If you have ever enjoyed watching movies like District 13 or Paul Walker’s (RIP) Brick Mansions, with their barely-time-to-breathe parkour action, then you really need to check out John Travolta’s 11-year-old son, Benjamen, on the parkour course. While not quite a David Belle (District 13) yet, young Travolta’s skills are pretty impressive. Parkour, or freerunning, is the skill of traversing any terrain using jumping, climbing, swinging, and some other “ings” that I am probably omitting. Think Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan when they wanted to get somewhere.
To be honest, when I first heard about Ben Travolta being a “level 3 Ninja” as announced by his dad John Travolta on Instagram, I pictured a kid running around cones in the backyard next to the jet airplane. Nope. Young Travolta rocked a course that was far, far more advanced than cones, and there was no jet airplane in sight.
Ben starts, or at least the video starts, with him climbing up one staircase, and down another–picture two sets of stairs adjoined to form an upside-down V. Except Ben was just using his hands and “climbed” hanging from underneath the stairs, kind of like an advanced form of monkey bars. Speaking of monkey bars, Ben’s went there next, but they were spaced what looked like five feet apart. Young Travolta had to swing like a gymnast on the uneven bars to have the momentum to reach out for the next bar.
After ripping through the monkey bars, Ben ran a short distance to a small platform and jumped to a side wall, again had to be about 5 feet to grab hold of a couple of handles. Next, Ben had to jump off the wall to grab what looked like a bar from a set of parallel bars. The video cuts abruptly at that point.
The video picks back up with Ben running up an almost perpendicular ramp, grabbing hold of the top, and climbing over. The video cuts again but picks up at his next station. In the next move, Ben went from the start position on a chin-up bar and heaved the bar up a couple of feet to the next bar-holding hooks… and then he went back down. This kid was off the hook!
After a brief swing on the parallel bars, which was pretty tame compared to everything else on the course, or at least that’s what I thought at first. On closer examination, Ben went from hanging in the air from a bar and “jumped” with the bar from one stand to another. Ben then went back to the upside-down V staircases. Young Travolta avoided the steps altogether though, instead, he used nubs on the side of the stairs to work his way to the top of the V, before dropping and sticking a landing.
Maybe it’s just me being overly impressed by an 11-year old kid, but hey, it was pretty impressive. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a lifelong victim of an ongoing conspiracy between the ground and walls to trip me up either. Ben got a few accolades on his dad’s Instagram post, including from Sharon Stone, that posted, “GREAT GOING BEN.” and Jamie Lee Curtis, who posted, “WOWZA.”
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View the video here.