by CASEY LABRACK

Residents know Washington, D.C., as a city that runs on time, with metro commuters brushing past one another uncomfortably and hustling up the left lane of escalators. For that reason, it’s fitting that the French discipline of parkour, the art of moving quickly and efficiently, has a beachhead in the District.

A downtown gym called Primal Fitness last month began a “parkour boot camp,” teaching 15 locals to view their everyday surroundings as an obstacle course to be overcome with vaults, cat leaps and kicks off walls.

The six week, three-class-a-week course combines a general physical preparedness program called Crossfit with specific drills designed by Primal Fitness to teach basic parkour moves, like hitting the ground in a roll as a way to lessen the impact from a fall.

“Over the years we found that there weren’t many people that were doing standardized conditioning or strength training or really any kind of training for parkour, so we decided to open up a gym,” said Jesse Woody, 27, the head trainer at Primal Fitness. “We didn’t create parkour, that’s been around, but we were the first to implement it into this sort of program,” Woody said.

Observer photo by Claire Walker
Matt Devoe kicks off a wall to gain height in a move that Parkour tracers call a “tic-tac.”

Rather than training for competition or performance art, the parkour practitioners — called tracers — practice for a workout, a pastime or to prepare themselves for escape in case of emergency.

“Sometimes I actually want someone to try to chase after me for real,” said Josh Birkins, 24, a production assistant and tracer.

Like martial artists, tracers rarely need their training to escape harm but nonetheless enjoy ancillary benefits.

“There have been times when you’re late for the bus and you take the shortcut, but other than that I usually just play with it,” Woody said in the Primal Fitness office, sitting behind a desk filled with scattered papers and a stick of deodorant.

“It gives you more options and it gives you more confidence knowing that you could use it if you had to,” Woody said.

Last week, the beginners attempted the “tic-tac,” a way to run at and kick off a wall or upright object in order to gain height. The gym, originally a fire station, was converted last month, now featuring boxes and hurdles to provide make-shift obstacle courses.

For the more experienced tracers, the obstacles are everywhere they go.

“I’ll be walking down the street, sizing up buildings, trying to find interesting ways to climb a wall or jump over something,” said Rob Wolcheski, 25, a commercial real estate consultant and assistant parkour trainer at Primal Fitness. “The way I view the urban landscape now is much different,” Wolcheski said.

Amanda Henry, 27, a graduate student at George Washington University and tracer since April, admitted she sometimes has to remind herself to move like everyone else when in public.

“I was on a very long flight recently, and I was thinking I could just [move on all fours] across the tops of the seats and get out to the front faster than everybody. But I’m old enough that it occurs to me that’s probably not a good idea,” Henry said.

“You look around and see fences, for example, not as divisions but as fun things to go over,” Henry added.

Observer photo by Claire Walker
Fellow tracers look on as Josh Birkin attempts to land a “precision jump” onto a board.

Parkour has its origins in French military training, with Frenchman David Belle widely considered its founder and spokesman. The term “parkour” comes from the French parcours, meaning route, and tracer is likewise a common American pronunciation of traceur, the French name for a male parkour participant.

The discipline first began to spread with videos, and owes much of its rising popularity in the United States to YouTube. Belle has been featured in a number of French action movies, and the latest Bond movie opens with a parkour chase scene.

At the moment, Primal Fitness is the only dedicated parkour gym, according to Woody. Through contacts with European parkour groups, he seeks to define a program and make an official certifying authority for U.S. parkour in the future.

Henry, who first saw parkour in French movies, says that the discipline is still being defined, mostly through discussion on the Internet.

“It’s not like most teams and sports, it’s just not a group like that,” said Henry. “You get these forums which are full of people back-and-forthing about what is parkour, what isn’t parkour, where you should do it, whether or not you should compete and whether you should get product endorsements.”

For now, the hobby remains informal with small groups arranging meet ups and sharing good urban obstacles online.

“I like university campuses just because they tend to have more interesting architecture, and also more grandiose architecture,” Wolcheski said. “So you’ll find larger cat leaps or things to vault and excellent wall runs.”

Parkour competition also has yet to form, except against one’s own performance.

“It’s sort of unspoken. I try to do better than last week. And yeah, I’m kinda keeping an eye out to see what everyone else is doing,” Henry said.

Since starting in April, Henry has learned to make a precision jump to land on a railing more than six feet away and can cat leap easily from one ledge to another.

Asked what she could do with more parkour training, Henry replied, “Almost anything.”

Observer photo by Kate Schuler
Tracer Amanda Henry uses quadrapedal movement in climbing an obstacles.