The Real Life Spidermen

I was watching a show on ESPN just the other night and they did a little spotlight on a pastime called "parkour". This was something I had never heard of before and I was intrigued and decided to do a little research on it.

Parkour is the art of leaping from building to building, scaling large obstacles or getting from one point to another as quickly and efficiently as possible. Some call it a sport, others define it as a dangerous pastime, but the people who actually perform these acts, known as traceurs, look at it as something a lot more meaningful. To them, the art of parkour as a physical and mental discipline that ill help them overcome, not only physical obstacles, but also regular, everyday challenges that they will meet in day to day life.

The movements and ideas behind parkour can be traced back to the early 1900's and military training set up by Georges Hebert, a Frenchman who had traveled through Africa and was impressed by the agility of the tribesmen he encountered on his travels. At this time the training practices were known as "l'art du deplacement", or "le parcours". It wasn't until the mid 1990's that the sport really took off thanks, in large part, to another Frenchman called David Belle who gave the discipline it's modern name and developed the moves as they are known today.

It should be noted that it's not just a matter of getting from point A to point B any way you can, as there are in fact a number of basic moves that have to be implemented in order for the person doing it to be considered a traceur rather than someone just blindly scaling walls and jumping buildings. As you would expect, the moves all have French names and include, but are not limited to -

passement - this is a vault that is done with use of the hands.
roulade - roll.
saut de bras - a cat leap
lache - a dismount or swinging jump.

Thanks to sites like Youtube, the sport has become something of an underground phenomenon and is now being practiced all over the US , with training classes popping up and the sport being featured in TV commercials, most notably for K-Swiss who have actually developed a parkour shoe. You know that something has hit the top of the popularity status when there is a shoe designed for it.

What is truly amazing is that in the years that the practice of parkour has been performed there have been no reported casualties and, in fact, it is reported that the number of injuries sustained is no higher than any of the extreme sports like skateboarding etc. With that being said, as graceful and elegant as these "athletes" look when performing the moves, I don't think it is something I'd be willing to try myself. I'd hate to become the World's first parkour casualty.