An eleventh grader at SPA, Imran Umer has many hobbies but his favorite is freerunning.

“If I had to describe myself in three words, I would say that I’m creative, a risk taker, and open-minded,” junior Imran Umer said.

According to the World Freerunning Parkour Federation, freerunning is “moving using the most creative ways from point A to point B, embracing influences from other movement disciplines such as break dancing, martial arts tricking and capoeira.

“It’s essentially the same as parkour, but just with added acrobatics,” Umer said.

This is a relatively new “sport,” so not many engage in it. Many people decide to do parkour or freerunning on their own while others decide to take classes with friends.

“I’ve been doing parkour for about three years, since freshman year. At first, I was just doing it on my own, but then I started taking lessons at my local gym,” Umer said.

This local gym, Gleason’s Gymnastics School, is home to many athletes from all over the metro area. Unfortunately for Umer, parkour is a very unique sport that not many of his friends take part in.

“Usually, I’ll either do parkour by myself or at the gym, because not many of my friends do it, and when they try to do it with me, they often can’t keep up,” Umer said.  

Umer does parkour less often in the winter because of the complications of school.

“During the school year, I obviously have much more going on and it’s harder to find time to do parkour, so most of the time I’m doing it in the summer,” said Umer. “I love parkour and I wish more people could appreciate it the way I do.”