Parkour is one of the newest-widely appreciated sports that has your heart jump to your throat. Who knew getting from one point to another could be so hypnotising to watch? With so many questions in our minds about parkouring, we found the perfect collective to know all about in detail. Benj, Max, Sacha, Callum, Josh, Toby and Drew are the 7 awesome members of a Parkour collective called Storror who create the most exciting and breath-taking content on the internet, showcasing their skills through crazy adventurous videos. They will also be speaking at the #TEDxGateway event happening in Mumbai this December. So here’s all about Storror, the most talked-about Parkour collective!
Excerpts:
How did the 7 of such talented personalities come together as one collective? What inspired you all to start with this sport?
All seven of us were involved with different sports before parkour— football, skating, badminton, trampolining. But in 2005, we were introduced to Parkour, thanks to a TV show called Jump Britain‘. It inspired us all individually to get out and attempt to recreate what we had watched, and ultimately brought us all together.
As we’ve said many times, there’s an instant sort of bond you get from meeting people who are passionate about the same thing as you are. We all met a lot of other people in those early days of the community before we were a team, but there was something specific about the 7 of us that meant we stuck together and we quickly became to be known as the STORROR boys.
Knowing this is a new emerging sport, how did you manage to reach the top of it?
We knew by our mid-teens that we were very different from most of our fellow school friends. We had uncovered a wealth of capabilities and experiences that weren’t accessible through standard education. So, when we all had to make decisions about our career paths and further education to decide what we wanted to do after school, none of us chose to take the standard route. We chose parkour and managed to turn our passion and what we love into a sustainable business.
We started our YouTube channel on 10.10.10 for fun, and in the last few years figured out how to turn our lifestyle into a brand.
How long did it take to master this sport and were there any major injuries or challenges during this journey?
Where we are now is a product of over ten years of hard graft. There have been a few injuries along the way but nothing major. There were never any close calls, and never any when on skyscrapers. When you’re at that level you have to take it very seriously. If there’s anything where there is a chance of making a mistake, you just wouldn’t do it—none of us want to die! We approach everything we do with such rationality and it is all logic, although it looks crazy to those watching who don’t do what we do, it’s easy for us.
We know we can do a jump before we’ve actually done it. We train and fail lots on the ground before we ever take what we do to huge heights or skyscrapers.
How does having a following of 67 million views make you feel now?
It took us 7 years to hit 1 million subscribers back in March and in the last six months we have gained another two million, it’s insane. Once we discovered how to take what we do and format it in a way that works for YouTube, we ran with it and continuously try to better our concepts and execution.
We started out thinking 100,000 subscribers would be great, now we’re just going to have to make the goal 10 million.
Parkour sure seems like a sport for the fearless, so does it resonate with your personalities or did it take practice to become fearless?
Fear is something that we get asked about a lot. Parkour is a unique and difficult combination of knowing your capabilities and trusting yourself. As we explain in our TEDx talk, we have fear but we don’t become fear. It’s a deep understanding through years of experience. We approach fear with rationality and not emotion.
We are able to identify when fear doesn’t correlate to how dangerous something is. We’re not risking our lives, we’re proving that fear does not limit us.
How do you see Storror in the future? Do you plan on adding more in it?
We’ve had an incredible year but 2019 is all about what we can do for others. Our aim is to inspire 1 million people to start moving. Whether that is from our videos, learning parkour in our future training facilities or even from our clothing. It would be a great thing if more people in this world moved.
We’ve lots of exciting things around the corner but whatever other avenues we do pursue with parkour, know that you will always find brand new content on our channel every Monday at 5 pm GMT.