowered with what they can do, and the way we go about teaching them is showing them skills and how they can advance through those skills. They become a lot more confident with themselves."

Moreland says Parkour is for the young and for the young at heart.

Anyone looking for a great way to challenge themselves, and stay in shape at the same time can benefit from the martial-arts like discipline.

He added "This is a great exercise because we're doing so many different types of movements. We're climbing, we're swinging, we're jumping, we're balancing. Very rarely do you find a sport or a discipline where we encompass all different aspect of human movement in one place."