SPRINT! JUMP! ROLL!

PICTURE YOURSELF at the top of a staircase with steel railings. Next to it is a five-inch-wide, seven-foot-high wall. How would you get down? If you’re like most people, you might stroll down the stairs. But if you’re Gabriel Nunez (above), the 37-year-old CEO of the Tempest Freerunning Academy in Chatsworth, California, all you see is possibility.

You might sprint and jump into the wall, plant your feet, and then leap and flip off it, landing on the stairs below. Or you might grab the lip of the wall, lower yourself halfway, push your feet off, and flip onto the ground. Then maybe you’d hop up to the railing, run down it, and side-flip to the landing at the bottom. “Usually you start by climbing onto something,” says Nunez. “Then once that’s easy, you figure out how you might do it in a more creative way…. Freerunning is an exploration.”

This is how you see any