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Parkour
Developed by French soldiers in Vietnam based on the principles on Herbertism, and later popularised and developed upon by David Belle, parkour is an art/discipline focused on moving quickly, efficiently and with a purpose.
Traceurs and traceuse (male and female practitioners of parkour) train to make their body useful in all situations. To overcome obstacles ranging from simple railings to large gaps and drops both quickly and in safety. True parkour is practiced with a goal in mind - possibly to escape attackers, or even in a rescue situation. Parkour is not about risk-taking or daredevil stunts, but rather focus, discipline and humility. As it is focused on efficiency, movements such as flips and spins are not part of parkour.
Quoted from parkour.net - "An art to help you pass any obstacle; to go from point A to point B using only the possibilities of the human body."
Quoted from Cali meets David Belle, on parkour.net - "At the physical end, Parkour is getting over all the obstacles in your path as you would in an emergency situation. You want to move in such a way, with any movement, that will help you gain the most ground on someone/something as if escaping from someone/something or chasing toward someone/something. Also, wherever you go, you must be able to get back. If you go from A to B, you need to be able to get back from B to A. You don't need to do the same "move," but just get back."
Freerunning
The term "freerunning" was created by famous parkour practitioner Sebastien Foucan, and has come to encompass a mixture of parkour and tricking. Parkour movements may be combined with flips and tricks, and trades a focus on pure movement and efficiency for self-expression and experimentation. The comparison between freerunning and the artistic katas of martial arts has been made in the past, where elements of purist martial arts are combined with tricking to stretch the boundaries of the human body. Freerunning has also been seen as "performance-parkour", as extraneous movements can be added to parkour to better catch the attention of an audience and entertain, or simply to challenge one's self.
Freerunning and parkour are often trained in tandem by many practitioners.
Tricking
A sport/discipline which focuses on using gymnastics and martial arts-esque techniques in tandem to create a stunning display of movement and skill. Trickers jsut need a piece of flat ground to do their work. People can practice tricking for performance purposes or for personal growth. Can also been seen as "urban gymnastics". Flips, twists and saults are considered tricking techniques.
- Definitions by The pkaus Team (Swift, ruzkin, GreenDream, JZSyd and Jerds), March 2006
Parkour/Art du Deplacement
The first name for the discipline, born in France in the 1980s, was Art du Deplacement; best translated in English as the Art of Movement. Over time other names were used to describe it, including Parkour - derived from the French parcours, meaning 'route' or 'course' - and later Freerunning. However, the name has never been as important as the methods and spirit of practise which remain at its core today. For the sake of convenience, these pages will refer to the discipline as Parkour.
Parkour focuses on developing the fundamental attributes required for movement, which include balance, strength, dynamism, endurance, precision, spatial awareness and creative vision. It is a way of training one’s body and mind in order to be as completely functional, effective and liberated as possible in the physical realm, and a way of thinking based on rigorous self-discipline, autonomous action and self-will.
Beyond this simple explanation, however, parkour is a discipline of self-improvement on all levels, an art that reveals to the practitioner his or her own physical and mental limits and simultaneously offers a method to surpass them.
A practitioner of parkour aims to be self-reliant and physically capable; fit, strong and healthy; honest and sincere; disciplined; focussed; creative and always useful and helpful to others.
- As defined by Parkour Generations, 2008
More information on how to begin your journey into the world of parkour/freerunning can be found here: Getting Started. |
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