Step Anyway

Fear doesn’t disappear when doing Parkour, you just become more comfortable with it.

Like it is for many, fear became a roadblock for me. Challenges I knew I could do felt both so close and completely out of reach. I couldn’t get myself to commit to certain things. 

In 2017, I attended a workshop led by Max Henry, Parkour athlete and author of The Parkour Roadmap, a written guide to Parkour history, culture, and technique.

I don’t remember the entirety of the workshop, but I do remember one bit he shared that’s stayed with me to this day.

When speaking about fear, he expressed that fear often stems from a lack of trust in ourselves. To work through fear, we have to build that trust through creating a compromise with ourselves and that starts in our everyday lives.

It was a simple statement, but it jarred me into a new perspective. 

The way I understood his statement was this: if you treat yourself as you would another person, then the actions you take (or don’t take) in your everyday life directly impact how much you can trust yourself with big tasks.

If you say you’re going to get something done and you don’t follow through, you slowly chip away at that trust. And when a bigger challenge shows up, you hesitate not because you’re incapable, but because you haven’t built that rapport with yourself. You haven’t proven that when you say “I will,” you actually mean it.

Brilliant.

That thought process carried me far. Every action I took, at work, in training, in my personal life held more weight. The small things mattered. Discipline wasn’t just about productivity; it was about integrity with myself.

However, unbeknownst to me, I was missing another piece of the puzzle.

To be clear, we all deal with fear differently. I’m not claiming to have solved fear. What I can offer are actionable perspectives, insight into how athletes in our space are able to achieve such incredible feats despite it.

Fast forward to 2023.

The keys to our Parkour studio in Oakland, California are finally in our hands. Three empty floors. Over the next few years, those floors will be filled with stories of joy, woe, hardship, success, failure, family. Stories I hope to unpack more in these blogs.

At the time, I was coming back from a hiatus. My training had suffered due to my own negligence, and I was learning how to fall in love with the sport again.

One of the first obstacles Darryl built was a set of three walls at varying heights alongside a 3-foot box. (At the time of writing this, that box is now fixed against another wall for Lache Pres. If you’re reading this in the future, this probably makes no sense. I’m sorry. Sqvadron keeps progressing. Yesterday’s challenges are not today’s challenges.)

We were working Catbacks from the newly built walls to the 3-foot box.

I could not get myself to do it.

It got so bad that Darryl stepped in and said a phrase I will never forget, a piece to my puzzle:

“You don’t have to do the challenge. But if you want to complete it, you have to want it more than you are afraid.”

That line has been a work in progress for me ever since. I’ve unraveled it slowly day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. Both phrases, the one about self-trust and this one about desire versus fear, have stayed with me. I attribute much of my progress to those two ideas and the individuals who embodied them.

Now let’s take one more time skip.

February 2026.

Sqvadron walks up to the 12th Street Double Tap. The only challenge Darryl hadn’t completed before his ankle surgery during his 2025 rampage of the new move that took the community by storm. (The Double Tap)

This one sits on the busiest street in downtown Oakland, right next to the entrance and exit of a BART station. Police. Security. Wind. Foot traffic. A thin wall landing. Inset wall. Every possible variable present.

I watched my friend struggle with all of it, waiting for an opening just to attempt the challenge.

As practitioners, we understand that our sport lives in the streets. But knowing that doesn’t eliminate the pressure of performing in real time. We don’t get to close down roads. We don’t get controlled environments. We can’t disrupt people just living their lives.

And on top of the external chaos, there’s the internal one. Fear. The unknown. The constant calculation of risk.

Wave after wave of attempts.

Then suddenly:

Deep breath.

Step.

Step.

STEP.

Jump.

Connect.

Land.

STUCK.

Just. Like. That.

The next day, I asked Darryl what made him finally go for it. He said, “It got to a point where I didn’t care what happened to me.”

And he trusted that his experience would carry him through whatever situation he found himself in.

At the end of the day, we all practice this sport for different reasons: recreation, art, challenge, community, something else entirely.

But no matter the reason, we all run into fear and maybe the work isn’t eliminating fear.

Maybe it’s building enough trust in yourself, and enough desire for the outcome, that when the moment comes, you step anyway.

- Armando Covarrubias