Excellent Parkour

Parkour

A traceur performs an équilibre de chat (cat balance).Parkour (sometimes also abbreviated to PK) or l'art du déplacement (the art of moving) is the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one's path by adapting one's movements to the environment. It is a non-competitive, physical discipline of French origin in which participants run along a route, attempting to negotiate obstacles in the most efficient way possible, as if moving in an emergency situation. Skills such as jumping and climbing, or the more specific parkour moves are employed. The object of parkour is to get from one place to another using only the human body and the objects in the environment. The obstacles can be anything in one's environment, but parkour is often seen practiced in urban areas because of the many suitable public structures available such as buildings and rails.

Parkour practitioners are often called traceurs if male, or traceuses if female.




What is Parkour?

Parkour can be compared to some martial arts, but the traceur is more interested in getting away rather than defending anyone from physical threat; in the fight-or-flight response, parkour is the flight. In September of 2009, American Parkour began a community effort to define parkour. They invited the entire community to post their personal definition of parkour. It was edited into the final version by a committee of American Parkour employees and people outside of American Parkour to ensure that it was truly a community effort. Their result:

Parkour is the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one's path by adapting one's movements to the environment.
Parkour requires... consistent, disciplined training with an emphasis on functional strength, physical conditioning, balance, creativity, fluidity, control, precision, spatial awareness, and looking beyond the traditional use of objects.
Parkour movements typically include... running, jumping, vaulting, climbing, balancing, and quadrupedal movement. Movements from other physical disciplines are often incorporated, but acrobatics or tricking alone do not constitute parkour.
Parkour training focuses on... safety, longevity, personal responsibility, and self-improvement. It discourages reckless behavior, showing off, and dangerous stunts.
Parkour practitioners value... community, humility, positive collaboration, sharing of knowledge, and the importance of play in human life, while demonstrating respect for all people, places, and spaces.
—American Parkour Community Definition
Two primary characteristics of parkour are efficiency and speed. Practitioners take the most direct path around an obstacle as rapidly as that path can be traversed. Developing one's level of spatial awareness is often used to aid development in these areas. Also, efficiency involves avoiding injuries, both short and long term. This idea embodying parkour's unofficial motto is être et durer (to be and to last). Those who are skilled at this activity normally have extremely keen spatial awareness.

Parkour's emphasis on efficiency distinguishes it from the similar practice of free running, which places more emphasis on freedom of movement and creativity.



Basically, Parkour is a natural method to train the human body to be able to move forward quickly making use of the environment that's around us at any given time. This 'art of displacement' requires neither specific structures nor accessories for its practice. The body is the only tool. It's an athletic discipline accessible to all, because it combines all the natural skills of the human body: running, jumping, climbing, etc. It's a discipline that permits exploration of the potential offered by your body. It's about being able to face the obstacles with which you are presented, whether they be in the natural environment or in the urban environment, in a search for movement that combines effectiveness and control. The necessary equipment is simply a T-shirt, a pair of light jogging-type trousers, and a pair of running shoes.

Steps

1. Get in shape! Being in shape is the most important aspect of parkour. If you are not in shape, then you will get seriously injured. You can get in shape by doing 5 simple things: running a lot, doing push ups, pull ups, dips, and core strength training. These will all improve your endurance in a parkour situation, and help you not to get injured, if you ever have to try something risky, like a fall.

2. Buy your clothes. However, know that there is no perfect pair of shoes or pants or shorts. It's simply what you can move in freely and won't hinder any movement. But some recommendations are:

* Climbing pants, since they allow you to move freely, and are durable, fit well, and don't get in your way. Gramacci, Prana stretch Zion pants (very good), North Face, and Arborwear are recommended. Jeans are not recommended, as they are too stiff and do not allow enough freedom of movement.
* Buy shoes that are good for running (no skating shoes), that can grip various surfaces, have good shock absorption (forefoot absorption is great!), and you may want good toe bumpers, since it cushions those cat leaps. The shoes must be snug or else you're greatly increasing your risk of injury on landings. Nike Air Pegasus, Adidas Nova, and Montrail Masai are good.
* Shirts don't have to be anything fancy, but it's good to have a sweat wicking type. REI and running shoe stores have these. Long sleeves may be considered to prevent scrapes while first learning.

3. Start slowly, so that you will not get injured. Even if you think that you are not getting hurt, you may need to think of some of the long term effects of the things you are doing to your body. You need to condition and make your body used to doing certain things without over-stretching or bruising it.

4. Learn the shoulder roll: the shoulder roll is one of the most basic but useful tools in your parkour tool box. A shoulder roll is a forward roll diagonal across your back over the shoulder. So if you are a doing one on the right side you would bring your arm close to your body and tuck your head and neck close to your chest, and roll over your right shoulder and coming up onto your feet at the end. The reason you roll diagonally is to reduce the damage to your back and spine. Shoulder rolls are very important because they reduce the impact of any kind of landing, by converting the downward motion of a fall into forward motion, where you can easily begin to run again.

5. After you have learned the basic shoulder roll, practice vaults. These help you clear obstacles easily and in speed. A vault should essentially keep your forward motion going while you are clearing an obstacle.

6. After that, start training jumps from about 3 ft. You should never jump off anything higher than you yourself can jump. This is because if you repeatedly land on your legs from extensive heights you will damage your knees, but if you train 1000 low falls, than you will be able to do 1 high fall.

7. Practice always, and after you have mastered those three basic things above, move on to harder, and more complicated moves that can eventually help you clear obstacles more quickly and efficiently. You can find all kinds of moves










David Belle : History

Belle family

David Belle, parkour founder, at The New Yorker Festival.Main articles: Raymond Belle and David Belle
Raymond Belle was born in French Indochina (now Vietnam). His father died during the First Indochina War and Raymond was separated from his mother during the division of Vietnam in 1954. He was taken by the French Army in Da Lat and received a military education and training that shaped his character.

After the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Raymond was repatriated to France and completed his military education in 1958. At age 19, his dedication to fitness helped him serve in Paris's regiment of sapeurs-pompiers (the French fire service).

With his athletic ability, Raymond became the regiment's champion rope-climber and joined the regiment's elite team, composed of the unit's fittest and most agile firefighters. Its members were the ones called for the most difficult and dangerous rescue missions.

Lauded for his coolness, courage, and self-sacrifice, Raymond played a key role in the Parisian firefighters' first helicopter-borne operation. His many rescues, medals, and exploits gave him a reputation of being an exceptional pompier and inspired the next young generation,especially his son, David Belle.

Born in a firefighter's family, David was influenced by stories of heroism. Raymond introduced his son David to obstacle course training and the méthode naturelle. David participated in activities such as martial arts and gymnastics and sought to apply his athletic prowess for some practical purpose. At age 17, David left school seeking freedom and action. He continued to develop his strength and dexterity in order to be useful in life, as Raymond had advised him.


Practically since the inception of parkour in 1997, it has been used in cinema to aid in great storytelling. There are twenty basic moves in parkour, and while in homemade parkour videos we don’t often see them performed in combos of two or greater (out of sheer complexity!), through the magic of editing, an entire sequence of moves can be cut together to look like one non-stop stunt sequence, often to breathtaking effect. Parkour founder David Belle has said the philosophy behind parkour is “You want to move in such a way…as to help you gain the most ground on…something, whether escaping from it or chasing toward it.” and this philosophy lends itself perfectly to the narrative structure of a great action film or commercial. Here are some of the best parkour moments in films and commercials.

One of the first to leverage the spectacle of parkour in cinema was founder David Belle himself. In 1997 Belle created a group of traceurs (parkour practitioners), free-runners, and street acrobats called Yamakasi. Inspired by this group, Luc Besson scripted a heist film by the same name in which the Yamakasi clan rob from the rich to pay for a heart implant for a young boy injured while imitating their stunts. Here’s a couple of thrilling sequences where they’re being chased by Doberman Pinschers and over the rooftops (a popular parkour theme) by cops.










10 examples of Parkour in film and television




YAMAKASI

The success of Yamakasi led, understandably, to a sequel, Les Fils du Vent, in which the Yamakasi crew travel to Bangkok, Thailand to fight the Yakuza. In the opening credits, Yamakasi play a (highly competitive) game of capture-the-weathervane ball across the rooftops of the city. Check out some of the Capoeira-style soccer kicks. We’ll see more of that later in this post.


Les Fils Du Vent titles:
PARKOUR BALL

Perhaps the best known example of parkour in film is from Banlieue 13 (District B13), a Luc Besson-produced action flick about a government conspiracy to nuke the most gang-infested ghetto in Paris. In the film’s riviting opening, David Belle narrowly escapes the persistent and agile thugs sent to get him. Watch how fluidly he slips from one floor to the next!


BANLIEUE 13:

One of David Belle’s fellow traceurs in the group Yamakasi was Sabastien Foucan. He’s also one of the founders of free running, a discipline similar to parkour, but with the focus being more on the movement aesthetics (although they are sometimes considered interchangeable). In the opening of Casino Royale, Foucan’s character, Mollaka gives James Bond a chase that would be an acrophobic’s worst nightmare up an unfinished construction site in the Bahamas.



CASINO ROYALE:

Most people probably wouldn’t expect to see parkour in a film by the late Anthony Minghella, director of The English Patient and Cold Mountain. In 2006’s Breaking and Entering, Rafi Gavron plays Miro, a traceur hired to break into architectural firms. Here’s a compilation of scenes of some of the impressive stunt work from this film.


Breaking and Entering:

As soon as advertisers realized they could make a buck or two by exploiting the panache of parkour they wasted no time doing so. To its credit however, Nike went one step further in its “Presto” campaign by approaching parkour with a much-needed humorous tone, proving it didn’t have to be pigeon-holed into the action genre.

Here’s David Belle (again), going above and beyond the call of chivalry for a very fickle lover, who’s got a little surprise for him.



Nike “First Love” commercial:

Now it’s Sébastien Foucan’s turn in the spotlight, fleeing for his life through city streets and rooftops, from the angriest chicken ever.


Nike “Angry Chicken” commercial:

The traceur featured below is Chase Armitage, a key member of a crew called 3Run. Chase has been engaging in parkour and freerunning since he was 14, and it shows in this XBox spot. It’s amazing how the high-speed photography demonstrates how fluid and graceful moves which normally occur within a fraction of a second can truly be. The spoken text also elegantly captures the spirit behind freerunning.



Xbox “Slip” commercial:

And once again, here’s the incomparable David Belle, a little older, yet still in phenomenally good shape, performing some pretty nifty acrobatics in this BBC One commercial. Ever the iconoclast, Belle improvises his own way to beat the rush hour traffic home to watch some telly.


BBC “Rush Hour” commercial:

Finally, not technically parkour, here’s a commercial featuring a particular type of street acrobatics known as Capoeira. Capoeira originated in Brazil and is distinguished by its fluid kicks, sweeps, and headbutts. While some of the ball-passing has probably been executed in CGI, the acrobatics themeselves are nevertheless impressive to watch.


Fifa 3 commercial: