culture@dailylobo.com
It was late one night in 1998 when Donna and her boyfriend Daniel scaled the abandoned Albuquerque High building to look over the city. Little did Donna know she would spend years climbing around Albuquerque with him.
“At first I thought it was crazy, I thought I was just dating a guy who liked to climb and jump off of things,” Donna said. “It didn’t have a name back then, but yeah, that was my introduction to parkour.”
Donna and Daniel French are the co-owners of Zero Point Parkour & Fitness, New Mexico’s first and only parkour gym. Parkour is an athletic way of moving around obstacles and is often distinguished by flips and leaps from the tops of buildings, as well as climbs and rolls over obstacles such as walls and fences.
Zero Point Parkour & Fitness is geared specifically toward this free-running sport and features a scaled wall — which resembles a skateboard half-pipe — to run up, several hanging ropes, an inflatable mound to tumble on and a jumping ledge beside a giant foam pit.
Donna said she never expected her husband’s interest in parkour to leap from a hobby to a business.
“Growing up, climbing trees is all I did, but when I met Daniel, I just thought he was a crazy hyperactive kid. That’s all I ever thought of it,” she said. “But now we got married, he’s 33, he never grew out of it. Now that it has a name and a following, it’s a little more organized, rather then being ‘Hey, let’s go to an abandoned building and climb it for fun.’”
Donna and Daniel’s interest in opening a parkour gym began when they competed for an extreme obstacle television program, “American Ninja Warrior.” The televised competition features athletes who scale walls, climb monkey bars and dangle from ropes.
A former competitor, Daniel constructed an obstacle course in his backyard to gear up for the event. The couple noticed that the most competitive contestants were members of Apex Movement, a new parkour gym in Colorado, so the two decided to open a parkour gym of their own.
Daniel said that the recent rise in parkour’s popularity has changed the public’s perception of parkour; it is now considered a more serious sport.
“I think a lot of it was just a close-minded view of what is a sport,” Daniel said. “Oh, that’s not sporty, that’s just running and jumping off of things. If you’re not competing in things like a decathlon or if you’re not running a 100-yard dash, it doesn’t really count, you’re just goofing off.”
Zero Point parkour instructor and gymnast Jaret Salas teaches gym members how to safely approach the sport. Salas competed alongside Donna and Daniel at this year’s “American Ninja Warrior” and placed in the event’s top 15 before competing in the show’s next round in Las Vegas, Nev. Salas said that parkour’s daring acts are similar to gymnastics.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
“It’s like gymnastics. Gymnastics looks very difficult, and it’s very easy to injure yourself, but through proper technique and training and strengthening, it can be just as safe as any other sport,” Salas said. “It’s a movement, getting from point A to point B. Some just take it to a more difficult and extreme level, in some cases jumping off a building or from wall to wall. Parkour is as difficult as the practitioner makes it. Anyone can learn it.”
Salas teaches adults as well as children, with classes starting for members as young as 5 years old. Daniel, whose two young children are involved with the program, said children take naturally to the extreme sport.
“It’s reasonably set up like casual gymnastics in that it’s go all the time — it’s related to natural play for kids,” he said. “A lot of it is just giving kids obstacles and some basic movements and helping them progress through. It’s pretty interesting what kids can do. Pretty much every kid does it; at some point we learn it’s not acceptable behavior to climb on whatever’s around you or just express yourself through movement, so they haven’t learned that yet and hopefully they never do. Why stop playing?”
Zero Point Parkour & Fitness
1100 Third St. N.W.
(505) 238-2009
Open Monday through Saturday
4:30-7 p.m. Ages 5-12
7-9:30 p.m. Ages 13 and older
