What Is A French Martial Art Of Jumping & Running?

Parkour is an acrobatic activity developed by David Belle in France. It stresses running, jumping, leaping, rolling and climbing over, under and through previously established obstacles, usually in an urban setting. It is sometimes classified as a martial art despite its founder's insistence that, strictly speaking, it is not. The dedication and physical prowess required to practice parkour, however, places it on the same level as many traditional martial arts that stress discipline and development of the ability to respond quickly and effortlessly to a challenge.

Origin

The word "parkour" itself is derived from the French word used to describe military obstacle courses, "parcours." Parcours also refers to a route. As a teenager in the early- to mid-1990s, Belle created parkour in a suburb of Paris called Lisses. He was inspired by the exploits of his father, Raymond, who died in 1999. The senior Belle was a renowned fireman and acrobat. For years this relatively new art was associated mainly with young Europeans. As a result of exposure on Internet videos and in films, it has spread to the United States, Asia and Australia.

Maneuvers

According to Alec Wilkinson, the author of No Obstacles, Navigating the World by Leaps and Bounds in the April 16, 2007 issue of "The New Yorker," it is possible to identify more than a dozen fundamental parkour maneuvers despite the lack of an established glossary. These include the wall run, the precision jump, the roll, the tic-tac, the underbar, the cat leap and at least half a dozen different types of vaults. "All the techniques in parkour are from watching the monkeys," Belle told Wilkinson. The goal is to combine these moves smoothly at speed, one after another, as dictated by the obstacles that confront a traceur--a male practitioner of parkour, or a traceuse, a female practitioner of the art.

Parkour in Practice

Before you can hope to approach the skill level of experienced practitioners of the art, you need to master basic skills such as rolling. This is essential to avoid serious injury. Learning to roll is a gradual process that starts on the ground and is practiced until the roll is mastered. Then the roll is practiced from a slight elevation. This process continues until you feel comfortable leaping and rolling from greater heights. Eventually, rolls and other maneuvers of parkour are combined as, for example, you fly feet-first through the opening in a fence, jump over a wall, leap from one building to another, move horizontally for several steps along a vertical surface and push off to perform a back flip. The goal is to perform these acrobatic movements without conscious effort as you move through your environment.

Goals and Philosophy

Belle believes the art he founded is less about overcoming obstacles than overcoming fears, according to an interview he gave to Kung Fu Magazine.com. Parkour, he insisted, is about tackling your fears and gaining self-knowledge. "So you can see then that parkour is in the spirit of the martial arts, but it's not a martial art," he told writer Craig Reid. For traceur Ryan Ford, parkour is not about training to use the skills for a practical reason such as escaping from attackers. Rather, he told "The New Yorker" it is about the personal goal of self-improvement, of getting progressively better.