Our guest this week is Ryan Ford, an internationally-recognized expert and coach in a lesser-known and fascinating sport called “parkour.” If you have never seen a video of Parkour (see below), it’s a sport where people in urban environments climb, jump, flip, twist, and generally maneuver through their environment like Batman or Spiderman. Besides performing world-wide for dozens of respected organizations and competitions, Ryan is also an accomplished entrepreneur, with a network of his own gyms and online businesses. His success – and superhuman feats – have lead to media attention from such media giants as the New Yorker, TIME, and ESPN.

Whether or not you have a burning desire to jump off of rooftops, this interview will offer you a lot of awesome takeaways, ranging from fitness advice, tips on how to avoid injuries, ideas on how to turn your passion into an entrepreneurial career, and a better understanding of how one should approach obstacles – both physical and mental. I know you're going to enjoy it!

In this episode, we discuss:

• Ryan's bio, what he's done, and his journey towards becoming a professional Parkour specialist
• What is “Parkour,” where does it come from, and why should you care?
• What Parkour is about today, and why might someone practice it?
• Why Ryan believes that everybody has tries Parkour, and everyone should pick it back up again
• How to safely start experimenting with Parkour at home
• Where can you safely practice Parkour, and how does law enforcement feel about it?
• Is Parkour a standalone exercise regimen, or should it be paired with other forms of training?
• Practical tips anyone can use to avoid injuries
• What kind of mobility work does Ryan advocate?
• What is the single most important movement the human body should be able to do?
• Ryan's journey from professional athlete to successful entrepreneur
• How Ryan built his businesses
• Why Ryan chose to finish his college degree despite his entrepreneurial success
• How many women are doing Parkour?
• Ryan's views on CrossFit
• Two of Ryan's favorite books, and why he loves them

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• The sport of Parkour (Wikipedia)
• Ryan's network of Parkour gyms, Apex Movement
• ParkourEDU, Ryan's online school for Parkour
• MovNat and our interview with Erwan Le Corre
• Raymond Belle, the founder of Parkour, and his son David Belle
• Our interview with Yuri Marmerstein
• Kelly Starrett and his book, Becoming a Supple Leopard (iBookstore)
• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
• Steve Blank, the Customer Development methodology, and his book on the subject
• Movement expert Ido Portal
• Carl Paoli
• Rock Climber Alex Honnold
• CrossFit
• The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle (iBookstore)
• The Sports Gene by David Epstein (iBookstore)
• Find Ryan on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram

As promised, here is a great video featuring Ryan and some of his team members:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman Podcast. Where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Hey there, Superfriends! This is Jonathan Levi. My guest today is Mr. Ryan Ford. An internationally recognized expert and coach in a lesser-known, but fascinating sport called Parkour. If you've never seen a video of parkour, it's a sport where people in urban environments- climb, jump, flip twists, and generally maneuver through their environment like Batman or Spiderman. Besides performing worldwide for dozens of respected organizations and competitions,

Ryan is also, as I found out, an accomplished entrepreneur with a network of his own gyms and online businesses. His success and his SuperHuman feats have led to media attention from such giants as the New Yorker, Time, and ESPN. Whether or not you have a burning desire to jump off of rooftops. This interview will offer you a lot of awesome takeaways.

Ryan and I discuss, why it's important to keep your body well-rounded and ready for anything. We discuss different approaches to avoiding injury. We also discuss Ryan's journey from a hobbyist to an entrepreneur and a global authority who makes a living doing what he loves. Ryan also gives some great practical tips and some reading material that can help you get back in touch with your rugged inner child.

It's a great interview and I'm very proud to bring it to you. This episode is brought to you by the best-selling online course, Become a SuperLearner. If you're like most people, you probably have a long list of books you want to read, languages you wish you knew and skills you wish you had the time to learn.

This course teaches you how to learn anything and everything faster and more effectively by teaching you not only speed reading, but also an entirely new framework for understanding, creating, and storing memories. To get an 80% off coupon and join over 25,000 satisfied students. Visit jle.vi/learn. That's http://jle.vi/learn. And now without further ado, Mr. Ryan Ford.

Ryan, Hey there, how are you doing? Welcome to the show. I'm doing awesome. How are you?

Ryan Ford: Fantastic. I'm really excited today to learn a little bit about parkour. You know, something that I have seen on YouTube, you know, I've been sent some videos, but I really have to admit, I don't know much about it. So I'm really looking forward to getting the opinion of one of the experts. 

 Yeah, for sure. We find there's quite a few misconceptions out there, so I'm happy to fill you in and educate you a little bit on this.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Well, we'll definitely dig into those. But first, uh, go ahead and tell us a bit about yourself.

Ryan Ford: Yeah, sure. My name is Ryan Ford. I'm 27 years old based out of Boulder, Colorado.

And I basically do parkour for a living. I'm both an athlete, a coach, a gym owner, but I've been lucky enough to perform parkour where all around the world in places like China, Lebanon, Colombia, France, England, Hawaii, all over the place for lots of different companies. I've also been featured by Time, ESPN, the New Yorker.

Over the past five to 10 years. And then in 2006, I started the first parkour program in the Western hemisphere. So we were teaching out of a bouldering gym initially for a couple of years, just kind of saving up money, and then eventually got our own gym. And now we're up to five gyms. So most of my time is just kind of focused on building the gyms, teaching people parkour.

Doing the occasional performances as well as just training on my own. And one of my other big new projects right now that we're about to get into is launching an online educational platform called ParkourEDU, which will be online video courses and stuff. So no matter who you are, no matter where you are in the world, you'll be able to experience some of the curriculum methods and teaching ideas that we've developed here in Colorado.

Jonathan Levi: That's awesome. I'm not sure if you're familiar. I actually teach a number of online courses as well. So it'd be happy to chat with you offline and we can discuss a little bit about. I teach on a platform called Udemy and, you know, I've been doing online education for a couple of years, so we can chat about that.

Ryan Ford: I've looked into those and definitely up for learning more about that.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. Can you explain to our audience a little bit about what parkour is and how it originated?

Ryan Ford: Yeah, kind of a simple way to think about parkour is it's an art of movement in which we're training our body and mind to overcome obstacles efficiently.

So. It's a pretty easy metaphor for people to understand the very physical part of what we do is overcoming rails jumping between benches over staircases and that kind of stuff. But it also is more of a lifestyle philosophy in the sense that you're overcoming obstacles physically, but you're teaching yourself to face your fears, be creative, solve problems. All of that kind of stuff. So it is about overcoming obstacles, literally and figuratively.

Jonathan Levi: Amazing. What does the name parkour come from?

Ryan Ford: It comes from a French word for the military obstacle course. And that's kind of where the roots are. I noticed you had Erwan on your show a couple of weeks ago or something, but parkour has similar routes to MovNat.

It comes from the natural method, as well as military obstacle course training during the French Vietnam war, there was a guy named Raymond Bell who essentially was kind subscribing to those ideas of the natural method. And later came back to, the suburbs of Paris, France, where he was a firefighter.

And he had a son named David, who eventually David and his friends growing up in the suburbs of Paris, France. They. Kind of use those ideas of military obstacle course training the natural method training, and they started adapting it to an urban environment. So that's kind of how parkour got its first start.

Jonathan Levi: So is parkour today still associated with urban warfare, or is it more a separate training methodology, hobbies, sport, what would you call it today?

Ryan Ford: Oh, that's a really hard question. I've been doing parkour for about 11 years now. So I was one of the first people in the USA, at least who started practicing pretty seriously.

It's been around in France and Europe for about 20, 30 years. But it didn't come out of there until the past 10 or 15. So that really depends on who you're asking. Some people consider it more of an arts and they like to do it more as a creative expression. There are some competitions for free running, which is like parkour but with a little more emphasis on the performance aspects.

So doing tricks for difficulty in style and that kind of thing. So in that sense, it could be like an arts. If you're more into the idea of parkour as it was originally intended by David Bell and some of the early founders, it was more of kind of like preparing yourself for an emergency situation. So if I had to run across the street and climb up this burning building to try to save somebody, how could I use my parkour skills to do that in the fastest way?

Or if you're being, you know, kind of like seen by some potential muggers in a back alley, how could you run away and save yourself? The original intent was more of a utility, the functionality, and the effectiveness of how to reach and escape. But nowadays you definitely do see people who just kind of do it for fun or for creativity or for many different reasons.

Jonathan Levi: It sounds like something that would be very useful in the zombie apocalypse. I have

Ryan Ford: to admit. Yeah, for sure. Actually, I have quite a few friends who have been doing stunts on the walking dead. Really? Yeah. They're dressing up like the zombies and taking the big hits.

Jonathan Levi: Wow. That's very cool. I'm a big fan actually. Yeah, me too. So what motivates someone, a nice guy from Boulder, Colorado to decide that they want to jump from building to building, run up walls,

Ryan Ford: stuff like that. Yeah. So how I got into it was about 11 years ago. I was still in high school at the time. And, I'm actually a little bit different than a lot of parkour people, um, a lot of park where people who come from like a gymnastics background or martial arts or dance, rock climbing, more of this individual movement sports.

But what I came from was mostly soccer for 11 years and then, in high school, I did track and field and football. And at the time I was a junior in high school getting kind of burnt out on playing football, but a real close to my house is a world famous concert venue called Red Rocks Amphitheater. Not sure if you've heard of it or not. But it's this amazing,

natural amphitheater built into these monolithic rocks and stuff. So it's a really cool environment, lots of height changes and steps and rails and cool architecture all over. So I would be running the steps there trying to get in shape for spring training and football. And I had seen some parkour videos a little bit earlier because me and some of my friends will want to learn how to do a wall flip, where you run up the wall and back flip off.

And so one day we were standing outside of the school library. There's a nice brick wall and some grassy landing right underneath of it. So we're thinking about trying this wall flip and all right, so who's going to do it first and nobody wanted to try it until one of my friends who actually did martial arts, he stepped up to the plate.

He's like, all right, I think I got this. And that was the last time you ever saw him? Yeah. We're all anxiously awaiting to see what's going to happen here. But my friend takes two steps up the wall and falls down flat on his back and completely knocks the wind out of himself. He's like rolling around on the ground, gasping for breath and me and all my friends are just like, Oh my God, which has happened.

But this kid, he eventually catches his breath. Five, 10 minutes later stands up. He's like, all right, I got it this time. He actually tried it again and he nailed it. Which was pretty amazing. So we had no idea what we were doing, but this kid got it. Unfortunately, after seeing the first attempt, the rest of us didn't want to try it.

So that's when we later got a little bit smarter and looked it up on the internet, this was actually before YouTube existed. So I was downloading the original parkour videos on my dial up modem overnight, and then trying to go out to Red Rocks Amphitheater, and little schools and parks around me to basically try what I saw.

So not the smartest or safest way to go about it. Looking back, I did a lot of dumb things. Like I thought in order to practice my roll from a big height drop. I needed to do it from the very tallest thing on the playground. So as jumping-off this 10 to 12-foot thing, trying to practice my roll will, whereas nowadays I would have somebody, you know, squat down on the ground.

And do it in a much safer way. So I definitely had to learn a bit through trial and error because at the time I couldn't find anyone else in Colorado who did parkour.

Jonathan Levi: So how many injuries did you get during this time?

Ryan Ford: You know what, even though I say I was making some really dumb mistakes, I actually didn't get hurt that much.

Maybe it was just because I was a little bit younger. But I was also in pretty good shape from football. I had been lifting for a couple of years, so I was relatively strong, but I did get my fair share of cuts and bruises and bumps, a couple of sprains, but honestly, I played soccer and football and I got hurt a lot more when I did those because there's this.

In a lot of team sports, you have this unexpected variable that you can't account for, which is the other player or the other team. And I can't control what they do. So you could always get like slide tackle into the ankle or the knee or somebody is trying to tackle you. And that's where a lot of injuries occur in team sports is that contact with other people who you can't control, but in parkour, you are always in control if you choose to be. So,

as long as you practice with a safe and smart mentality, then it actually can be very safe because you're out in a typically urban environment or sometimes natural. So you're dealing with very hard surfaces, rocks, asphalt, metal, and you can't afford to mess up. So, unfortunately, the people who are reckless tend to not last very long and they quit or they move on to something else.

But the people who stay smart and safe. It actually can be a very great way to get into good shape and actually, um, stay very strong and healthy as well. Is it something

Jonathan Levi: that anyone can do? Are there any kind of physical

Ryan Ford: prerequisites? Yeah, absolutely. This is something I believe anyone and everyone should do.

And actually, I would argue that everyone used to do it and it's just a matter of when did you stop? Not when did you start. So every little kid, when you're three feet tall, you're climbing up rocks and trees and jumping off benches and hopping across cracks in the sidewalk. And this is the mentality that we have in parkour.

It's just kind of preserving what we always did as a kid, seeing the environment through the eyes of a child. One thing I've found is, I've been on rooftops before and I find that nobody will ever notice you're out there except for kids. Kids are walking down the sidewalk, just looking up and around and they're taking in everything that's around them.

Whereas a lot of people grow older and they grow up and they're looking down at their cell phone, walking down the sidewalk is not paying attention to anything and it's a whole different mindset. So I would say that everyone should do parkour everyone did do parkour. And if it's something that you stopped doing, you should definitely think about getting back into it.

Even though the very basic stuff. Like I don't care if you're trying to be, you don't have to be the next, the parkour all-star doing backflips and roof gaps in this spectacular stuff you see on YouTube. What parkour is at its core at its fundamental basis is just hanging on a bar, being able to pull yourself up, or being able to step over a handrail.

Or being able to squat and duck under a tree branch, just basic movements, is really what parkour is all about. So everybody should do at least some form of it I believe.

Jonathan Levi: I'm going to throw in a quick disclaimer that this podcast takes no responsibility for what people do and try and all well and good.

But then I'll ask what are the first steps to getting involved in parkour, I mean, today it's probably very different than when you started.

Ryan Ford: Yeah, actually nowadays. There are quite a few parkour gyms popping up all over the place. So your best bet to get into this and be safe about it and smart about it is to find either a parkour gym near you or somebody who does parkour who's in your area and has some experience so they can kind of show you the ropes.

Cool. So, yeah, that's the best way it's always to learn in person, but if you can't do that, there are a lot of internet resources. Now there's some good tutorials on YouTube. I will also say there's a lot of terrible tutorials on YouTube. So you kind of have to take some of those with a grain of salt and try to be critical about what you're actually watching.

But that's what my new online platform ParkourEDU will be about is trying to make sure that people can go to a place where they know everything is going to be very high quality and safe and all that kind of stuff.

Jonathan Levi: How big is the parkour community? I mean, do you guys have events or competitions and that sort of thing?

Ryan Ford: Um, yeah, the parkour community worldwide, that's a really hard question to say, but because of things like YouTube and social media, parkour definitely is a global phenomenon at this point, and it's also partly because parkour literally requires no equipment. It requires no playing field. All you really need is your own body.

You don't even need shoes necessarily. So it doesn't matter if you live in Singapore or Sudan or, you know, Brazil, America, like no matter where you are, you can walk out your door or maybe you don't even have a door. You can walk out into the forest or, you know, wherever it may be. And you can find basic challenges to move your body through and over and under.

And with that mindset, I got some of the most amazing parkour and inspirational stories in parkour that I've heard of are actually like people in the Gaza strip and people in Russia, just jumping off of a band and buildings and, you know, they don't have much to do, but parkour doesn't require anything, so anyone can do it anywhere.

And I think that's one of the beautiful things about it.

Jonathan Levi: Definitely. I remember when I was a kid, I used to skateboard kind of in my early teenage years. And it's definitely not the case with skateboarding. And when you have municipalities putting up steel, kind of, pipes on curves and all different kinds of things to prevent.

And it's interesting that you mentioned Singapore because Singapore is, I actually lived there and they're very good about they build skate parks. And those are the only places where it's technically legal to actually skateboard has parkour suffered from the same kind of law enforcement impingement, or can I pretty much go out and jump over or whatever I want wherever I want.

Ryan Ford: Yeah. That kind of depends on where you are. I have found that at least I've done park or kind of all over the world, but, I'm going to use America as a quick example here. Places like Boulder, Colorado are very progressive open-minded, and active. And so people tend to be a lot more accepting and knowledgeable about what we do, but also I've developed a community over the past 10, 11 years around here.

So it is pretty accepted in Colorado at least. But I have gone to places in the Midwest where they're a little bit more conservative, a little less active. And so. They might not understand what we do as much. And so I have seen more resistance in certain places around the country, just because of the way of thinking or the level of activity that they have in that area.

As far as I know, I've heard of a couple, no parkour signs that have been posted. One was in DC, a couple in London, but those are more just because of trespassing, private property sort of thing. Not necessarily because they actually don't want you to, like, where do you draw the line? What is parkour? Or am I allowed to jump up and down in place?

Am I allowed to crawl on my hands and feet? It's kind of hard to define. No parkour. So. Sure. But yeah, it just kind of depends. I mean, the biggest thing that we have to deal with is private property. So a lot are, people might come out and say, hey, I'm worried about liability, or I don't want you getting hurt or breaking something here.

I need you to leave. And. We try to be really respectful and we can do parkour anywhere. So if somebody doesn't want us there, we're going to be respectful and just move on and try to find another spot. Yeah.

Jonathan Levi: What type of exercises and training does one pair with parkour or is it more of an all-in-one exercise regimen?

Ryan Ford: Yeah, I think it can definitely be your primary form of exercise or physical activity. The way that we start people out is completely bodyweight. So if you were a beginner coming to my gym or training with me, the kind of things that you would be doing at first is learning how to crawl on your hands and feet, which is what we call quadrupedal movement.

From there, you learn how to land, correctly. You learn how to roll and fall, and then you learn how to balance, jump, vault over, you know, waist-high stuff with your hands and your feet. And then it kind of progress from there into like kicking off a wall, trying to grab the top and climbing up or doing monkey bar stuff, weaning on bars.

And then. Toward the end of the beginner curriculum. I might introduce you to the very basic flips and twists if we have the right equipment if we can be safe about it, but essentially it's just kind of reclaiming the movement ability that you had as a kid and starting out from the ground and building it up to taller obstacles and taller surfaces.

And also starting with the very simple stuff. And then kind of putting those simple pieces together into more complex skills later.

Jonathan Levi: I see. So how does a beginner or even an advanced parkour athlete, how do you avoid

Ryan Ford: injuries? There are a lot of different ways to avoid injuries, including just the physical preparation that we do.

So a lot of joint prep, mobility stuff, as well as just strength and conditioning. So the stronger you get you will do parkour or you'll pick it up quicker and also more safely. So if I can do a lot of pull-ups, obviously it's going to be easier for me to be able to climb up a wall. And if I have some muscle in my back, it's going to hurt less, if I try to roll over concrete. So just basic strength and conditioning mobility work is going to be your first line of defense and then learning techniques. So learning how to land, roll and fall properly, are the key parts to being safe when something goes wrong. It's inevitable in parkour that you're probably going to mess up or fall or bail, or something's going to happen at some point.

So you need to be prepared with good landing form, good rolling form, and the knowledge of how to fall correctly. And this actually applies to everyone. Whether you, maybe you're older, I've heard that people over the age of 65, if they fall and break their hip, they are like 20% of them die within a year or two.

And, of that 20% or of the other 80%, a huge number of those people never get to live on their own again. So basic things like learning how to fall correctly, learning how to kind of like let your momentum go. Instead of fighting that momentum and potentially like sticking your arm out, breaking your elbow, or things like that.

This is a huge study in itself of what we do. We call it Ukemi, which is the art of falling. We've adapted it from Aikido, a martial art into parkour. So, learning how to fall safely and correctly is going to help you if you're a snowboarder, if you're a skier, if you flip over your handlebars on a bike, if you are just walking in the city and you get hit by a car, like all of these things are real-life scenarios where you should learn how to fall correctly. So that's another big one.

Jonathan Levi: Yeah, that's a skill. We had a guest Yuri Marmestein, who's a hand-balancing expert. And that was one of the things that he said is, you know, I do all these great tricks, like double black flips and all that great stuff, but it all starts from learning what to do in the worst-case scenario.

Ryan Ford: Actually Yuri is how I found out about you guys. I just had Yuri out at my gym doing a workshop a few months ago, so I know that guy he's very great coach and athlete. He's awesome.

Jonathan Levi: And just such an impressive artist.

Ryan Ford: Definitely.

Jonathan Levi: So you mentioned mobility. Are you doing a lot of foam rolling, ART, what kind of maintenance stuff are you doing for your muscles?

Ryan Ford: A lot of flexibility. So stretching stuff, as well as, yeah, some foam rolling, lacrosse ball stuff to warm up usually. And we've also taken that to the next level and. We'll do mild fascial release on rails and walls and stuff. So I just lay on a rail and roll out some of your back muscles or something.

Get out all those nice crunchies. Yeah, I actually, well, we started as well. And so I'm a big fan of what he does and we do a bit of that as well. The supple leopard mobility, WOD sort of stuff, but also just kinda one really big emphasis that we have is on developing mobility in a full squat. So,

just that like basic resting position that you don't see a whole lot in America, but you do see a lot of in like third world countries. Full squat, just really deep in there. A lot of people in America have lost that ability. So we spend a lot of time trying to regain that full range of motion in the squatting position because it's really important for having good, safe landings and having strength and mobility through that full range of motion in which you could land or fall from.

So the full squat I'd say is that's one of the most important things. Anyone in parkour or anyone, in general, could work on.

Jonathan Levi: So glad you said that, and I love Kelly Stuart's work as well. And one of my favorite things that he says is not a quote exactly, but something along the lines of, you know, the squat is the single most important movement

a human being should be able to do. Absolutely. So Ryan, I didn't realize you were actually a very accomplished entrepreneur as well. I think you said you have the five gyms and you're working on the video platform. Take me through your journey to becoming from a hobbyist to, I guess you would say a professional athlete to an entrepreneur.

I mean, how did you, does that come from?

Ryan Ford: You know, that's a good question. I mean, looking back, I can't really pin any of this on one specific event or anything. It just kind of proceeded when I love it. I actually found myself here in short, but. So give you a long answer, I guess I told you about how I got into parkour initially in high school.

And, a couple of years later when I got into college, I was part of National Parkour Team. And there was usually about 10 or so of us on the team from all over the USA. And what we did was basically represent parkour in a good light. We were all pretty skilled at it, or at least as skilled as them, they came in the US at the time.

And so we were, I guess, the ambassadors for parkour in America at the time. And I, through this team, the tribe and American parkour and which is a website. We got to travel the world, doing performances and stuff. And then I started to, I was originally doing pre-med and business in college. I went to CU Boulder and eventually I started to think about, well, what if I pursued this parkour thing? Maybe I could open a gym or do something like that. So I think it was probably about halfway through college. I was a sophomore when I decided that I was going to try to open a park or a gym. And the way we started working to that goal was just teaching out of a climbing gym in town.

So, looking back these five gyms and all this stuff that I've kind of helped build up. It literally started with $200 of my own money that we invested into building some really kind of crappy wooden boxes for people to jump over and faults over. And we stored those in this little corner of the climbing gym and taught people.

We were giving away our class for $5 for a two-hour class at first. So practically giving it away for free. And just saving the money that we were earning and slowly reinvesting it back into newer, nicer equipment. As we got more popular, we expanded from one or two classes a week to four or five. And we did that for a couple of years until we, I think had saved up maybe five or $10,000.

And we knew we had enough clientele. And enough money to open up a very basic facility of our own. So we actually opened up our first park or gym next to a homeless shelter in downtown Denver. And there is hoards of homeless people across the street. At all times, there is drug deals and gunshots, and it was a pretty sketchy place.

Looking back. I'm amazed that we even tried to do that because it was definitely not a great place, especially for women and kids and stuff. So we were there for about a year and somehow made it work somehow kept making money and reinvesting. And eventually outgrew that space. So we kind of figured out what we were doing a little bit better and opened up some nicer facilities.

So that's kind of, uh, how that all started. The first gym was in Denver later, we opened up one in Boulder. And we really just kind of pursued it for the love of what we did. I paid myself very little for a long time, and I was trying to do everything from accounting and marketing and coaching and just trying to do it all.

But eventually, we realized that wasn't sustainable. So we started getting some more passionate people on board to spread out the workload and start helping out with coaching and managing. And that kind of freed me up. To be able to start opening more gyms and to start pursuing this new online project that we're working on.

Jonathan Levi: What I love about your story Ryan is I talk to entrepreneurs from all over the world and, you know, I invest in small startups as well, and a big advocate of this kind of lean startup or the kind of Steve blank customer development model. And what I love is when I hear about a successful business like yours, it always starts out the same way.

It's like we had nothing, we had passion, some people asked us we were doing this. We validated interest. So it's like, whether you're, right doing a web tech startup, unless you're doing pharmaceuticals, there's always a way to start small and validate interest and figure out how you can do what you love and iterate.

Ryan Ford: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we never had a business plan at first. We had no idea what we were doing for accounting and we learned as we went and we had something original and unique and we developed it into a good curriculum and people recognize that. And so we were able to learn as we went and just grow into something more professional and more legitimate.

Jonathan Levi: Did you wrap up your college degree, or did you drop out to start the business?

Ryan Ford: You know, I actually, for a long time in college, at least half of it, I was thinking about, wow, I really don't need a degree to do what I want to do. And so it was always kind of in the back of my mind, but I was getting some help from my parents and me, it was something that was really important to my parents.

And. I saw the value in it as well. Like if this parkour thing ever died out, or if I, God forbid I break my back or something like, it'd be good to have a degree to fall back on. So I was traveling the world, performing parkour trying to start this gym, these classes, and stuff all while I eventually got my degree.

And actually, we opened up our first gym of our own in three or four months before I graduated. So that was a very, busy chaotic time.

Jonathan Levi: That's brilliant. And reminds me of my own story, starting an office and hiring employees, setting up the furniture and then having to go back to class on Monday, you know, University classes, right?

Ryan Ford: Yeah, it was, it was a trip for sure. So

Jonathan Levi: So what are some tricks or techniques that someone could easily learn themselves? I mean, it sounds like your friend was very lucky to learn that wall flip, but what are some techniques that I could play around with and learn and see if this for me?

Ryan Ford: Yeah. Most people are definitely not going to start out with the flips and the roof jumps and gaps.

We hope. Yeah. Unfortunately, we have to deal with that misconception because people see that stuff is like the most spectacular kind of glorified thing on YouTube or in commercials and movies and things like that. But what they don't see is all the practice that went down behind the scenes. So people are starting out at ground level.

They're training things, thousands of times at ground level before they ever take it up to heights. And in that sense, if you were a beginner, you would basically be starting with crawling on all fours, learning how to land and fall and roll correctly, balancing. You know, even bouncing on the sidewalk curb, or, um, you know, learning how to hop over a little bench in the park or how to step over a handrail at the park, how to do the monkey bars again, if you forgot how, you know, just basic things like that.

Jonathan Levi: Super cool. That actually reminds me a little bit of, uh, Ido Portal, this kind of movement expert out here in Israel that he teaches me out a lot. Oh, very cool. So like the lizard crawl and stuff like that. So I wanted to ask you who are some people's work that you follow and whom you admire either in the fitness field or other?

Ryan Ford: Yeah, I mean, you know, Portal is definitely a huge one. I'm going to his movement X camp. They actually have one here in Boulder in May. So I finally get to check that out. Awesome. Kelly Starrett is a big influence as well as his partner, Carl Paoli, I try to parkour to me is a conglomerate of dance, rock climbing, track, and field, martial arts, all kinds of things.

So I try to keep my eyes and ears open to all kinds of different movement arts. And I see people like Ido Portal, Kelly Starrett. These guys are more of movement generalists. They have amazing stuff and curriculum and drills and things for people to do no matter what your movement's style is. Aside from that, I definitely have my own inspirations in rock climbing.

For example, Alex Honnold, he's known for free soloing without any equipment. Some of the hardest climbs in the world. In breakdancing, there's a bunch of people that I love to see just like the unique blend of, you know, uh, capoeira and dance and hip hop. And, you know, I really tried to take inspiration from all different kinds of movement styles.

Jonathan Levi: Very cool. One kind of unrelated question to jump back just occurred to me is parkour predominantly a male sport, or are there a lot of females also doing this?

Ryan Ford: Yeah. You know, I've seen for now it is definitely a male-dominated sport. I'd say it's around anywhere from like two-thirds to three-quarters, male.

And if there is a community that's not as organized, it could be even higher, maybe even 80 or 90%, but here in Colorado, at least it's been around for a while. We have a very supportive community. We have gyms where people can go to learn it in an organized fashion. And what we've found is that. I think parkour is something that's a little more inherently, natural for a guy. Just guys want to go climb stuff and jump off stuff and maybe even be a little reckless and throw themselves around. Not that that's what we're trying to promote, but that's just what I've kind of noticed. Girls are very interested in it, I find. But a lot of times they see that there's so many guys that they kind of assume that it's not for them or they maybe get a little intimidated.

So one thing that we've been doing around here, which we've had a lot of success with is just having some weekly and monthly classes or get-togethers that are just for women. And so it's kind of a place where they can go to train together. And what it really takes honestly, is more female role models just by nature of there not being as many women in parkour.

There are fewer female role models as well. And if there were more female role models, I think that's what it really takes for more women to be inspired to try it. 

Jonathan Levi: Sure. And I think that's one of the things that CrossFit has done so well. I mean, you have these amazing and inspiring female CrossFit athletes.

Which has really prompted women all over the world to say, you know what to hell with it? I can lift up heavy stuff too. Yeah.

Ryan Ford: CrossFit has definitely done that. Well, they get a lot of heat for a lot of negative things, but I like to say that they've done far, far more good than they have.

Jonathan Levi: I would agree. And not just because I'm a member of the cult, you know.

Ryan Ford: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I started out, well, we taught out of the bouldering gym for a little bit. And then for the next year or two, we actually taught out of CrossFit gym. And I got my across the, at level one cert. And we originally thought when we were going to open our parkour gym, that we needed CrossFit to help sustain it and get it going.

But what it turned out to be is I never had more than one, four or five CrossFit people in a class. And it's just because we never put a whole lot of energy or marketing or anything into that. We just focused on the parkour and it turned out that all we really needed was the parkour at the gym.

That's so great. But I do love the mentality of CrossFit. I think it aligns with parkour in the sense that you're not necessarily training for anything specific. It's more about trying to be very generally well-rounded and ready for anything. I think those two really go together well. Yeah, that's what I love about it.

Jonathan Levi: And I've noticed such a big difference in my own physical health based just on the switch from regular weight training to CrossFit. Right. So, Ryan, what are a few books that have greatly impacted you and your work?

Ryan Ford: That's a good question. Or just in general, you know, impacted kind of your personal life, you as an entrepreneur.

Ryan Ford: Yeah, actually recently a couple of books that really got me thinking and a lot of new, different ways that applied to. Not just my movement practice, but also I think there's a lot of good lessons, entrepreneurially and things as well. But two that come to mind over the past year that I read where The Talent Code and The Sports Gene.

Have you heard of this to you? I have not actually. So Talent Code is about this guy who basically traveled all over the world, searching for talent hotbeds. Like why are the sprinters in Jamaica? So dominant. Or why are tennis players from this one little tiny town in Russia? So well-represented in the top 100.

Why are people in different areas around the world so great at violin or chess, or, you know, just random different things. Why are people really talented in these certain places and not in others? And so he studied why a talent hotbed is successful and what makes a talent hotbed. And it really comes down to how they practice.

And it comes down to their master coaches and it comes down to ignition, meaning what is that one event or that thing that ignited the culture or the people in that area to be really into this one thing. And it could be maybe somebody from their town, their small town or small Island or whatever. Made it into professional baseball and hit a home run in the world series.

And all of a sudden this little tiny Island in the Caribbean is obsessed with baseball. So it's a really interesting study into what makes a talent hotbed and what he's also kind of getting into is the whole like nature-nurture debate. And he's arguing a little bit more for the side of nurture that anyone can become super talented at something

and here's how so I thought that was a really great book. I learned a lot of good stuff from it. And then The Sports Gene I feel is a great compliment to it because The Sports Gene is kind of doing the same thing. He's kind of traveling around the world, figuring out why Jamaicans are great at sprinting and why Kenyans are great at long-distance running and some other things like that, but he's arguing a little bit more on the like nature or genetic side of things and trying to explain why certain populations around the world are at a slight genetic advantage for certain kinds of athletics or things like that.

So those two things put together. I feel gives you a really great picture of the nature, nurture genetics, talent, sort of debate. And how you can apply all that stuff in your own practice to make yourself better at what you want to do. Awesome. I'm going to check

Jonathan Levi: those out and then we're definitely going to put them in the show notes at speaking of show notes, Ryan, I don't want to take too much of your time, so we'll go ahead and wrap, but I wanted to know where can people get in touch with you?

I know you're working on a new online platform, but in the meantime, How do people find you? How do they get

Ryan Ford: engaged? Yeah. So my two biggest projects are the gym is called Apex Movement and you can go to apexmovement.com or find us on social media. And the new online platform is called ParkourEDU. And that's all one word.

You can also find that at ParkourEDU.org, it's just a splash page right now, but hopefully, we're launching that in the next month or two. Other than that, I have my own personal social media. You can basically just search Ryan Ford or Ryan “Demon” Ford. Demon is kind of a nickname of mine. So, you can search that on YouTube.

I also have a really big channel with 5 million views on different kinds of educational parkour videos, little ideas of exercises and games and drills and things you can do on your own at a park or at a school, just kind of on your own. And use that to get better at parkour.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. So we'll put all that stuff in the show notes and in the outro, it'll tell everyone where to go ahead and find the show notes.

So thanks very much. It was such a pleasure. And I'm glad I'm a little bit more educated about parkour than I was an

Ryan Ford: hour ago. Yeah, definitely. I enjoyed talking to you about it. I think it'd be an awesome thing for you to potentially try and give some thought, seeing as how you're in the CrossFit and Ido Portal and Kelly Starrett.

I think all of these things, the trend nowadays is going away from the machines and the fitness gimmicks and all that kind of stuff and back toward our roots, which is just basic movement. And so I think we're all kind of preaching the same message in general and people who are interested in CrossFit and MovNat, parkour.

It's all very related.

Jonathan Levi: Definitely. Well awesome, Ryan, thanks so much and have a great day.

Ryan Ford: Yeah. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.

Jonathan Levi: So that's it for this week's episode. I hope you guys thoroughly enjoyed it. If so, please take a moment to leave a review on iTunes and to share it with your friends and family. You know, another thing is that we're always looking for guest posts and guests on the blog and on the podcast.

So if you know somebody or are somebody. Who has an interesting SuperHuman skill to share either on the blog or the podcast, please be in touch with us. Our email is info@becomingasuperhuman.com.

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the becoming superhuman podcast for more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time.