Jonathan | Wellington Central, Wellington

“I am proud of myself because I have trained in Parkour for seven years and I’ve been constant with my training.

In Colombia I had a difficult life with a lot of needs and it wasn’t easy to live in Colombia or to maintain my training, but I was consistent in my training and I am very proud of it and the physical abilities that I have.

The majority of my teen years I was on the streets. To prevent a bad lifestyle I dedicated myself to play in parks, playgrounds and move around. Years later when I was 17 years old I discovered Parkour and it suited my life perfectly. The motto, one of the mottos of Parkour, is ‘self-improvement’ and that is what I have been doing. I have a resilient life and another motto is ‘being strong to be useful’ and I hope to obtain a good amount of possible abilities to be helpful to people that may need me.

I grew up in Colombia. Colombia is a country located in the north of South America. The life in Colombia is very difficult, especially nowadays that the country is in a critical situation. I grew up in the poor suburbs of Bogota City. This is a city that tends to exploit people so I had a difficult life. My mum brought my two brothers and me up on her own. Despite all of these difficulties I studied at school and always maintained myself moving around,learning, being curious and reading a lot. I had a lot of issues along my life and every time I feel stressed or I feel anger and I would like to offload my anger against someone, the best thing I can do is to breathe, breathe deeply and then go to training. When I train I have a lot of time to think and to offload my anger with the movements and at the end of my training I feel tired but very happy even though I have more options to think about. So for me, Parkour is very important because it helps me to be in balance, both physically and mentally. This is something that I love.”