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There was a lot of times were the parkour scene still had a lot of anger and a lot of youth to it.
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It used to get into a fair bit of trouble when I was younger.
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And now that I'm interested in parkour I realise it's becauseI wasn't interested in anything,
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I didn't have anything to do.
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That first step, realising that you can give it 110%,
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you can commit with your body, and can spring in to that jump,
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and realise that, oh, even if I land and jump off the other side,
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it's still okay. I'm not going to crash and burn.
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I believe it does change the way you look at the world.
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The art of moving efficiently through urban environments, known as parkour,
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is both a sport and a discipline.
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More than 20 years after it's birth in France in the late 80s
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parkour is thriving in Australian cities.
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I'm Dominic di Tommaso, 24 years old,
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I am part of Crew 42.
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My name is Max Masters,
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I'm 25 years old, and I've been doing parkour for almost nine years.
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Max and Dom are two of the founding members of Crew 42,
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one of the top parkour groups in Australia.
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Is it a business, but it originally started out as a group of mates,
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just having fun and trying to capture that.
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I have a strong team of six,
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and we do professional work quite often, probably once a month at this stage.
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We're training together twice a week.
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We've done a few different things like a car show performance in China, and
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we work at a lot of different companies like Panasonic.
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I get to be part of an exclusive group of parkour, which happens to represent Sydney as a whole.
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So i can say that I am Sydney Parkour.
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Both Max and Dom starting training around the same time,
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but they came from very different backgrounds.
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I identify as Islander Australian.
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My mother is from Papua New Guinea,
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and my father is from the Cook Islands.
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My father left us when I was quite young.
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My mother suffers from a mental condition, paranoid schizophrenia.
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From the age of six until about 13, me and my siblings were in foster care.
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There was one time, for maybe half a year, where I actually didn't have a place to stay,
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As a kid growing up and going to high school, I found it really hard to focus on things like study, and
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reading books and getting ready for tests.
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I wasn't focused enough from all the unstable trauma that was happening in my life at the time.
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I didn't really finish high school.
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I used to hang around with a group of guys who were really quite aggressive and violent.
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I was charged with assault occasioning in actual bodily harm.
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I thought I was going to end up just like everybody else in my neighbourhood.
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There wasn't much hope back then.
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I used to have a youth mentor who would take me around to different places.
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One day he showed me parkour on youtube,
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and I couldn't believe it.
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I was like a huge green light, saying YES.
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I had a full time background in figure skating,
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I also did ballet and dance full time.
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I've won the Australian Championships for ice skating four times.
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Something like falling on the ice 100 times a session when I was younger,
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to now falling on concrete once, it's a little bit easier to deal with.
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I was always doing sports, and channeling my energy into sports with all these guidelines and restrictions,
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And then one day, on the internet,
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I saw a parkour video, and went, 'people can do this, legitimately?'
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Like they just run and jump, they don't need guidelines or rules?
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Dom is a sponsored athlete.
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He's also part of another crew, Team Farang,
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a collection of elite parkour athletes from around the world.
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Parkour has taken me to Thailand, it's also taken me to China, multiple times,
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I've been to Holland, I've been to Spain, I've been to France, I've been to Italy,
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I think the biggest feeling of elation I've had has been a jump called the ManPower gap.
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Five stories high on to a four story roof, death drop in between.
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Currently in Australia, as a professional parkour competing athlete
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I believe I am the only one making enough to get by and travel.
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There is no strict guideline - it's not like you start start in the mailroom of parkour
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and work your way up to CEO.
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So when you do your slide over the box, you want to think about where you're going to land...
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Both Max and Dom are giving back to the sport that changed their lives.
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and training the next generation.
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Not everyone who is doing parkour is jumping from 40 story rooftop to 40 story rooftop.
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That's just what you see in the internet.
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There's a lot more of a deeper side, and a lot more that's come in at ground level.
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It's something that can really teach people to overcome obstacles both mentally and physically,
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and to be more confident in themselves.
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Today, what we're going to be doing, is learning our web stuff.
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I'm 14, and I've been doing parkour for just over a year.
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Even when it seems like they're really good, and they're not going to bother with someone who is new,
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you'd be surprised at hour friendly everyone is,
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and how much they love to help out.
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-How to you find it here? -Good, really good.
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The guys here are like family.
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So when you roll, you come down to your shoulder, but you come over it,
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looking up the whole time...
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The general atmosphere, within the parkour community,
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is just positive.
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Everybody's just accepting of one another,
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age, race, gender, it doesn't matter.
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I believe that Max is easily on the same level, if not better than myself.
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He's naturally very very gifted for the sport.
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He's tried to reinvent himself and reinvent what he is doing,
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so that he can make a career in this sport. So that it is possible for someone
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from his background,
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to do what they love and achieve a fully fledged life dream.
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Everybody is dealt cards.
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It's just whether you get on with it or not.
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Parkour is my life. i can't see my life without it at all.
