Parkour Running Blog

Parkour. You may have seen it performed in the latest James Bond movie, “Casino Royale,” and in the futuristic French movie, “District B-13.” Young, athletic men moving from rooftop to rooftop, room-to-room, sidewalk to balcony, using a variety of fantastic leaps, bounds and landings.

According to the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, “Parkour or art du déplacement (English: art of displacement) is a physical art of French origin, the aim of which is to move from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the possibilities of the human body. It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment — from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls — so parkour can be practiced in both rural and urban areas. Male parkour practitioners are recognized as traceurs and female as traceuses.”

It’s not quite an extreme sport, but more of a martial art that’s now practiced by thousands of individuals on university and college campuses in Dallas, Houston, elsewhere in Texas and throughout the country. According to parkour founder David Belle, “The spirit of parkour is guided in part by the notions of ‘escape’ and ‘reach,’ that is, the idea of using quick thinking with dexterity to get out of difficult situations, and to be able to go anywhere one desires.”

According to Belle, when you’re in a hostile confrontation with an individual, you’ll be able to speak, fight or flee. And since martial arts train for the fight, parkour trains for the escape.

An important characteristic of parkour is efficiency. This means that a traceur must not merely move as fast as he can, but move in a way that is the least energy-consuming, while simultaneously the most direct. And because parkour’s unofficial motto is être et durer (to be, or to exist, and to last), the quick efficiency also involves avoiding injuries, both in the short and long-term.

Parkour got its start in Paris twenty years ago when two teens began devising moves to swiftly get from one point to another to rescue someone or escape in an emergency. The sport, also sometimes called free running, has been creeping into U.S. culture in recent years through YouTube clips.

For all its risks, parkour encourages good habits and pushes discipline and self-improvement. True traceurs aren’t smokers, because it would hurt their endurance. Nor do they drink or take drugs while running, because it would hurt their balance and agility. Parkour web sites post daily exercises such as push-ups and other calisthenics that focus on strength and flexibility. Veteran traceurs often urge newbies not to show up for training sessions until they can finish a hard three-mile run.

When it comes to performing parkour, there are fewer predefined movements than in gymnastics and other extreme sports. Parkour is not a sport that’s made up of a list of appropriate “moves”.

Every obstacle a traceur faces presents a unique challenge on how they address it and overcome it effectively and efficiently. This will depend on an individual’s body type, speed and angle of approach, the physical make-up of the obstacle, etc.

Parkour is actually primarily about training the body and mind to be able to react to obstacles appropriately with a technique that works. But many times the technique used defies classification and is not given a name. In many cases, effective parkour techniques depend upon rapid redistribution of body weight and by incorporating the body’s momentum to perform seemingly impossible or difficult body maneuvers quickly.

The adsorption and redistribution of energy is also important, because as body rolls during a landing, it needs to reduce impact forces on the legs and spinal column. This allows a traceur to jump from greater heights than those often considered sensible in other forms of acrobatics and gymnastics. According to David Belle, you want to move in such a way that will help you gain the most ground as if escaping or chasing toward someone or something. Despite this, there are many basic techniques that are emphasized to beginners for their versatility and effectiveness.

Most important are good jumping and landing techniques. The roll, used to limit impact after a drop and to carry an individual’s momentum onward, is often stressed as the most important technique to learn. Many traceurs develop joint problems from too many large drops and rolling incorrectly.

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I looked up “Parkour” on dictionary.com and got results for parker, parky, perkier, and porker, but not for parkour! Spell check suggests park our, parker, and parlor, but doesn’t have parkour. I even looked it up in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the eleventh and latest edition, but it wasn’t there, either. It does exist though, and its popularity is growing.

So what is it? It’s a form of exercise that involves body movement and avoiding obstacles in one’s path by jumping, vaulting, or climbing over them. Its origin is French, but in recent years, has become popular in the United States. The founder of Parkour, David Belle, describes it as “using physical agility and quick thinking to get out of difficult situations, and to be able to go anywhere that one desires.”

The word parkour is derived from the French word parcours, which means course. Belle apparently thought of the idea by watching French soldiers navigate their military obstacle course, or in French, “parcours du combatant.” A participant in parkour is known as a traceur.

Now you might think that people who hurdle over obstacles to get from place to place are considered acrobatic. But, to the true traceur who practices parkour, they are adamant that acrobatics plays no part in parkour. You see, parkour is useful; its purpose is to move from one point to another in the most efficient way. If acrobatics were involved, it would slow down the process, making the traceur move in less than the most efficient manner.

Important to parkour is its mental aspect. Because of its physical nature, there is risk involved and overcoming fear of injury is part of the learning process. Early training involves concentrating on fitness, general agility, and control of movements. Elements of parkour that put your body under extreme stresses should not be attempted until the age of 15 or 16, as the body is still developing. It is best to train outdoors so not to develop poor techniques. Learning with others experienced in parkour is best, but training using videos that show people who have a variety of skills and abilities is helpful as well.

If you’re like me and think that jogging for exercise is boring, perhaps parkour is for you. It sure sounds a lot more fun. You are certain to hear more about parkour as it has been featured in several commercials, music videos, movies, television programs, and even in video games.

It seems that more and more often we are getting articles about parkour. The sport has hit the globe at an alarming rate. It basically involves doing gymnastics in an urban environment, but more and more, it is portrayed as vandalism, as youths wanting to cause nothing more than trouble, but there have been a couple of positive articles as well, explaining what goes on, and the brighter side of the sport.

At the moment, a standard parkour jam consists of meeting at a public place, warming up, and then going to certain spots, working them and training, while still complying with security and not aiming to damage. It is also important to show the true intention of parkour, as invented by David Belle. The sports intention is to get from point A to point B as efficiently and smoothly as possible, but as the Daily Telegraph portrayed it, us Tracuers (French word meaning parkour practitioner) aim to compete with each other to see who can leap off the highest object, and pump as much adrenaline as possible, while tempting security and vandalizing. This is the opposite of the truth. It is a noncompetitive sport, that teaches self discipline. Large jumps, while still a fundamental part of Parkour, do not get attempted in the first couple of years, and still are not attempted unless the situation of the jump has been assessed as much as possible.

Some of the basic moves in parkour are the Kong vault: a move where your aim is to cross a table top that it usually quite long, you dive at the bench at speed, and spring yourself up with your arms to clear it, another move is a wall run, where you run at a wall, of varying heights, from about 1.5m to 4.5m, you get to the wall, jump, swing your arm up, and kick off the wall upwards.

If parkour is seen as the Daily Telegraph portrays it, it will quickly be banned, non grip paint will be applied to rails and walls, and it will be considered as vandalism by the general public, security guards and the police. It will be banned from most places, much like skating has been.
There are still groups around, like PK13 in Adelaide, who go to places that they are clearly not allowed to go, and annoy and tease security on purpose. It is groups like these that will, in the end give parkour a bad title.

In my opinion, the sport will decline in popularity as time goes on, as more and more people join, more idiots will also come along, and it will be given a bad reputation. Groups like PK-13 will expand, and they will be the ones that get the main media attention, because they are “cool” and “rebellious”. The movement of it will also adapt to new conditions, we will think of a new way to climb a non grippy wall if they start fighting the sport. More and more media attention will go towards parkour as well, some good, some bad as usual.