This past year I’ve been hanging out with the Penn Gymnastics Club, which is open to anyone with a PennCard. I decided to join since I realized that practicing basic parkour moves and elementary acrobatics in a safe environment full of experienced people and soft mats was probably a better idea than jumping around on concrete and grass while hungover (cough cough like the Collarbone Incident in 2005).
So I have been learning a lot and having a blast on the mats with my fellow club members.
It’s interesting—all of the women in the club have at least some experience in gymnastics (some are even part of Penn’s actual gymnastics team), but the majority of the guys in the club are, like me, amateurs looking to learn acrobatics for parkourish purposes.
But in any case, the following video was recorded a month or so ago (April 2008) and reveals my process as I finally learned how to wallflip. It’s quick, and it’s not pretty. But hopefully it is amusing.
I suppose the takeaway, though, is that it’s never too late to learn this stuff, since here I am at the ripe old age of 26 doing acrobatics for the first time.