Lynn Jung has always been and continues to be so incredibly inspiring in the face of a tremendous setback. If you follow Lynn, you know that she has been treading on a long and arduous road of recovery for a nagging injury that we wouldn't wish on our worst enemies. Lynn's movement is so clean and dynamic! She has pushed her tricks and progressed so hard in recent years, achieving an incredibly high level of athleticism in freerunning before her shin decided it had different plans for her. At the time of her shinjury, Lynn then did what all of us say we want to do during recovery time and never actually do- which is become a GODDAMN MOTHERF*#@*ING BOSS at handstands! Good lord she became a calisthenics and handstand master and did it so fast. Just a testament to the hard work and dedication this woman puts into every single thing she does- including the women's clothing line she just designed for Storm! Okay, sorry for the fangirl ramble, please continue on to read and learn from this incredible athlete now!
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How long have you been training?
I started going to Freerunning classes in 2011 but started training more seriously in 2013.
What got you into parkour?
I was at Uni in Austria and at that time still very dedicated to dance. My sisters had recently started to go to freerunning classes and when my dance class got cancelled I decided to join them, not actually knowing what freerunning was. Classes were held in a gymnastics gym and coming from a gymnastics background a foam pit and a trampoline sounded like a lot of fun to me. I think it wasn’t so much the movement side of freerunning that got me hooked in the beginning but very much the atmosphere in the gym. It was so different from anything I had experienced before, both gymnastics and dance being in a very strict and controlled environment. I just really enjoyed being able to go to training sessions and decide what I wanted to work on that day and having people around me helping out and encouraging me to do new things each time. So over the next months my focus slowly shifted from dance to parkour and while I initially tried to keep up with dance classes and go to freerunning classes whenever my schedule allowed it, I soon started skipping dance lessons and ended up going to open gym pretty much on a daily basis. The first two years of my training pretty much happened in that gym and more specifically in the foampit haha. I somehow was given the opportunity to go to the very first Tempest Pro Takeover in 2013 – which really had the biggest impact on the way I trained.
What do you do for a living?
I am professional freerunner. Unfortunately I’m struggling with a major injury right now which means that I can’t take on any work at the moment. I am lucky enough to have XDubai as my sponsor which allows me to focus on my recovery without having to work at Starbucks or sleep in my car.
Do you have any other skills/passions besides parkour? If so, what are they?
A year ago my answer to this question would have been a very different one but one good thing about this injury is that it forces me to find new things I enjoy doing and luckily I seem to have found a fair amount of hobbies to keep me busy. I’ve gotten (back) into photography and I really enjoy having a „non physical“ passion as most things I am enthusiastic about imply physical exercise. I also really enjoy yoga which I’ve always done a little bit but more thoughtfully since my injury. I’m still very passionate about dancing and even though I am very restricted in my movement at the moment I try to incorporate some dance drills into my yoga and handstand practice. I also work out a lot in gym because I truly believe that this will help me get back into parkour more quickly once I am healed up which is giving me some hope and something to look forward to. I am also currently writing my Master thesis which really I should have done a while ago. I find it really hard to sit at a desk for more than a couple of hours a day but I’d say it is worth it as it means I will be able to focus solely on my training once I am recovered.
How do you manage fear when going for something scary?
I haven’t done anything that really scared me in a while but before I got injured I was working a lot on things that took me out of my comfort zone - not a specific move but more generally training at heights for example or working on running pres that required actual running. I usually try to rationalize my fear. What is it I am scared of? How bad would the consequences be if something went wrong? What could go wrong and how would I have to react to avoid injuries. For example if I train at heights I am most concerned about foot placement which means I have to work on foot placement more so I can trust myself and know I won’t fuck up when I am doing something at heights. I also never just go for something if I am really scared. I like to go to a spot and look at things I want to do but know I will have to work up to, to make it safe. I then try to find similar challenges in a safer place and think myself into the situation of doing the jump or whatever it is over and over again until it almost feels real. It helps to take away the fear and instead of being scared when I actually attempt the move I am just nervous but a good kind of nervous. There are still a few specific challenges (mainly in Brighton and Lisbon) I have always been too scared or unsure to do, so I think about them when I can’t sleep and hope to trick my body into thinking I have already completed the challenge. Hopefully they will feel less scary once I come back to them.
Do you have any obstacles that interfere with your training? If so, how do you deal?
My injury. I have an anterior tibial cortex fracture, which is one of the rarest and shittiest fractures an athlete can have. It got misdiagnosed for half a year and once diagnosed it still takes an incredible amount of time to heal if it heals at all. Because it is such a rare injury, there aren’t very many studies on how to best recover from it. I have done everything possible to avoid surgery and my fracture seemed to be healing just fine. Unfortunately I got cleared to get back into training too early and I re-fractured the tibia. I will find out in two days whether or not I will have to opt for surgery. Fingers crossed. For the time being I try to keep myself busy and stay positive.
What piece of advice would you give to someone starting out?
This really is a hard one. I guess everyone is different and will struggle with different things when getting into Parkour. I’d say the main advice to anyone would be to simply enjoy training. The main reason to move should always be the fun and enjoyment you get out of it whether you do parkour once a week as a hobby or trying to make a career out of it. If you love what you do you won’t mind putting in the work. This doesn’t mean that training is all just fun. Frustration and struggle are just part of anything you spend time on.
Who is a woman that inspires you and why? (in or out of parkour/freerunning)
When I first got into Parkour Luci for sure was my biggest inspiration. I remember watching her videos with my sister and we’d go out and try the things we thought were maybe achievable. Most weren’t haha. I think Luci was and still is a role model that a lot of female athletes look up to when getting into parkour and really might even be the reason they consider giving parkour a go in the first place. I also want to name Fizz, Shirley and Tam who have inspired me loads in my early training years. It is great to see that only a few years later there are so many more women to look up to and be inspired by! However the gender gap is still huge and we need more women in parkour!
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