We had the good fortune of connecting with Stephen Mccarty and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Stephen, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
When I think about risk, I think about everyday life and how anything can happen at any time I that are out of our control.

Knowing that has helped me learn how to take calculated risk and create a training method around the sport “parkour”

When training parkour the athletes are very cautious about everything that can go incorrectly. Addressing this problem is called eliminating variables.

What is this and how do we do it ? Here are 3 things we parkour athletes like to check off the list

– [ ] Check all surfaces by wiping them down or making sure it is a sturdy object before use .

– [ ] Breaking down the skill by leaning different ways to bail out if anything was to go wrong.

– [ ] Is it in the way of the public if so we have a spotter someone who will let us know when it’s good to go and when it’s not.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Outside of being a parkour athlete myself I also train athletes at a gym in spring branch called “RISEATTHEWAREHOUSE “. There I coach parkour, gymnastics, and ninja warrior for all levels beg-adv .

The reason I chose to get myself into a gym was because I knew in order to be successful I need to surround myself around the people who are both trying to do what I’m doing or they have already done it, So I thought why not work at a training facility working birthday parties (before I became a coach) and watch and learn from the coaches and athletes.
Eventually I learned enough gymnastics prerequisites and drills to help build my air awareness and applied those to my parkour training just a little bit, but that wasn’t enough.

The hardest part about this journey at first was finding people to train with, Most importantly finding the right people to train with. Luckily I was able to use Instagram and YouTube to search for parkour videos. Eventually after searching until 3am one night on Instagram I put in #houstonparkour I found 2guys who had been training for about a year at the time and they were willing to help me understand parkour more and how to start properly. Who would’ve know we would become friends, teammates , and business partners

The thing I am mostly proud about is me having the guts to drop every other sport and doing my own thing I’ve always been big on playing sports expo traditional sports and being active my whole life but when things get repetitive I get bored of it. The beautiful thing about parkour is that you are the only one who can set your own limit, you have to be physically and mentally strong.
Your mind will get your body to start moving and if you can overcome your mind you will learn that you can do anything it will take a lot of hard work but that’s anything ..

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
downtown Houston has the best spots to do parkour I would take them to :

-The Theater district
-UofH downtown
-Mid Town Area
-The galleria
And most importantly
RISEWAREHOUSE TO CHECK OUT OUR OPEN GYM

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I would like to shoutout my whole family, they do not agree with what I do on a daily basis. But they respect my love and passion for parkour as a sport and not a hobby, that’s all that any person can ask for is the full support for your family even if it’s not what they want you to do they still will support you in any way possible. Although it was tough at first always feeling like everyone was against me except my Mawmaa (grandmother) she has been super supportive since day one I would flip in her yard all day long after school even though it scared her to death she saw how serious I was and so was she..

Instagram: Stephenpk713

Youtube: Stephen Mccarty

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