Parkour facts for kids
An athlete performing parkour
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| Also known as | PK |
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| Focus | Obstacle passing |
| Country of origin | France |
| Creator | David Belle Yamakasi |
| Ancestor arts |
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| Descendant arts | Freerunning |
| Olympic sport | Not currently; IOC discussions underway |
Parkour is an athletic training discipline or sport in which practitioners (called traceurs) attempt to get from point A to point B in the fastest and most efficient way possible. Traceurs do not use any assisting equipment and perform artistic-gymnastic maneuvers. Parkour roots in military obstacle course training and martial arts. It includes running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping, plyometrics, rolling, and quadrupedal movement—whatever is suitable for a given situation. Parkour is an activity that can be practiced alone or with others. Though it can be done anywhere, it is usually carried out in urban spaces.
Although practitioners of Parkour often perform flips and other acrobatic movements, these are not considered a part of Parkour proper.
The practice of similar movements had existed in communities around the world for centuries, notably in Africa and China. The Chinese tradition (qinggong) was popularized by Hong Kong action cinema (notably Jackie Chan) during the 1970s to 1980s. Parkour as a type of movement was later established by David Belle when he and others founded the Yamakasi in the 1990s and initially called it l'art du déplacement. The discipline was popularised in the 1990s and 2000s through films, documentaries, video games, and advertisements.
Contents
Etymology
The word parkour derives from parcours du combattant (obstacle course), the classic obstacle course method of military training proposed by Georges Hébert. Raymond Belle used the term "les parcours" that included all of his training - climbing, jumping, running, balancing, and the other methods he undertook in his personal athletic advancement. His son, David, further developed his father's methods and achieved success as a stuntman, and one day on a film set showed his 'Speed Air Man' video to Hubert Koundé. Koundé suggested he change the "c" of "parcours" to a "k" because it was stronger and more dynamic, and to remove the silent "s" for the same reason, forming "parkour".
A practitioner of parkour is 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 hurry up". The term traceur was originally the name of a parkour group headed by David Belle which included Sébastien Foucan and Stéphane 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 organised in July 2002 by Romain Drouet, with a dozen people including Sébastien Foucan and Stéphane Vigroux.
History
Origins
The practice of similar movements have existed in various communities around the world for centuries prior to the foundation of a parkour movement, which was influenced by these earlier traditions. Such athletic traditions had existed among various indigenous tribes in Africa for centuries. A similar discipline in Chinese culture is qinggong, a Chinese martial arts training technique that also dates back centuries. It was notably taught at the Peking Opera School in the 20th century; the school's most notable students are the Seven Little Fortunes, including Sammo Hung and most famously Jackie Chan, providing a basis for their acrobatic stunt work in Hong Kong action cinema from the 1970s onwards.
Georges Hébert
A forerunner of parkour in Western Europe was French naval officer Georges Hébert. Defore World War I he promoted athletic skill based on the models of indigenous tribes he had met in Africa. Hébert became a physical education tutor at the college of Reims in France and set up a "méthode naturelle" (natural method) session that consisted of ten fundamental groups: walking, running, jumping, quadrupedal movement, climbing, balancing, throwing, lifting, self-defence, and swimming. During World War I and World War II, teaching continued to expand and eventually became the standard system of French military education and training. Inspired by Hébert, a Swiss architect developed a "parcours du combattant"—military obstacle course—the first of the courses that are now standard in military training.
Raymond and David Belle
Born in 1939 in Vietnam, Raymond Belle was the son of a French physician and Vietnamese mother. During the First Indochina War, his father died and he was separated from his mother, after which he was sent to a military orphanage in Da Lat at the age of seven. He took it upon himself to train harder and longer than everyone else in order never to 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, and also created courses of his own that tested his endurance, strength, and flexibility. This enabled him not only to survive the hardships he experienced during his childhood, but also eventually to thrive. After the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, he returned to France and remained in military education until the age of 19, when he joined the Paris Fire Brigade, a French Army unit.
Raymond's son, David Belle, was born in 1973. He experimented with gymnastics and athletics but did not like both school and the sports clubs. As he got older, he learned of his father's exploits. David talked to his father and realised 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 an indoor environment.
From his father David learned about the way of training that his father called "parcours". He understood 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 realised 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.
Yamakasi
David initially trained on his own, and after moving to Lisses, found other young men (including his cousins) who had similar desires, and they began to train together. The group eventually included David Belle, Sébastien Foucan, Châu Belle Dinh, Williams Belle, Yann Hnautra, Laurent Piemontesi, Guylain N'Guba Boyeke, Malik Diouf, and Charles Perrière. The group began calling themselves the Yamakasi, from the Lingala ya makási, meaning strong in one's person, or "strong man, strong spirit" (see § Name and split below).
The group drew inspiration from Asian culture and Asian martial arts, notably the acrobatics of Jackie Chan such as qinggong displays in his Hong Kong action films, and the training philosophy of Bruce Lee, who they considered to be the "unofficial president" of their group. The group also was influenced by the Japanese shōnen manga and anime series Dragon Ball, in which the heroes attained extraordinary abilities through hard work, as well as the martial arts films of Belgian actor Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Discipline
The group put themselves through challenges that forced them to find the physical and mental strength to succeed. This included training without food or water, or sleeping on the floor without a blanket to learn to endure the cold. For example, no one in the group was permitted to be late for training, as it would hold back the whole group. If any member completed a challenge, everyone else had to do the same thing. If any member hurt himself during or after the execution of a movement, the movement was deemed a failure. A movement executed only once was not considered an achievement; only with repetition was the challenge complete. Every movement had to be repeated at least ten times in a row without the traceur having to push his limits or sustaining any injury. If any mistake was made by any traceur in the group everyone had to start all over again.
Name and split
In 1997, David Belle's brother Jean-François invited the group to perform for the public in a firefighter show in Paris. Jean-François sent pictures and video of the group to a French TV programme, and the popularity of parkour began to increase. A series of television programmes in various countries subsequently featured video footage of the group, and they began to get more requests for performances. During this time, conflicting interests arose within the group. Sébastien Foucan wanted to teach more rather than to train more, and David Belle had the ambition to become an actor. David and Sébastien chose to leave the group, and used the name "parkour" to describe their activity (see § Etymology above). The seven remaining Yamakasi members continued to use the term l'art du déplacement.
Organizations
International parkour organizations include the World Freerunning and Parkour Federation, established in 2007, who have worked with MTV to produce parkour-related shows.
International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) added parkour as one of their disciplines in 2017, despite much opposition, including the establishment of Parkour Earth to represent various national organizations in opposition to the gymnastics organization. The FIG program includes Speed-Run (Sprint) and Freestyle events. The first event in the FIG Parkour World Cup was held on 6–8 April 2018. The first Parkour World Championships were scheduled to take place at Hiroshima on 3–5 April 2020, but were postponed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parkour debuted at the 2022 World Games.
Practice
Movement
While there is no official list of "moves" in parkour, the style in which practitioners move often sets them apart from others, and there are a number of named movements that are characteristic, for example:
- "Parkour roll": Rolling to absorb impacts from larger drops, moving diagonally over a shoulder to convert momentum from vertical to horizontal.
- "Precision jump": Jumping and landing accurately with the feet on small or narrow obstacles.
- "Arm jump": Jumping and landing feet-first on a vertical surface, catching the horizontal top with the hands.
- "Wall run": Running toward a high wall and then jumping and pushing off the wall with a foot to reach the top of the wall.
- "Climb up": Moving from a position hanging from a wall-top or ledge, to standing on the top or vaulting over to the other side.
Risks
Trespassing
Parkour is not widely practiced in dedicated public facilities. Traceurs practice parkour in both rural and urban areas such as gyms, parks, playgrounds, offices, and abandoned structures. Many parkour organizations around the globe support the Leave No Trace initiative, promoting safety, respect for the spaces used and their other users, and sometimes includes picking up rubbish to leave areas in better condition than they were found.
Injuries
In a survey of parkour-related emergency department visits in the United States between 2009 and 2015, most injuries were reportedly caused by landing from rooftops or from striking objects.
Entertainment
Parkour has become a popular element in action sequences, with film directors hiring parkour practitioners as stunt performers. The first director to do so was Luc Besson, for the film Taxi 2 in 1998, followed by Yamakasi in 2001 featuring members of the original Yamakasi group, and its sequel Les fils du vent in 2004. Also in 2004, Besson wrote District 13, another feature film involving advanced parkour chase sequences, starring David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli, followed by the sequel District 13: Ultimatum in 2009 and remade in English as Brick Mansions in 2014.
In 2006 the James Bond 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 (2007), Casino Royale is credited with starting a new wave of Parkour-inspired stunts in Western film and television. Parkour was prominent in Live Free or Die Hard (2007), again with stuntman/actor Cyril Raffaelli, and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), choreographed by David Belle. Several films besides Yamakasi are about thieves who use parkour, such as Breaking and Entering (2006), Run (2013), and Tracers (2015). The 2011 film Freerunner is about eight freerunners racing through a city for survival. The 2019 Netflix film 6 Underground featured several parkour scenes choreographed and performed by team Storror. Parkour also featured in Dhoom 3 (2013), Bang Bang! (2014) and Aadhi (2018).
Parkour is also featured on TV. MTV's show Ultimate Parkour Challenge premiered as a one-hour special in October 2009 starring the athletes of the World Freerunning & Parkour Federation. This was followed in May 2010 with a six-episode series of the same name. The athletes were Daniel Ilabaca, Tim Shieff, Ryan Doyle, Michael Turner, Oleg Vorslav, Ben Jenkin, Daniel Arroyo, Pip Andersen and King David. The programme format was a two-part weekly competition in different Southern California locations.
Professional wrestler John Hennigan is a long-time practitioner of parkour and often incorporates it into his wrestling style, with the WWE giving him the nickname "The Prince of Parkour". Actor Stephen Amell learned parkour at Tempest Academy in preparation for his role as Oliver Queen in the television series Arrow, and co-star Caity Lotz is also a practitioner.
Modern video games frequently include aspects of parkour as major game-play elements. Since the series' inception, Tomb Raider series has included increasingly numerous parkour elements. The Assassin's Creed series also makes heavy use of parkour movement (called freerunning in the game). The Mirror's Edge games are heavily inspired by parkour, consisting entirely of efficiently moving around buildings, rooftops, and other obstacles. Brink introduced a parkour mechanic into a realistic first-person shooter. Prince of Persia and Dying Light include a central parkour mechanic, while Crackdown and Crackdown 2 include an emphasis on gripping and vaulting from ledges and protruding objects. Tony Hawk's American Wasteland allows the character to use several freerunning techniques while not on the skateboard. Tron Evolution's basic movements and combat were based on parkour and capoeira.
Images for kids
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A beginner takes a leap in Seattle's Freeway Park under the guidance of experienced practitioners (2012).
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A traceuse vaults a railing.
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See also
In Spanish: Parkour para niños
