WHAT IS PARKOUR?
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
Parkour is a spirit/philosophy that incorporates a method of moving within your environment and approaching obstacles of any kind, be they physical or mental. The philosophy encompasses such things as:
• Seeking to improve and understand ourselves through the practice of Parkour.
• Using Parkour to help others, be it with helping someone learn Parkour or using your skills in a practical situation.
• Seek mental and physical progression in ourselves.
You then have the physical extension of Parkour which is as follows:
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.
These skills do not only apply to an urban environment, they can be utilised anywhere, in the forest, desert etc. It is not just they way you move that makes you a practitioner of Parkour, but the movement combined with the philosophy that defines it as Parkour.
MISCONCEPTIONS AND MISINFORMATION
Due to the way that Parkour arrived on the international scene there are quite a few misconceptions and erroneous information that has spread.
Parkour and Freerunning – These are not the same thing. They are not interchangeable terms. They are quite different from each other in their purpose and goals. Practitioners of Parkour are called Traceurs, Freerunning practitioners are called Freerunners, the terms Freerunner and Traceur are not interchangeable.
Parkour shows – There is no such thing as performing a Parkour show. If you see any presentations of Parkour purely for the sake of entertainment cannot be defined as Parkour, simply because you are not following the principles of what Parkour is. You can take the movement from Parkour and use it to entertain, but the end result cannot ethically be called Parkour as it doesn’t follow the principles of the discipline.
Flips – Many people get confused when they see someone who calls themselves a Traceur doing flips and spins. Just because someone does these things does not mean the actions constitue Parkour, it just means that the traceur trains in other aspects of movement as well as Parkour. If you are unsure simply ask yourself, if you were running for your life what would you do?
Parkour is not just an Urban sport – Parkour was developed and practiced in the trees and forests of France just as much as in the cities. It is practiced to great effect in the natural environment that has been shaped by time and the elements, and can be rough and jagged as opposed to the smoothed and usually symmetrical man made urban environment.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
To understand what Parkour is it helps to understand where it came from.
Parkour was developed by David Belle in France in an effort to understand himself and his motivations and find his own way in life.The principles of Parkour can assist those who choose to learn about it to find their own way as well.
The physical component of Parkour involves such things as: people running on foot, moving quadrupedally, jumping, climbing, and other methods of catching yourself, grabbing hold of things, and hanging from things, rolling and balancing. People moving 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.
But Parkour is much more than a physical pursuit. The activities described above have been practiced since the beginning of time. It’s the principles behind Parkour combined with the physical that defines it as something unique. Those principles include:
• Seeking to improve ourselves through the practice of Parkour
• Using what you have gained from Parkour to help others, be it with helping someone learn Parkour themselves or to use your skills to actually aid someone
• Seek mental and physical progression in ourselves and to promote it in others.
Most importantly, Parkour is a tool to understand yourself. To discover within ourselves who we are and what it is we truly wish to achieve, and to pursue it.
The description above barely begins to scratch the surface of the full depth and breadth of Parkour. To gain a deeper understanding of it and all that it involves takes more effort than to watch a few videos and go and copy them.
History: The roots of Parkour go back over 100 years. It begins with Hebertism. Hebertism was created about 100 years ago by George Hebert.
George Hébert (1875-1957) exerted a major influence on the development of physical education in France. A former naval officer, he travelled throughout the world before World War 1 and was struck by the physical development and skill of indigenous peoples in Africa and elsewhere;
“Their bodies were splendid, flexible, nimble, skilful, enduring, resistant and yet they had no other tutor in Gymnastics but their lives in Nature.” – G. Hébert
In 1902, Hébert was stationed in the town of St. Pierre in Martinique when the town fell victim to a catastrophic volcanic eruption. Hébert heroically co-ordinated the escape and rescue of some seven hundred people from this disaster. This experience had a profound effect on him, and reinforced his belief that athletic skill must be combined with courage and altruism. He eventually developed this ethos into his motto, “Etre fort pour être utile” – “To be strong, to be useful.”
Returning to France, Hebert became a physical education tutor at the College of Rheims, where he began to define the principles of his own system of physical education and to create apparatus and exercises to teach his “Natural Method”. As well as the “natural” training regimens he observed in Africa, he was inspired by classical representations of the human body in Greco-Roman statuary and by the ideals of the ancient Greek gymnasia. Hebert’s system rejected the sclerosis of remedial gymnastics and of the popular Swedish Method of physical culture, which seemed to him unable to develop the human body harmoniously and especially unable to prepare his students with the “moral requirements” of life.
In the same way, Hebert believed, by concentrating on competition and performance, competitive sport diverted physical education both from its physiological ends and its ability to foster sound moral values.
The final goal of physical education is to make strong beings. In the purely physical sense, the Natural Method promotes the qualities of organic resistance, muscularity and speed, towards being able to walk, run, jump, move quadrupedally, to climb, to walk in balance, to throw, lift, defend yourself and to swim.”
In the “virile” or energetic sense, the system consists in having sufficient energy, willpower, courage, coolness, and fermeté (“firmness”).
In the moral sense, education, by elevating the emotions, directs or maintains the moral fibre in a useful and beneficial way.
The true Natural Method, in its broadest sense, must be considered as the result of these three particular forces; it is a physical, virile and moral synthesis. It resides not only in the muscles and the breath, but above all in the “energy” which is used, the will which directs it and the feeling which guides it.
David Belles father learnt and practiced Hebertism and when he spent time with his son, David, passed on his knowledge to him. As David grew and learnt he adapted what he needed from Hebertism to create something unique to him, something that allowed him to pursue his own needs and goals.
In turn this has passed on to other practitioners to act as an inspiration for self development through the practice of Parkour.
