Parkour

Parkour (French pronunciation: ​[paʁˈkuʁ]) is a holistic training discipline using movement that developed from military obstacle course training. Practitioners aim to get from A to B in the most efficient way possible.They do this using only their bodies and their surroundings to propel themselves; furthermore, they try to maintain as much momentum as is possible in a safe manner. Parkour can include obstacle courses, running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping, rolling, quadrupedal movement, and the like, depending on what movement is deemed most suitable for the given situation.

Parkour is a non-competitive activity, which can be practiced alone or with others. It can be practiced in any location, but is usually practiced in urban spaces. Parkour involves seeing one’s environment in a new way, and imagining the potentialities for movement around it.

Developed in France, primarily by Raymond Belle, David Belle, and Sébastien Foucan during the late 1980s, Parkour became popular in the late 1990s and 2000s through films, documentaries, and advertisements featuring these practitioners and others.

Parkour’s training methods have inspired a range of other activities, including freerunning and l’art du déplacement. Although their creators define them as separate activities, practitioners and non-practitioners alike often find it difficult to discern the differences between them.

Etymology

“Le parcours” was the French phrase passed down to David Belle from his father Raymond Belle. The term derives from “parcours du combattant”, the classic obstacle-course method of military training proposed by Georges Hébert, the term “le parcours” was used by Raymond to encompass all of his training including climbing, jumping, running, balancing, and the other methods he undertook in his personal athletic advancement. One day when David Belle was on a film set, he showed his ‘Speed Air Man’ video to Hubert Koundé, who suggested to change the “c” of “parcours” to a “k” because it was more dynamic and stronger, and to remove the silent “s” for the same reason.[citation needed] Belle liked the idea and officially changed the name of his discipline to “parkour”.[citation needed]

A practitioner of parkour is often called a traceur, with the feminine form being traceuse. They are nouns derived from the French verb tracer, which normally means “to trace”, as in “tracing a path”, in reference to drawing. The verb tracer used familiarly means: “to buck up”. The term traceur was originally the name of a parkour group headed by David Belle which included Sébastien Foucan and Stephane Vigroux.

A jam refers to a meeting of traceurs, involving training lasting anywhere from hours to several days, often with people from different cities. The first parkour jam was organized in July 2002 by Romain Drouet, with a dozen people including Sébastien Foucan and Stephane Vigroux.

History

In Western Europe, a forerunner of parkour was French naval officer Georges Hébert, who before World War I promoted athletic skill based on the models of indigenous tribes he had met in Africa. He noted, “their bodies were splendid, flexible, nimble, skillful, enduring, and resistant but yet they had no other tutor in gymnastics but their lives in nature.” His rescue efforts during the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée on Saint-Pierre, Martinique, reinforced his belief that athletic skill must be combined with courage and altruism. Hébert became a physical education tutor at the college of Reims in France. Hébert set up a “méthode naturelle” (natural method) session consisting of ten fundamental groups: walking, running, jumping, quadrupedal movement, climbing, balancing, throwing, lifting, self-defense, swimming, which are part of three main forces: During World War I and World War II, Hébert’s teaching continued to expand, becoming the standard system of French military education and training. Thus, Hébert was one of the proponents of “parcours”, an obstacle course, which is now standard in military training and which led to the development of civilian fitness trails and confidence courses.

Born in 1939 in Vietnam, Raymond Belle was the son of a French doctor and Vietnamese mother. He was cut off from his parents by the struggle for independence and sent to a military orphanage at the age of 7. Isolated there, he had to become stronger in order to survive. He took it upon himself to train harder and longer than everyone else in order to never be a victim. At night, when everyone else was asleep, he would be outside running or climbing trees. He would use the military obstacle courses in secret, but he also created courses of his own that tested his endurance, his strength and his flexibility. Doing this enabled him not only to survive the hardships he experienced during his childhood, but also eventually to thrive. In 1954, he returned to France and remained in military education until 1958, when someone who was impressed by his abilities suggested that he join the Paris fire-fighters.

Raymond’s son, David Belle, was born in 1973. He experimented with gymnastics and athletics, but became increasingly disaffected with both school and the sports clubs. As he got older though, he started to read the newspaper clippings that told of his father’s exploits and got more and more curious about what had enabled his father to accomplish these feats. Through conversations with his father, he realized that what he really wanted was a means to develop skills that would be useful to him in life, rather than just training to kick a ball or perform moves in a padded, indoor environment.

Eventually, through conversations with his father, he learned about this way of training that his father called ‘parcours’. He heard his father talk of the many repetitions he had done in order to find the best way of doing things. What he learned was that for his father, training was not a game but something vital which enabled him to survive and to protect the people he cared about. David realized that this was what he had been searching for and so he began training in the same way. After a time, he found it far more important to him than schooling and he gave up his other commitments to focus all his time on his training.

Initially David trained on his own, however later he found other people (including his cousins) who had similar desires and they began to train together. The group at that time included David Belle, Sébastien Foucan, Châu Belle Dinh, Williams Belle, Yann Hnautra, Laurent Piemontesi, Guylain N’Guba Boyeke, Malik Diouf, and Charles Perriére, amongst others.

In the late 1990s, after David’s brother sent pictures and video to a French TV programme, the popularity of parkour began to increase. A series of television programmes in various countries subsequently featured video footage of the group, and as the popularity increased, they began to get more and more offers. Eventually, the original group split apart to pursue different goals, some staying with the discipline and others leaving. The number of practitioners in total though kept on increasing and parkour’s popularity began to spread around the globe through television, feature film and increasing use of online video-sharing methods.

Philosophy and theories

According to Williams Belle, the philosophies and theories behind parkour are an integral aspect of the art, one that many non-practitioners have never been exposed to. Belle trains people because he wants “it to be alive” and for “people to use it”. Châu Belle explains it is a “type of freedom” or “kind of expression”; that parkour is “only a state of mind” rather than a set of actions, and that it is about overcoming and adapting to mental and emotional obstacles as well as physical barriers.

A newer convention of parkour philosophy has been the idea of “human reclamation”. Andy (Animus of Parkour North America) clarifies it as “a means of reclaiming what it means to be a human being. It teaches us to move using the natural methods that we should have learned from infancy. It teaches us to touch the world and interact with it, instead of being sheltered by it.”It is as much as a part of truly learning the physical art as well as being able to master the movements, it gives you the ability to overcome your fears and pains and reapply this to life as you must be able to control your mind in order to master the art of parkour.”

Academic research on parkour has tended to describe how parkour provides a novel way of interacting with the (urban) environment, that challenges the use and meaning of urban space, metropolitan life, and embodiment.

Traceur Dylan Baker says “Parkour also influences one’s thought processes by enhancing self-confidence and critical thinking skills that allow one to overcome everyday physical and mental obstacles”. A study by Neuropsychiatrie de l’Enfance et de l’Adolescence (Neuropsychiatry of Childhood and Adolescence) in France reflects that traceurs seek more excitement and leadership situations than do gymnastic practitioners.

A campaign was started on 1 May 2007 by the Parkour.NET portal to preserve parkour’s philosophy against sport competition and rivalry. In the words of Erwan LeCorre: “Competition pushes people to fight against others for the satisfaction of a crowd and/or the benefits of a few business people by changing its mindset. Parkour is unique and cannot be a competitive sport unless it ignores its altruistic core of self development. If parkour becomes a sport, it will be hard to seriously teach and spread parkour as a non-competitive activity. And a new sport will be spread that may be called parkour, but that won’t hold its philosophical essence anymore.” Red Bull’s sponsored athlete for parkour, Ryan Doyle, has said, “Sometimes people ask, ‘Who is the best at parkour?’ and it is because they don’t understand what Parkour is; ‘Who is the best?’ is what you would say to a sport, and Parkour is not a sport, it is an art, it’s a discipline. That’s like saying, ‘What’s the best song in the world?'” This seems to be a highly consensual opinion of many professional traceurs who view parkour as a style of life more than a set of tricks, as has been popularized by YouTube and most media exposure.

In an interview with the press, David Belle explains that parkour is a training method for warriors. “So many people try to train easy ‘Come do parkour! It’s really cool!’ But if tomorrow I made you do real training, you would end up crying. That’s what you need to know: you are going to cry, you are going to bleed and you are going to sweat like never before.” Belle is an influential proponent of discipline and control in parkour, saying, “Precision is all about being measured,” and going on to describe parkour as an art that requires huge amounts of repetition and practice to master. Parkour to Belle is a method of self refinement and is to be used for learning to control and focus oneself.

A point has been made about the similarities between the martial arts philosophy of Bruce Lee and parkour. In an interview with The New Yorker, David Belle acknowledges the influence of Lee’s thinking: “There’s a quote by Bruce Lee that’s my motto: ‘There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. A man must constantly exceed his level.’ If you’re not better than you were the day before, then what are you doing—what’s the point?”.

“If two roads open up before you, always take the most difficult one. Because you know you can travel the easy one.” ―Raymond Belle

“With parkour, I often say, ‘Once is never’. In other words, someone can manage a jump one time but it doesn’t mean anything. It can be luck or chance. When you make a jump, you have to do it at least three times to be sure you can actually do it. It’s an unavoidable rule. Do it the hard way and stop lying to yourself. When you come for training, you have to train. Even if it means doing the same jump fifty or a hundred times. ―David Belle”

Movement

There is no official list of “moves” in parkour, however the style in which practitioners move often sets them apart from others. Some examples of the ways in which practitioners move:

• running towards a high wall and then jumping and pushing off the wall with a foot to reach the top of the wall
• moving from a position hanging from a wall-top or ledge, to standing on the top or vaulting over to the other side
• Vaulting over obstacles
• jumping and landing accurately with the feet on small or narrow obstacles
• jumping and catching a ledge with the hands while the feet land on the vertical surface below.
• using a rolling motion to help absorb large impacts

Risks

Trespassing

Parkour is not widely practiced in dedicated public facilities. Although efforts are being made to create places for it, many traceurs do not like the idea as it is contradictory to parkour’s values of adaptation, creativity and freedom. Traceurs practice parkour in both rural and urban areas such as gyms, parks, playgrounds, offices, and abandoned structures. Concerns have been raised regarding trespassing, damage of property, and use of inappropriate places such as cemeteries. A few city councils have even posted notices banning parkour in some areas – although the legal enforceability of notices like these have yet to be tested. However, most traceurs will take care of their training spots and will remove themselves quickly and quietly from a public place if asked.[citation needed] Along with helping others, another value of parkour is to respect people and places. One of the first campaigns to preserve this sort of philosophy is the ‘Leave No Trace’ project, promoting to traceurs the importance of training safe, respecting the environment and the people around them.

In most countries the law does not automatically condemn passage on private land or climbing enclosures, and it is often a civil offense rather than a criminal offense. Additionally, many countries have freedom to roam laws giving the right to passage on private property, according to some limits.

Injuries

Concerns have also been raised by law enforcement and fire and rescue teams of the risk in jumping off high buildings. They argue that practitioners are needlessly risking damage to both themselves and rooftops by practicing at height, with police forces calling for practitioners to stay off the rooftops. Some practitioners of Parkour agree that such behaviour should be discouraged.

Because parkour philosophy is about learning to control oneself in interaction with the environment, leading parkour experts tend to view physical injury as a deviation from true parkour. Daniel Ilabaca, co-founder of the World Parkour and Freerunning Federation, is quoted as saying, “Thinking you’re going to fail at something gives you a higher risk of doing just that. Committing to something you’re thinking or knowing you will land gives you a higher chance of landing or completing the task.”

American traceur Mark Toorock says that injuries are rare “because participants rely not on what they can’t control – wheels or the icy surfaces of snowboarding and skiing – but their own hands and feet,” but Lanier Johnson, executive director of the American Sports Medicine Institute, notes that many of the injuries are not reported. When injuries do occur, many members in the parkour community encourage pursuing the most scientifically sound method to recovery and future prevention.

Equipment

There is no equipment required, although practitioners normally train wearing light, non restrictive casual clothing:

• If anything is worn on the upper body, it is usually a light garment such as a T-shirt, sleeveless shirt, or crop top;
• Most commonly sweatpants are used on the lower body, although some wear tracksuit bottoms or shorts.

Comfortable running shoes, ones that are generally light, with good grip and flexibility are encouraged. Various sport-shoes manufacturers, such as Nike, with its Nike Free shoes, have developed shoes specifically for parkour and freerunning; and many other companies around the world have started offering parkour-specific products.[citation needed] Some practitioners use thin athletic gloves to protect the hands; most do not, preferring the increased grip and tactile feedback. Since Parkour is closely related to méthode naturelle, practitioners sometimes train barefooted to be able to move efficiently without depending on their gear. Some traceurs also like the feiyue martial arts shoes[citation needed] for their light weight, thin sole, and flexibility. David Belle notes: “bare feet are the best shoes!”

Popular culture

There have been a few documentaries about parkour on major television networks. Jump London is a 2003 documentary which explains some of the background to parkour and culminated with Sébastien Foucan, Johann Vigroux, and Jérôme Ben Aoues demonstrating their parkour skills. Jump London changed the presence of parkour in the UK almost overnight and is widely credited for inspiring a new generation of traceurs. It was followed by Jump Britain in 2005. The Australian version of 60 Minutes broadcast a segment about parkour on 16 September 2007, featuring Foucan and Stephane Vigroux.

There have also been a number of films featuring elements of parkour. After including parkour practitioners in a chase sequence in the film Taxi 2 in 1998, French director/producer Luc Besson produced the 2001 film, Yamakasi, featuring members of the original Yamakasi group, and its sequel Les fils du vent in 2004. Also in 2004, Besson wrote Banlieue 13, another feature film involving advanced chase sequences, starring David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli, followed by the sequel District 13: Ultimatum in 2009. In 2006 the film Casino Royale featured Sébastien Foucan in a chase taking place early in the movie, sparking renewed media interest in parkour. Along with The Bourne Ultimatum, Casino Royale is credited with starting a new wave of Parkour-inspired stunts in Western film and television. Parkour practitioners also feature prominently in the film Breaking and Entering, in which two of the characters climb buildings and run over rooftops to burgle an office in Kings Cross, London. Parkour was also involved in the film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, where David Belle was hired as choreographer for some scenes in the film and appears in the DVD and Blu-ray featurettes. Aamir Khan learned Parkour for his role in the 2013 movie Dhoom 3.

The webcomic Schlock Mercenary makes frequent reference to “Parkata Urbatsu” which is said to have grown “out of the ancient disciplines of parkour, urbobatics, and youtubing. It is a martial art that focuses on both pursuit and escape in developed environments, with an eye towards the aesthetic.”

A number of video games include aspects of parkour as major gameplay elements. In the Assassin’s Creed series of games, Altaïr, Ezio, Connor and Edward make heavy use of parkour movement, though it is named freerunning in the game. Crackdown and Crackdown 2 include an emphasis on gripping and vaulting from ledges and protruding objects, which are designed to make players feel fully in control of their own movement, and by extension fully in control of their environment. Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland allows the character to use several movement techniques while not on the skateboard. In this game as well, it is referred to as freerunning. Mirror’s Edge is a game heavily inspired by parkour- the core gameplay consists of efficiently moving around buildings, rooftops, and other obstacles, and made movement itself the goal. Tron Evolution’s basic movements and combat were based on parkour and capoeira.

Military training

Although parkour itself grew out of military obstacle-course training, it has since developed separately. After the attention that parkour received following the 2006 film Casino Royale, military forces around the world began looking for ways to incorporate elements from parkour into military training. The British Royal Marines hired parkour athletes to train their members. Colorado Parkour began a project to introduce elements from parkour into the U.S. military and some members of the United States Marine Corps have tried parkour.

Derivative terminologies and disciplines

In 1997, David Belle’s brother Jean-Francois asked the group if they wanted to perform for the public in a firefighter show in Paris. The group decided to name themselves “Yamakasi” (meaning “strong man, strong spirit”) for the performance. For the purposes of that performance, Sébastien Foucan came up with a name for what they were doing: “L’art du déplacement” (French for “the art of movement” or “the art of displacement). The firefighter performance caused both positive and negative attention. Some members in the group were later concerned how the public would view their discipline since the performance did not demonstrate all the aspects of it, such as their hard training, and their values and ethics. During this time there was also an interest conflict within the group. Sébastien Foucan wanted to teach more rather than to train more, and David Belle had the ambition to become an actor. This caused the group to break up as David and Sébastien chose to leave the group. David Belle’s friend Hubert Kunde suggested that he should replace the ‘c’ in “parcours” with a ‘k’, and drop the ‘s’. From this moment on, David’s method of training and practicing became known as “parkour”. The seven remaining Yamakasi members would keep using the term “l’art du déplacement”. Sébastien Foucan would keep using the term “parkour” for several years.

In September, 2003, the documentary Jump London, starring Sébastien Foucan, was released. In the documentary, the term “freerunning” was used as an attempt to translate “parkour”, in order to make it more appealing to the English-speaking audience. Foucan decided to keep using the term “freerunning” to describe his own separate discipline.

The remaining seven Yamakasi members kept using the term “l’art du déplacement”, also not wanting to associate it to closely with parkour. Similar to Sébastien’s freerunning, l’art du déplacement was also a more participatory approach that was not all hardcore but also focused on making the teaching more accessible. David Belle kept the term “parkour”, and stated that the group contributed to the development of it, but that his father was the source of his motivation and that he verbally communicated this method to only him.

Both parkour and freerunning encompass the ideas of overcoming obstacles and self-expression, in freerunning, the greater emphasis is on self-expression. Although the differences between the disciplines are often hard to discern, practitioners tend to aspire to parkour and describe themselves as traceurs rather than as freerunners.

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