Parkour

You might not even know it, but all your life you have been doing parkour. But how? Even the smallest things like running, climbing up walls, and jumping are already parkour. People who have been doing parkour longer have just used those simple moves but made them more advanced. Parkour is the art of movement, like taking natural body movements and incorporating rolls, jumps, flips, and more.

The word “parkour” is a made up word coming from the french word “parcours” which means “route”. Parkour, also known as “freerunning”, was invented by David Belle in Paris in the 1990s. Parkour has lots of names including the Art of Movement, Freerunning, L’Art du Deplacement and more (Parkour Generations).  

Parkour can be done in any sort of way. To begin, even climbing up or over a wall could be the start, and then you could make it more advanced by jumping off of it and landing into a roll. Taking it even a level further, you can start doing flips off walls. Jumping is another move that you can make more advanced. For example, one thing you can do is practice jumping higher and higher each time, and then over time you can progress to front flips, backflips, fulls or any other trick that could involve hight. And lastly running can be taken a step further to vaults, which are basically faster ways to get over walls.

Now that you know a little more about parkour including the history,  and how you can improve on climbing, jumps, and runs, you should try parkour sometime. You can also watch some videos on parkour to help you with your movements. It’s a great activity to get into this summer on your free time!

References:

Wilkinson, Alec. “A World Without Obstacles.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 25 Jan. 2018, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/04/16/no-obstacles.

“Parkour History.” Parkour Generations, 1 May 2017, parkourgenerations.com/parkour-history/.