Written by Michael Graef

I’ve been hearing Christmas music everywhere. Tis the season, right? Every song and strand of lights serves as a reminder of hot chocolate and gift shopping. Have you finished your shopping list?

Shopping for a parkour athlete is pretty simple, but if you aren’t involved in the community, it’s pretty simple to botch entirely. In this shopping guide, I’ll assume you don’t know too much about the parkour community in general, so I won’t leave anything out.

First, let’s talk about the Top 3 Things To Never Buy a Parkour Athlete:

1. Parkour Gloves. Unless it’s a gag gift, don’t you dare. Nothing says, “I’m a noob,” like a pair of fingerless parkour gloves. Why? Most practitioners prefer bare hands for a few reasons. One: bare hands can feel obstacles better, and that’s important. Two: the more you train, the tougher your hands get, so gloves are obsolete. Three: Parkour athletes don’t want to lose their friends. NOTE: Studies indicate that there is a close correlation between parkour glove wearing and loss of friendship.

2. Foam Sole Shoes. A large portion of the community doesn’t like shoes with a foam sole because they have a hard time getting good traction when they train, and apparently, traction is important.

3. Restrictive Pants. If you’re buying pants for a parkour athlete and want them to wear the pants more than once a year, make sure they don’t hinder movement by limiting range of motion. In general, a better bet is to get some sort of sweat pants, shorts, joggers, or flexible, stretchy pants.

Now that you know what not to buy, lets talk about what you should buy your parkour friend. Number 1 and 2 are good ideas, but number 3 is most important, because it supports the parkour community as a whole.

1. Trainers. [Price: $35-$100]. There are some great shoes out there. We’d recommend the following: Adistar Racer (Adidas), SI-18 Rannell 2 (K-Swiss), and Puma Faas 300 V2 (Puma). A good rule of thumb for shoes is to find a light pair with a substantial amount of soft rubber surface area on the sole.

2. Adobe Creative Cloud. [Price: $50]. The parkour community is very media-driven, meaning practitioners are constantly sharing videos and photos with everyone. Adobe CC is a monthly subscription to a great service. You get access to several Adobe programs, especially the important ones for media sharing and creation: Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, etc. NOTE: It’s a subscription based service, meaning it’s $50 per month. An idea: you could buy a month or two, and if they like it let them continue the service on their own. Or, you know, really hook it up.

3. Merch. [Price: $20-$60] This one is the best. You can impress your parkour friend with your knowledge of brand and support the parkour economy at the same time. There is a hefty list, but we recommend checking out the following online stores: Farang, Storm Freerun, Storror, Norml Brand, Myrm, and Etre-fort. These are all companies we personally rep and support, so spend your dollars with the parkour community! Here’s Kent rocking some Farang and Norml Brand stuffs.

Cheers.

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