Preston has become the envy of parkour fans up and down the country after a city centre gym received £25,000 of freestyle equipment.
City of Preston Gymnastics Club was selected by the governing body British Gymnastics for the pilot scheme.
The club in Campbell Street now boasts a collection of giant blocks, walls and frames that cannot be found anywhere else in the UK.
Parkour, also known as freerunning, is a mixture of acrobatics and athletics, which developed out of military obstacle course training.
Practitioners move from one place to another, negotiating obstacles in between.
Founded by David Belle in France in the 1990s, it gained widespread fame when it was incorporated into a chase at the beginning of the James Bond film Casino Royale.
Head coach Charlotte Coles, 27, said members of the club’s Preston Freestyle team were leading the way nationally in using the equipment.
She said: “British Gymnastics contacted us because Sport England were looking at new initiatives to engage the target age group of 14 to 25.
“There is a drop-off in a lot of sports when children become teenagers and things like peer pressure and body image start to affect them.
“We’re piloting it so we’ve been asking the boys and the girls what they think of it, and if they were to change anything, what would they do.”
She said the equipment had created such a stir that a world leading parkour team from Basingstoke, 3Run, and Liverpool’s successful Airborn Academy, had already asked if they could come and use it.
Club treasurer and coach Angie Linford, 42, said the equipment could also be used to help train the stuntmen and stuntwomen of tomorrow.
She said: “We can train anybody who wants to be on the stunt register and teach them the discipline of gymnastics.”
The blocks are surrounded by Tribond carpet, a foam matting used in Olympic gymnastics competitions, which reduces the impact of landing.
Paris Mullarkey, 11, and Shannon Earnshaw, 13, are training to become elite gymnasts.
Paris said: “It’s really good, sometimes after you’ve done a hard training session it’s nice to relax by doing parkour.”
Shannon added: “We’re very lucky to have this here.”
Aspiring coaches Steven Gregson, 18, and Jack Foy, 20, love the new equipment.
Steven said: “This is the first thing I’ve ever seen like this.
“I like how it replicates stuff you can find outside, and it’s safe indoors.”
Jack added: “I’ve been practising my wall flips. There are a lot of possibilities - as soon as I looked at this I thought ‘I could do that with that and I could do that with that!’”
The club invites people to come down and try a ‘taster’ session.
A freestyle class is held on Tuesday nights for eight to 13-year-olds and on Wednesday, Thursday and Fridays, classes are held for anyone aged 14 and over.
Comments