By Viggo Sarmago
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – Almost every Wednesday, from 3:30 in the afternoon until dusk, kids flock to the corner walls of Intramuros near Letran, Manila, to practice parkour. 

From the outside looking in, bystanders would watch as kids do seemingly dangerous stunts. 

Parkour is a street-sport defined as going from one place to another as efficiently and as acrobatically as possible. It can branch out and translate well into other types of movement-heavy practices such as gymnastics, and dancing. Philippine parkour as we know it can be traced back to a small group of friends who practiced the sport in Ateneo, who went on to create Parkour Philippines (PKPH) back in 2004. As time went on, more groups and parkour-centered gyms emerged, and in 2018, the Philippine Parkour Community was formed; a collaborative effort by PKPH and Philippine Parkour and FreeRunning Association (PPFA), a separate group which was formed in 2008. 

Parkour reached many parts of the Philippines, having small communities in Rizal, Navotas, Mindoro, IloIlo, and even parts of Visayas and Mindanao. But the community says the most prominent and active members are based in Manila. 

Within the confines of centuries old adobe stone walls, Kiro and his friends spend their time doing parkour.

The kids who go with the flow

A few years after coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kiro noticed kids training parkour near their area which sparked his interest. Curious, he and his friends gathered the courage to join their sessions, and became active members.

Kiro, or as they would sometimes call him Mayor Kiro, is an outgoing personality who always manages to showcase his new flow. Flow refers to an athlete’s sequence of parkour skills to navigate a particular space. The kids themselves are the ones who think of their flow, utilizing the skills they learn throughout the sessions. 

He lives with his mom in Intramuros, and is thankful for having been allowed and encouraged to keep doing parkour. He dreams of becoming a seaman, and credits parkour for helping build his character as a growing person. He believes that parkour will help him greatly in his aspirations, and said that the strength, and even some techniques like landing and vaulting (a technique used to efficiently traverse over, under, or through obstacles) will be useful in the job especially in emergency situations.

Kids like Kiro gravitate toward parkour for a variety of reasons. Like many of their peers, and even some of the now professional athletes, they started doing parkour because it simply looked cool; that the movements or tricks look fun to execute. Some of them were drawn to it because they wanted to recreate moves anime or movie characters would do. Others saw it as an extension of Pinoy games like luksong baka, or taya, while some saw it as an opportunity to “show-off” tricks to their other friends. Above all, they all agree that the beauty in parkour is its accessibility: they only need themselves, and a space to begin. 

While healthy competition can incentivize the kids to improve their craft, the community has fostered an environment built on respect, discipline and consistency that values effort and diligence over raw talent. Techniques are taught, shared and experimented with collectively. And as much as possible, comparisons are not made against one another but against the person they were last week. For kids like Kiro, this environment slowly developed their character and genuine passion for movement. 

Likewise, parkour reimagined how Kiro and his friends view their environment. What was once unassuming staircases, walls, and jagged nooks and crannies have suddenly become fun challenges for them to overcome. Kiro has said that he is always eager to learn new skills, despite how “dangerous” it may be, because it can broaden his perspectives of what he can do with the given space. 

Before parkour, Kiro described himself as a tambay, idly letting time tick by without much to do besides school. Parkour, unknowingly, was where he and his friends discovered a new found purpose and focus. “Before I was just hanging around anywhere, not helping mom, but after training with coach, I realized that I can do more for my mom,” Kiro said. 

The kids would not be consistently working out if not for the guidance from Coach Raven Cruz and Coach Johndave, who are part of the Philippine National Team for parkour. 

Raven Cruz, 32,  in particular, has been training kids parkour for more than a decade, and has seen its holistic effects on children first hand. 

He has trained kids who use solvent as a means to “escape” their precarious realities. Kids who have been sidelined and roamed the streets, saw the sport as a better alternative because of its engaging and fun nature. Despite that, some kids would withdraw which he believes can be linked to not being able to show up consistently, which led to the kids falling back to their old habits.   

Stagnation

Fast forward during and a few years after the pandemic, the community in Intramuros would face a recurring and persisting challenge: the lack of space. 

Kiro and his group never got to experience parkour outside of that particular spot in Intramuros. Though on occasion, they are able to train in indoor gyms such as Gymnastics Association of the Philippines (GAP) at Coach Raven’s expense. Before the pandemic, Coach Raven taught kids regularly in a myriad of places: Bantayog ni Lapu-Lapu, Quirino Grandstand and even other areas in Intramuros like Baluarte, as those places feature terrain suitable for more advanced techniques and longer flows. 

The kids have expressed how being limited to one relatively confined space can make things boring, and have felt like stagnating in their progress on a few occasions. “We want spaces that are bigger…the stones can be dangerous and sometimes it gets too crowded,” Kiro explained. Kiro and his friends also added that the current space isn’t suitable for more advanced techniques that they would’ve loved to do. 

“After the pandemic, the parks here [after being rehabilitated] got a lot stricter with what you can do which might also be why kids these days don’t really go to parks, which I understand, you want to ‘preserve’ it but when it comes to us, we always make sure we don’t break anything,” Cruz said. 

The community has stubbornly adapted to their ever decreasing space, and still occasionally hosts “community jams” where different parkour communities across the Philippines come together to compete, teach, and donate goods to neighboring communities. 

Kiro himself has become a pseudo-coach, sometimes leading the training sessions whenever the coaches are unavailable. 

Johndave Venico, 21, a parkour athlete from Rizal, who sometimes helps Coach Raven train the kids, spoke about the improvements he saw from when he first trained Kiro and his friends. He himself started parkour at a young age, and it was because of his outgoing personality that eventually led to where he is now: an athlete who has gone to multiple international competitions and a coach.

“When I saw them for the first time, they were very stubborn, and just did what they wanted to do, but now they understand and follow instructions clearly, ” he said in Filipino. “I think Kiro is also a natural leader, but it was because of Coach Raven’s training that it actually tapped more of his potential as a leader, because we saw that he can make others listen to him.” 

Aside from its holistic effects, Johndave also added that it has changed their personalities for the better, even if it’s small. “[The] discipline they’ve built probably transferred to different parts of their life,” he explained. 

Kiro is aware that he may not be able to do parkour forever, especially once he starts working, and has more responsibilities as he grows up. But ever since he started parkouring, he has become determined to keep his body in top shape, and to become the best person he can be.

And even if he may no longer parkour regularly, he thinks it would be nice to still do it from time to time, as long as there is space and freedom to do so and as long as there is community.

“Many kids have come and gone, maybe because of work, or school, or other things, but what matters is that this community stays open so that they can always come back when they want to,” Venico ended. (CAM, RVO)