Definition
Parkour
Parkour is the art of controlled movement whereby practitioners utilise obstacles in their surrounding environment to further their aim of getting from one place to another. Walls and railings usually perceived as a means of restricting movement take on new meaning as a tool of freedom and liberation.
Many of the underlying concepts in Parkour are said to originate from Herbetism; a physical training programme developed by Georges Hébert in the 1900's. It is widely accepted that Parkour as it's known today was created by David Belle, a French man from the suburbs of Paris, inspired by his father's background in gymnastics and the military.
A defining aspect of Parkour which sets it apart from other activities is the greater sense of purpose associated with it’s practice. Parkour is not just another sport or activity but a mature discipline similar to that of eastern martial arts.
At it's core, Parkour is about getting somewhere or getting away from somewhere quicker than the next person. If you consider martial arts as the art of attack then parkour is the art of escape. Why stand and fight if you can take a path that your attacker can't follow regardless of how much faster they may be?
There is a lot more to parkour than just the physical movement, it is the combination of purpose, intention and state of mind which together make parkour what it is. Some would argue that you are never truly doing parkour unless it is within the context of a real chase or route of escape.
Another defining aspect of parkour which sets it apart from many similar activities is the notion that there must be no competition. Parkour is a non-competitive discipline where the practitioner is only competing with oneself. This philosophy which is integral to parkour on every level is one of the reasons it is such a safe activity to participate in and also explains the friendly and welcoming attitude shown by all the teams and individuals involved.
Without competition there is no negative peer pressure so no one is ever pushed into a situation that they are not ready for. Similarly there has always been a culture where by practitioners are very willing to help others progress which is unlikely to have happened if parkour had started out as a competitive activity. Sadly there are now several organisations which can see a financial advantage in the running of parkour based competitions and they are trying to change this. Hopefully they will not succeed and certainly they will receive no support from the existing community but once the cash starts flowing, even with rejection from the current community, it could seed a whole new generation of practitioners who claim to do parkour but have not a faintest understanding of the philosophy behind it.
In the five years that parkour has been widely known about in the UK, it has been constantly mis-represented by the media which has resulted in endless confusion and heated online debates as to just what parkour is and what it's not etc. Often this misrepresentation was not intentional but it only took a few key players to publish some incorrect facts to initiate a chain reaction of mistaken understanding which still exists today.
A lot of the problems came about because of language barriers. Parkour being a French discipline came over to England and many of the subtleties were immediately lost in translation. This wasn’t helped by the fact that in the early days many of the French practitioners where quite secretive about their art and were unwilling to share any information about it freely with those of us in the UK.
Example of Parkour
Freerunning
Perhaps the most fundamental mistake ever was the confusion between parkour and freerunning which can be largely attributed to the jump London documentary and to an equal extent, Urban Freeflow. The problem materialised when sources in the media started using the term "Free Running" as an anglicised word for parkour because they felt that the French word (which was virtually unheard of at the time) would confuse their audience where as "free running" was a more descriptive name.
So the words parkour and freerunning were used interchangeably in the media to mean the same thing. This would have been fine had the French not already got a dicipline called freerun which happened to be very similar to parkour at first glance but with fundamental differences when viewed more deeply.
Parkour which was devised by David Belle from Lisses, France is all about raw power and effectiveness; it’s about doing whatever you need to do to get from one place to another but no more.
Freerun was developed by Sebastian Foucan who originated from the same part of France as Belle. They trained together throughout their youth but as time went on they developed differences in opinion and each took their own path. Freerun or freerunning was Foucan's development of parkour. Just like parkour there is a very strong philosophy behind it and it shares the same metaphorical ideals of no competition as well as the physical techniques for passing over obstacles. The difference is that where parkour is purely about practicality, freerun is about grace and style as well. Within in the definition of freerunning flips, kicks and other aesthetic movements are encouraged regardless of practicality and can be included amongst vaults and jumps if so desired. In this sense it is quite acceptable for parkour to be freerunning; but freerunning can never be parkour.
Example of Freerunning
Street Stunts, Tricking, Tumbling & 3Run
To further add to the confusion there are several other disciplines which share many aspects of parkour and freerunning each with their own twist that makes them distinct.
Street stunts is like freerunning without the parkour element and in many ways could be likened to a form of outdoor gymnastics. There isn’t much in the way of strict definitions of what is and is not considered to be street stunts but it is basically individual tricks where as with freerunning there would be an element of flow, moving from point to point linking one trick into the next.
Example of Street Stunts
Tricking is again very similar to street stunts and freerunning but slightly different again. In street stunts it is unusual to see many parkour type movements but they’re not unheard of whereas in Tricking parkour type moves are not included at all. Street stunts like freerunning will often make use of obstacles in the surrounding environment to perform tricks on/off/over where as tricking is primarily practiced on flat ground. While most acrobatic manoeuvres are considered to be tricking in a sense, strictly speaking tricking is focused around kicks similar to those found in martial arts like caporera and contemporary wushu.
Example of Tricking:
Tricking also has an element of competition in the form of Tricking 'Battles'. Typically two people will perform a routine of tricks in a bid to 'out-trick' their opponent. The winner is decided by the audience of people watching. Currently tricking battles are just done between groups of friends for a bit of fun, only time will tell if tricking battles develop into a recognised sponsored extreme sport competition. The tricking community on the whole does not seem to be so strongly against the idea of commercial competition as the parkour community so this is something which may develop sooner rather than later.
Tumbling is a subset of gymnastics which involves a set of acrobatic movements going in a line across a floor. All the movements are linked into one another and are usually focused around round-offs and back handsprings. Tumbling can be included as a part of freerunning, street stunts and tricking but is not a requirement for any of them.
3Run is the website of Team Evo, a group which practices parkour, tricking, wushu (and all the aforementioned variants). On their website they describe 3run as an abstract concept for freedom, harmony and personal progression. Some people take this abstract concept one stage further and consider 3run to be a recognised discipline in its own right to describe the interdisciplinary harmony that they strive for in one word.
Example of 3Run
It is worth bearing in mind that all these disciplines are in their infancy and are rapidly developing all the time. As such while this explanation is correct at the time of writing opinions of what is accepted in each category may change over the next few years or even new categories will be defined. We will try to update this page to reflect any changes as and when they happen but if we have got something blatantly wrong please let us know.