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ABOUT ACCESS PARKOUR
Scotland's leading provider for parkour and movement classes across Edinburgh and Scotland
"Access Parkour creates non-competitive physical spaces that allow people to develop the skills they need to overcome both physical and mental barriers in their lives"
WHO WE ARE
At our heart, we are a coaching organisation with a range of classes in Edinburgh. Our classes focus on non-competitive, enjoyable physical training based on parkour, for all levels.
We have classes designed for everyone!
Whether you are older and determined to look after your body, or a young athlete looking for a new outlet for your energy and drive, we have a fantastic community of inspirational people you can meet and learn from.
Parkour is a physical training methodology rather than a set of movements. It teaches you to challenge yourself and succeed in the challenges you face.
As a result, Access Parkour aims to embody this concept above everything. And our highly experienced coaches look forward to helping you begin.
MEET THE TEAM
All our coaches are friendly, experienced, and qualified through the two major parkour qualification providers PKUK and ADAPT. They are also first aid trained and personally selected and approved by Access Parkour for their high standard of teaching.
Feel free to Contact Us if you would like to know more about a specific coach or who will be taking a class.
Our Coaches
Hedge
Managing Director
Founder
Adorable Hedgehog
John Hall or 'Hedge' discovered parkour in late 2004 after watching a parkour video in school. After a short career in academia, he founded Access Parkour in 2013.
Hedge delivers most of our conditioning and movement programs, taking a special interest in creating spaces that builds people's mental and physical health. He splits his time between managing the company, teaching as much as he can, and researching Parkour.
Chris Martin
Spiderman's Little Brother
King of Beards
Chris bumped into Access Parkour entirely by accident and was immediately hooked. Now he is a fully qualified parkour coach and holds a diploma in sports coaching.
Chris maintains a fondness for Broomhouse, where he grew up and wants to help develop the local parkour scene to help at-risk youths in the local area.
Kirsten Altenbach
World Champion Giggler
Secretly in Charge
Kirsten organises more things than we can count, mobilising vast numbers of children to do parkour, petitions people, nudges people, boosts numbers at every single class, and is everywhere at the same time. She is kept busy raising two parkour mad sons who live in their very own bouncy world full of parkour classes and jumping.
Gordon Tsang
Director
Parkour Outreach Expert
Pet Lawyer
Gordon has been training parkour since late 2005 and is now a full-time solicitor at a global commercial law firm. Gordon is one of our most experienced coaches and organises the CIC Parkour Outreach.
He no longer teaches any regular classes but he dedicates his free time to training our new coaches, as well as developing the wider Parkour scene.
Nina
Ballantyne
Parkour Grandma
Nina started parkour back in 2006 as an over enthusiastic teenager, making her one of the first women to start training in Scotland. More than a decade later, she still loves sharing her enthusiasm for parkour at every opportunity.
Nina strives to create a supportive environment in her classes, using a mix of silly games and satisfying challenges to bring students together and to facilitate progression. She is proud to be Access Parkour’s token Glaswegian.
Stefano Sarpio Sardano
ADD Disciple
Drinks coffee with his Milk
Stefano's passion for parkour has led to him searching for great teachers and great experiences all over the world.
He's now engaged in an 'extended' visit to Access Parkour where he focuses on improving his coaching technique and delivering his own brand of parkour coaching, which is focused on finding joy in difficult movements.
Adam Romaine
Director
Workshop Manager
Neverland Native
Adam is a full-time coach and occasional circus performer with a degree in physics. He loves all sorts of physical skills and runs many of our most fun classes for children.
He has an almost Peter Pan quality with children and is one of our most popular coaches. His classes are known to be physical yet fun - applying many circus skills and games to his teaching style.
Seb Koci
Southern Gentleman
Man of Brewing
Seb has been bouncing all over the world doing parkour for the past few years but jumped at the chance to come and work with Access Parkour to develop his coaching abilities.
An accomplished acrobat and mover, Seb leads our acrobatic classes and many of our kids classes. Keep an eye out for him as he'll be tearing up the local spots in no time.
Sonia Marshall
Founder of EUPK
Wearer of colourful leggings
Sonia really really likes Parkour. She is an Informatics student at the University of Edinburgh, and can be found coaching at a few of our youth classes.
She runs the Edinburgh University Parkour Club, and loves trying to get absolutely everyone to go to parkour.
Behind the scenes
Mel Aghanya
Magic Admin Lady
Mel is Access Parkour's secret weapon. She handles all the administration and back-end running of Access Parkour and Room To Move, and is the glue that keeps the company together. That’s impressive for someone who hates computers.
When not solving crazy admin problems, Mel is also a mother of a vast brood of amazingly talented children.
Donald Dalziel
Media Camera Wizard
Chained to a desk by Hedge while making this website, Donald is still there eating only avocados to survive.
Donald is a Scotland based photographer and videographer who works closely with Access Parkour to manage our media.
See his website here: www.donalddalziel.com
OUR ETHOS
Access Parkour started as a solution to a problem.
Somewhere in the last few decades, we stopped moving and started sitting, children stopped playing and started gaming, and the majority of employment moved from physically demanding activities to nine-to-five office jobs. Many would argue that this is good. Life is not as hard as it used to be, and most people live more comfortable lives.
However, through living comfortably we forgot how to live any other way. Any action not regularly performed is an action that our bodies will forget. If a day involves nothing but sitting, and occasionally moving from one seat to another, eventually all we will be able to do is sit.
We are not talking about putting on a pair of trainers and going for a run every other week. Access Parkour believe in the fundamental tenant of parkour; "être fort pour être utile" and we understand this as "to become stronger by learning to overcome both mental and physical challenges."
To achieve this, Access Parkour introduce people to movement and challenge through parkour training. Whether that is by simply attending an Access class once a week to be able to reach the bottom shelf in the kitchen, or by dedicating our lives to parkour, we are here to help you every step of the way.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
We aim to reclaim P.E. It should be physical education, rather than just another hour of chores involving movement. It is our firm belief that without sufficient grounding in movement, we lose out in all aspects of life. After all, our brains are designed to control our bodies. Access Parkour aims to help schools and school children rediscover the joy of both learning and play through movement.
Furthermore, we want to initiate a wider discussion of how we, at all levels, interact with physical exercise. As children, we are introduced to exercise as a method of getting involved in competitive sports. Almost all PE curricula and game initiatives constantly revolve around competitive sport. However, physical education seems to have been removed from PE. This has a number of problematic results:
• Children are immediately ranked by their competence in a sports environment, and those who do not excel are told that exercise simply is not for them.
• Competition and physical exercise become synonymous.
• There is a lack of physical education: proprioception, dexterity, and functional fitness.
At Access we want to interrupt this cycle. We do not want to get rid of all competitive sports, but we do want to create an understanding: that there is more to being fit than being competitive. And parkour, with its focus on personal goals and non-competitive achievements, is a solid basis for this reclamation of physical education.
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PERFORMANCE & MEDIA
While our focus has always been on coaching, we regularly find our services in demand for all sorts of reasons. So, in 2017, we formed Access Performance. The performance section of our company contains a wide cross section of skills and backgrounds. From martial arts and stunts, to high level parkour performance, to partnered acrobatics and circus disciplines (even unicycling!).
What makes Access Performance unique is that many of our performers are also some of the top coaches in the country, and we are able to provide bespoke mixtures of performance and outreach. We have provided performances for small charity events, adverts, photo shoots, and Edinburgh's Hogmanay Celebrations. Members of our team have travelled all over Europe as part of a circus performing troupe, and we even have extensive experience in in-house video production thanks to Donald Dalziel Media.
Magic Admin Lady
Mel is the Access Parkour secret weapon. She handles all of the administration and back-end running of Access Parkour and Room to Move and is the glue that keeps the company together. Impressive for a Luddite who hates computers. A Mother of a vast brood of amazingly talented children, when not solving crazy admin problems, she is looking after her children/cats/dogs anything else lying around in her house.
PHOTOS AND VIDEOS OF OUR COACHES IN ACTION
All our coaches are not just amazing at coaching parkour, they are also athletes who regularly practice what they teach through parkour, circus, and performances.
