Community Highlights: Meet Jimmy Davidson of Freedom in Motion Inc, and, Motion Mentors LLC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jimmy Davidson.

Hi Jimmy , so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My name is Jimmy Davidson, I grew up in Temecula California. im 33 and am the CEO of Freedom in Motion Inc and CEO of MotionMentors.org. I began training parkour i started as a parkour athlete in 2007 before most people had ever heard of parkour, right around when YouTube the website first came out. From there, I joined the national parkour team owned by AmericanParkour.com and began traveling the world doing live performances, competitions, and stunt work. In 2014, I opened my first parkour gym in Murrieta, CA, about 90 minutes east of LA in the Inland Empire. Now, 12 years later, we have three locations in the Inland Empire and plan to continue growing. One year after opening my first gym, I had my daughter and had to move away to Seattle, forcing me to learn how to manage my business remotely at the age of 21. this helped me see the gym as a business and as systems, setting my on a journey of learning how to be an effective CEO remotly while raising my daughter, who is 10 at the time of writing this. In 2025 I wrote the book titled “Million Dollar Parkour Gym” with the goal of helping other small gym entraprenures especially if they serve kids and families like I do, reach their business’s full potential and to enable their businesses to do more good for their local communities, that work has been very fufilling and ive herd direct feedback that the book has helped multiple other business owners save their business from iminent shutdown.

Im 33 now, still train parkour (infact in 2025 I was ranked 9th in the country after the USPK national competition circut concluded, I placed 3rd in state finals and 9th in national finals in 2025, an accomplishment im quite proud of)

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
My book opens by discribing one of my low points as a business owner

“Bankruptcy was imminent.
“There’s no way I’ll be able to cover payroll this week. The rent
alone is more than what we have in the gym’s bank account. I
have to figure this out …”
I woke up at 3 a.m., the gym’s electrical transformer buzzing,
its red LED clock casting an eerie glow across the rubber floor
from my sleeping bag to the restroom.
Standing up and rubbing my eyes, I carried myself to the gym’s
sink to rinse off the stress sweat. Or maybe it was just regular
sweat. Inside the gym, it was still 80 degrees at three in the
morning, a typical southern California summer night.”

The first few years of running my gyms, I was virtually unaware of what i should be doing as CEO. I was not advertising, I was not selling, I was not looking at numbers or conversion, I was just making sure the numbers in the bank account didnt hit zero.

To make things more complicated, I had a baby and had to move away one year into opening the business. At one point I lived in Norway for 6 months and had to take customer service calls for my gym at 4am due to the time zone difference.

Later once the businesses started gaining traction and I was acting more like a business owner than an athlete who had a gym, the business grew to aout $3M in annual revenue but we almost went out of business because managing the large busienss and the many personalities (over 40 employees) was a huge pain point I had not yet gained enough experience in. One of our gyms had employees planning a walk out because they felt like I didnt care to listen to them, when in reality i was overwhelmed and under trained. Of course, we confrunted that head on and we got it solved, but I really needed to step up my leadership and communication skills to catch up withthe demands of my business.

One time, one of my locations’s landlords informed me they were selling the building and we had to get out in 3 months. 3 months to both deconstruct a parkour gym, find a new location, and rebuild is NOT an easy task, that also almost put us out of business.

we’ve been through a lot to say the least, but each moment of struggle pointed to a new way to grow and strengthen the team and business.

We’ve been impressed with Freedom in Motion Inc, and, Motion Mentors LLC, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Freedominmotiongym.com
my main business
This is a chain of indoor parkour gyms. think of it like an indoor obstacle course where we train (mostly kids) how to run, climb, jump, and overcome any obstacle in their path.
We only do parkour, we are not some gymnastics multisport gym that only uses parkour as a marketing gimic, parkour is all we do. That sets up appart on its own. ON a deeper level, our mission is to help athletes (mostly kids) discover that they are capable of being an athlete and they are capable of doing hard things. thats such an important lesson for kids to get now a days, especially seeing how many of them come to us addicted to sugar, screen time, and are largly unaware of what “practice” is or whats its good for. We train our coaches to be mentors for kids, and that sets up apart in a big way.

Motionmentors.org
This is a small business coaching business focused on helping other parkour gym owners run their own successful parkour gym

What’s next?
The mission of Freedom in Motion is to impact 1,000,000 lives. I want to show one million people that they are capable of being an athlete and that movement and fitness is FUN and not some grind to be avoided, or for kids to show them that movement can be FUN and a screen is not the end-all-be-all source of life.

1M is a big number

thats why we want to open more parkour gym locations

thats also why we have MotionMentors, to help other parkour companies participate in our goal of reaching 1M lives.
Working with other gyms also trains us in how we will scale and grow past our 3 gyms, coaching other gyms is greatly accelerating how well we run the gyms we own as we have access to way more data and can test more rapidly.

Pricing:

• $399 Parkour Summer Camp
• $30 Parkour gym trial class
• $399 Birthday parties

Contact Info:

• Website: https://freedominmotiongym.com
• Instagram: @Freedom_in_motion
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreedomInMotionGym/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@FiMParkourGym

Image Credits
Credit Freedom in Motion Inc