Recreational running is popular enough to warrant millions of dollars in advertising every year and more in consumer purchases, yet many people still find it boring. But what if taking a morning jog didn't mean training for a marathon or wearing short shorts?
Brief Summary
Parkour is a cohesive training discipline and even a way of life for some. It was started in Lisses, France in 1988 by then 15-year old Davide Belle and quickly grew from there. Training with parkour involves utilizing urban surroundings, such as climbing buildings, park benches, playground equipment, and more.
Players use what's available as an outdoor obstacle course to enhance movement. Some may create maps and treat it as a competitive sport, making races and awarding prizes at each level. Others consider it to be play. The key factors are to make use of any urban setting to challenge oneself with freerunning, climbing, and creative movement. Tricks are common as participants, often called practitioners or traceurs, become more advanced.
While there are no official contests, the movement remains strong. It's not hard to find unofficial contests if one is interested in participating. At the more advanced levels, it is not uncommon to see athletes vaulting, rolling, running, and more.
This is a sport that encourages its traceurs to overcome fear and to challenge both the body and mind. While critics may consider it dangerous, active participants will tout the benefits over any associated risks. It's considered an efficient physical training movement and classes can be found in practically any large city around the world.
Games like Minecraft and Roblox have implemented the training sport into their systems as well in what's commonly referred to as webgl. Players can create their own parkour settings and have their characters use them.
What if it meant creative, individual expression through acrobatic moves like leaping from walls and over gaps, ground rolls and precision jumping? Instead of running laps around the community park, you'd navigate through the city, making the urban landscape your personal obstacle course, a playground for strength, freedom, courage and discipline.
Advertisement
That's the basic idea of parkour. And it can be just as exciting and glamorous as it sounds, especially when performed by professionals. But its practitioners, called traceurs (males) and traceuses (females), because of its French origin, see parkour as much more than that.
In this article we'll take a closer look at what parkour is, the philosophy behind it, how it got started and where it's going in the future.
Parkour is an international discipline, sport and hobby that is best described as the art of forward motion in spite of obstacles, or to put it simply: the art of movement. Parkour's chief aim is never to move backward but instead to overcome obstacles fluidly, with strength, originality and speed.
Advertisement