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Friday 12 July 2013

Whats is Parkour ?

Parkour is a discpline training using only your body to move fast and precisely through your environment. It is a holistic training developed out of military course training. Parkour practitioners are called as traceurs
 Practicing Pakour increases a person's :strength, speed, agility, co-ordination, stamina, endurance, and precision. Parkour is a non-competitive sport. It is practiced on a obstacle course targetting a practitioners creativity of navigating through the obstacles. It offers a full-body workout at any level of experience, and improves your ability to move, to harness your confidence, and to change how you see the world. 





Parkour was originated from France, developed by David Belle in the 1980s. He formed a group named Yamakasi to further practice and develop the sport but started gaining popularity in the late 1990s and 2000s. The 2006 Bond Movie : Casino Royale opened a new dimension for Parkour. After the parkour stunts featured in the movie, military officials started hiring parkour athelets to incorporate elements from Parkour into military training. The British Royal Marines and United States Marine Corps are a few to be named.

Parkour includes running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping, rolling, quadrupedal movements and more, if they are the most suitable movements for the specific situation. I will explain more details on the movements involved in this sport in my further post. Parkour has inspired a a range of activities including Freerunning and l'art du déplacement. Although their creators define them as separate activities, practitioners and non-practitioners alike often find it hard to discern the differences.









The beauty of Parkour is its equiqment-free training. Thus, this sport can be practiced by all ages of people from different walks of life. T-shirt, sweatpants or track bottom are the basic needs of Parkour. But the most vital need in Parkour is the shoes. Comfortable and light running shoes with good grip and flexibility is encouraged. Nowadays, shoe manufactures such as Nike, Puma and K-Swiss have developed shoes specifically for Parkour. Although this revolution had helped thousands of traceurs around the world but The Founder of Parkour, himself has recommended barefoot training with his famous quote  "bare feet are the best shoes!".


Although Parkour is still infamous and a new vocabulary to millions of people but Parkour has been around since the existence of mankind. Sebastien Foucan, one of the elite French traceurs, has stated that when our ancestors chased game or were chased by predators they were practicing Parkour. This emphasis on the utility of Parkour is a common theme amongst us. Parkour teaches the way to be still like a mountain and flow like a great river.


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