Tempest Freerunning Academy: Parkour Gym in Chatsworth, LA

Tempest Freerunning Academy sits in the last building of a business park at 19821 Nordhoff Pl, Suite 115, in Chatsworth. A single drop-in costs $40, adults can train at a 15-and-over open gym for $15, and the doors open at 3pm on weekdays. If you typed parkour gym near me anywhere in the San Fernando Valley, this is the room that started it in California, opened on April 2, 2011.

The academy grew out of Team Tempest, a crew of professional freerunners who worked in film, television and live shows. When the gym opened in 2011, CSUN's student paper, the Daily Sundial, named Gabe Nuñez, Victor Lopez, Paul Darnell and Rich King as the owners and described it as the first facility in California built only for parkour and freerunning. The team had already been training professionally for about five years before they signed the lease in Chatsworth.

That first course was built like a map of places the crew had trained: a pastel concrete-look section they called Little Rio, a brick-style wall nicknamed Pershing Square after the downtown plaza, a warped wall borrowed from Ninja Warrior, iron monkey bars, seven-foot ledges, a spring floor and a blue foam pit. Nuñez told the Sundial the point was a place where you can play in your own environment the way you did as a kid. Forty to sixty people a night came through in those first weeks, roughly half of them total beginners.

Tempest does not let you pick your class by gut feeling. Everyone aged 9 and up starts in Beginner, which drills strength, balance and the basic parkour movements on soft obstacles. Every ten weeks the gym holds testing sessions, and passing one earns a colored band that unlocks the next room on the schedule. Green opens PK All Day, where students move from padded boxes to hard surfaces. Light Blue opens Train Hard Kong Harder, which shifts to bar technique once vaults are clean.

Dark Blue unlocks Hardcore Parkour and the first basic flips. Yellow is Flip N Flow, Red is I am a Freerunner with tricking and flips from height, and Black is Trü Freedom, built around competition-style runs. The top tier, Gold, is Goldfish Gangsta, where students film videos, go to jams and learn to coach others as Tempest ambassadors. Younger kids have their own tracks: Kinderkour for ages 4 to 5 runs shifting obstacle courses, and Tadpoles for ages 6 to 8 builds confidence before the band system begins.

The price sheet is posted on the academy's own site. A single class is $40. Memberships bill every four weeks: $150 for one class a week, $240 for two and $300 for three, with siblings getting 10 percent off. A prepaid 12-week package runs $408, $696 or $864 for one, two or three weekly classes. Every membership carries a $50 annual registration fee, but a one-off drop-in or a single open gym visit skips that fee.

Open gym is the cheaper way in for adults. The 15-and-over session costs $15, a mixed session where kids 7 and up train beside adults costs $25, and an unlimited open gym month is $80. Members can add unlimited adult open gym for $25 a month or kids open gym for $50. Private coaching is $100 for one person for an hour, $150 for two people, and $200 for three, with two-hour blocks priced at $150, $200 and $250.

New students fill out the online waiver first and then call to reserve a spot; the class schedule is fixed by age and band, so walking in at random usually means watching instead of training. Anyone 17 or under needs a waiver signed by a parent or legal guardian, and that adult's photo ID has to be shown at the desk, though a photocopy is accepted. Each Tempest location needs its own waiver, so the form you signed for the Vista gym does not cover Chatsworth.

The dress code is short. Wear sweatpants or anything you can kick a leg over a box in, take off jewelry, and bring a separate pair of clean gym shoes; staff ask you not to train in the sneakers you walked across the parking lot in because grit chews up the padding. Beginners who have never exercised are welcome, and coaches slot first-timers into Beginner rather than letting confident adults jump straight to the foam pit.

Weekday afternoons are split by age on the posted schedule: Kinderkour and Tadpoles groups early, band classes for ages 9 to 16 and adults later, with the doors open until 10pm. The academy says its coaches are working freerunners with film, TV and live-event credits, and you can see that in how much class time goes into rolls and landings before anyone is allowed near a flip. Adult open gym is the slot where grown-ups who started in Beginner train alongside more advanced members.

Be honest about expectations if you only want to try it once. A single $40 class is fine, but the real value of this gym is the progression, and one visit will mostly be rolls, precision jumps and safety vaults. Adults who just want to play on the obstacles should book the $15 adult open gym instead of a class, and parents of a curious 7-year-old can test the waters at a mixed session before paying for a membership.

Hours run 3pm to 10pm Monday through Friday and 8am to 3pm on Saturday, and the gym is closed Sunday. Saturday is the short day, and the gym also books birthday parties, so adults who want floor space are better off aiming at a weekday evening open gym. Testing sessions come around every ten weeks, and those days are about repeating set skills in front of a coach rather than free play.

If the class you want is full when you call, ask for the next mixed open gym rather than a different level; jumping into a band class above your level is not allowed. Families coming from the Westside who cannot make the drive can look at FR3RUNNING Society's Culver City-area gym at 8934 Ellis Ave, which runs its own open gym on Monday, Tuesday and Friday evenings for $25 per entry.

Turn into the business complex on Nordhoff Place and drive straight to the back; Tempest is the last building at the end. The gym is in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley, so most families arrive by car, but the Chatsworth Metrolink and Amtrak station on Old Depot Plaza Road is the nearest rail stop if you are coming from downtown Los Angeles.

After a Saturday morning session, drive over to Stoney Point Park at 11000 Topanga Canyon Blvd, the sandstone outcrop where Los Angeles climbers have bouldered for decades. Kids who just learned precision jumps tend to look at those rocks differently. Keep the jumping on the gym floor, though: the boulders are for climbing with proper spotting, not for testing new vaults.

Address: 19821 Nordhoff Pl, Suite 115, Chatsworth, CA 91311. Hours: Monday to Friday 3pm to 10pm, Saturday 8am to 3pm. Drop-in class $40, adult open gym (15+) $15, mixed open gym (7+) $25, unlimited open gym $80 per month, private hour $100. Sign the location-specific waiver online, then call to reserve; minors need a parent's photo ID and clean indoor gym shoes.