Michaelmas term in review

Training at Westgate, picture taken by Mu'adib 'Keymore' Shakir

With the first term of this academic year over, I wanted to give a huge thanks to everyone who made it what it was! It's been great to be able to train with so many different people this term, and it's a good time to look back over the year and remind ourselves what we have been up to.

Last term, our aim was to really inject some more variety to how we train and what we can train in Oxford.

Our sessions were organised every week and mostly ran on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Compared to last year, we've had more coaches, each with their own unique take on the discipline and their own eyes for movements. We have also scoured Oxford to find more interesting, varied locations, which has meant that the people training have got more choice of where to go.

Finally, we made a push towards encouraging non-structured sessions. As the name suggests, these sessions have been more about getting people directly into the spirit of training without the strict guidance that tends to come with the structured sessions. The ability to find movements and routes for yourself is a vital skill for a Traceur, used to progress your training in the direction that interests you.

Its been also been fantastic to have had some of you guys organising your own sessions and training on your own as well! I am hoping that more of these impromptu sessions keep happening next term, as it not only means that you guys are able to train more, but it also helps visibly spread parkour to others, meaning that our community is able to grow.

Talking of next term, you can expect more of the same to keep happening, but with one small addition: we will be putting on trips to visit other parkour communities in the UK. Nothing injects a spark of enthusiasm and inspiration as training with new people, be it in their local environments, learning to move through a new space, or getting another community to visit our home turf and cast fresh eyes on our now familiar obstacles.

Looking forwards to training with you all again in the New year! As ever, follow us on the Facebook group to see what you get up to!