Full schedules, impact eaters, Sandbox, and Skochy
Welcome back friends of the newsletter! I spent last week on a beach in Mexico and decided to give myself a week off from projects to enjoy time with the wife. I hope you don’t mind that it makes this week’s newsletter almost twice as long…
Full Schedules
As an adult with a job, I really appreciate when parkour events announce dates in advance. OMFG24 started the ball rolling when they announced their summer lineup last October, and the spring/summer calendar is already filling up quick! The biggest recent announcement came from Sport Parkour League who dropped dates for SPL (August 16-18). I won’t be making it this year but if you’re on the fence I couldn’t encourage you more! Make it happen. Other jams coming up include Avanti Garda’s spring jam in Prague and the newest iteration of Gizmo battles in Hamburg. If you are already struggling to keep track of what’s happening where, Matttma keeps a handy Jam Kalender on their website with tons of global events listed.
Online Comps
It’s been a good month for online competitions as well. Kings of the Concrete and Tempest are just about done taking submissions for their first comp of the year - KOTC winter. We’ve already seen some savage entries, with @lautaro.chialvo sending the first double full-in I’ve seen landed on grass and the Japanese/Iranian women’s communities both killing it as usual.
Ryan Ford’s recent online speed courses have also been gaining traction. It’s fun to see a completely different take on remote parkour competition, with standardized courses at classic outdoor locations. I’m not really into speed training (it’s pretty obvious I’m a Denver transplant and not a local just from that…) but I’m stoked to see if more people take advantage of all these courses to engage with other practitioners around the world and push themselves!
Impact Eaters
I speak for many when I say I’d love to know the secret behind Michael Khedoori’s drops. Well, thanks to his new Impact Program I finally can. It comes as a series of 3-7 minute videos explaining drop technique and progression. To my (pleasant) surprise, I got at least one nugget of solid information from pretty much every video in the series…which gives me quite a few drills and challenges to work on in my personal impact journey. For a free program, Khedoori provides the viewer with more value than a lot of parkour programs/workshops I’ve paid for in the past. While the format does put a bit more burden on the viewer than a direct “here’s how to build an impact workout” spreadsheet, it also allows for a ton of flexibility so practitioners of all levels can find key takeaways.
Speaking of impact, last week also saw another female send of the Manpower gap by Lena (@lele00037). She joins Lilou Ruel, Lola Roy, and Miranda Tibbling (and probably one or two other French women who never filmed the gap) as one of the small handful of women down to take this much of a drop. This gap will always and forever be impressive to me, both as an iconic spot in parkour’s history and also as a jump I never want to do. I’ll leave the 15 foot drops to y’all, so hats off and respect!
Sandbox
Sandox, featuring Ezra Schroer, is out now on The Commons and bringing all kinds of beanie goodness. I’ll be honest, I had some mixed feelings about this one from a production standpoint. Don’t get it twisted, the movement is beautiful. Ezra is one of my favorite athletes in the States right now. He always manages to mix power, technicality, and a really unique vision for spots/challenges. Sandbox was no exception…it’s full of great parkour and has one of the best ender clips I’ve seen in a loooong time. But I found the music and art direction pretty distracting. It’s got a heavy VHS/8-bit vibe that just didn’t really do it for me and often took me out of the video instead of adding context or color. That having been said, everyone has different tastes and I’m sure plenty of folks out there have another take on the music/VFX. Regardless of your taste, Sandbox was a great watch and treasure trove for anyone looking to play with new transitions. I know I’ll definitely be messing around with some of the wall spin variations Ezra came up with in the video!
Athlete Feature
This week’s athlete feature is Ema Miguel (@emamiguel.pk) from NYC. A couple weeks back, Ema dropped her first solo feature on Instagram and it’s a banger. For someone with 1.5 years of training under their belt, Ema has an insane level of confidence. I’m looking forward to seeing where her training takes her in another three or four years, especially with a group like @__solafide__ to train with regularly.
Saša Ševo and Skochypstiks
“In my opinion, parkour is a great medium where we allow ourselves to grow above the everyday and see the bigger picture, through the values we share.”
Some of you may be familiar with Skochypstiks (sko-chip-sticks) before this week. Some of you may only now be hearing about them as a result of the recent drama with Jujimufu - who released a pair of branded sweatpants a few days ago bearing almost identical looks/cuts/features to a pair of Skochy sweats he received from them in 2015. But there’s so much more to Skochy than that.
I’d wanted to chat with Saša since starting this newsletter - I met him 8 years ago and became a big fan as soon as I heard his vision for uniting the Balkan parkour community (keep reading to hear him discuss a bit of that in the interview).
They’re a smaller brand than some but you see them sponsoring major community events, year after year. They design and produce everything in Serbia, from scratch, for parkour athletes. The quality, durability, and materials are always top notch. Despite all of this, there are big parts of the community that saw a few of their goofier designs (made by request) years back and have since relegated Skochy to the backseat of parkour clothing. Even Max and Benj Cave, on a recent PPP episode, had never heard of them. So read on to hear a bit more about Saša, his parkour journey, and what training and Skochy mean to him!
What's your name and how long have you been training?
My name is Saša Ševo and I've been training since 2005. Parkour (forum) name - Zvrk! Meaning the spinning top (peg-top) in Serbo-Croatian.
How did you find out about parkour?
In High School class, when I was 17 years old, a friend gave me a CD saying ‘You’ve got to see this’. At that point I was already trying to do some handstands. I ran home, missed a class that day, I copied the CD and ran back to school to return it to the friend. It wasn’t until that afternoon that I watched what was on the CD: it was a video of a bunch of guys jumping around and doing flips. I started training that same afternoon.
I started training a discipline for which there was no school, no coach, and no Youtube video as a reference. Nobody knew about it. And the name was also weird and unpronounceable - Art du Deplacement.
How did Skochy get started?
First, it was the team. In 2008 we needed a name for the team and, after a long night of discussions, we came up with Skochypstiks. Trust me, it may sound weird, but it was the perfect name: Skochy means ‘jump!’ and pstiks is a hard-pronouncing suffix - a true obstacle for the tongue, just like parkour is full of obstacles.
In 2009 I started teaching parkour classes under the same name, and two years later (in 2011) we realized we wanted some custom hoodies. And so the first Skochypstiks clothing item was born - in collaboration with a very talented fashion designer who was able to bring to life everything I imagined. Step by step, we all liked the idea of custom clothes and products that we couldn’t find anywhere else in the market. The rest is history.
In the following years we will realize how bad of a marketing move was naming your brand Skochypstiks. Even today, a decent amount of people finds our website by googling it wrongly.
I usually ask folks where they are from but I know that isn't an easy question for you. How did your identity affect your experience of parkour growing up? Did it affect Skochy as well?
Well, it’s an easy question but the answer might be confusing. I was born in one part of Yugoslavia - a country that doesn’t exist anymore - and grew up in another part of it. In today’s geography - I was born in Croatia and I grew up in Serbia. It wasn’t the best moment for growing up since there was a war going on from when I was 3 years old until I was 7. Later, I saw parkour as an opportunity to unite people from different regions, like myself, which is still my goal today. In my opinion, parkour is a great medium where we allow ourselves to grow above the everyday and see the bigger picture, through the values we share. For me, it’s pretty much the same today, almost 20 years later.
What do you think sets Skochy apart from other parkour brands/what makes it unique?
What I always point out because I find it crucial for any business - at Skochy, we do it all ourselves, in collaboration with professionals. The whole production process is done in-house, by our small team: from the first sketches, through making prototypes, testing them in motion, making changes, choosing the right fabrics, cutting them and putting them together, photographing the items, designing the labels and putting them on the gear, packing it all in a custom made packaging and bringing it to the Post office. This is how we bring a product to the customer - a product that is specifically made for parkour movement, by parkour people, tested by various parkour athletes.
For the sake of comparison and better perspective, most businesses today have a much shorter path: founders of the new brand reach out to the company that makes the needed product and they choose and brand the existing item.
But, at the end of the day, the customer may not even notice the difference - they will choose based on the final product. So, my final answer to your question would be: the uniqueness. This is what makes the difference. Will your product be another pants with your logo, or will your product be the entire pants?
“Will your product be another pants with your logo, or will your product be the entire pants?”
Skochy has always had its own style. Where did that come from and what inspires your designs?
I have to follow up on the previous question - it’s the strive for uniqueness that inspires us. Skochy wants to make items that are needed, and items that cannot be found anywhere else. We strongly believe every business would be slightly better if they had this in mind when making their products.
Where would you like to see Skochy go in the future? Who would you love to collaborate with?
Skochy’s goal is to stay close to the parkour community and parkour people. That is why we are here in the first place. Despite many suggestions to widen our market to other disciplines, we strongly believe we should stay in our field. After all, our products come from the needs of parkour people, not basketball players (although they kinda like our ShortsX).
The perfect future as we see it now - reaching out to more people who train parkour, collaborations with schools and individuals, supporting youngsters on their parkour journey. Making gear that lasts for many years, so people don’t waste their money and we don’t waste the resources. After all, our goal is older than the brand itself: to inspire people to move, no matter what they wear. It didn’t change.
We aim to collaborate with people who share the same values we do. Skochy was never money-driven, and we don’t want to collaborate with anyone who’s only goal is profit.
What's your favorite parkour video, training shoe, and piece of clothing?
‘Oleg Vorslav - Out of time’, Nike Dart 4, Skochy’s Baggy Motion Pants.
But [keep] in mind there’s more than one answer to this question!
There you have it folks. I love seeing parkour put to a greater purpose or used to compliment someone’s life journey in the way Saša is doing. Using parkour to help bridge the gap between communities whose families were at war with each other 30 years ago is a beautiful thing. Creating a brand to give those communities a creative outlet, and hopefully sustainable and meaningful work, is beautiful too. If you want to support Skochy, head over to their website and pick up some clothes or buy them a coffee. Like I said, I’m a big fan of the iron sweatshirt and slim motion pants but they have plenty of other cool things on there to check out. They’ve even given us a 10% discount code (PointA) for our newsletter readers, so if you want to grab some gear feel free to use that - or not. And that’s it for this week! I’ll stop trying to sell you on Skochy and let you go enjoy the first full week of February.
See you next Tuesday,
Max & Sean
Point A