Taken from Wikipedia, couldn’t be bothered to explain to you myself!
Parkour is a physical art of French origin, the aim of which is to move from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible, using the abilities of the human body. It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment — from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls — so parkour can be practiced in both rural and urban areas. Male parkour practitioner are recognized as traceur and female as traceuse.
Parkour is a physical activity that is very difficult to categorize. It is definitely not an extreme sport, but an art that resembles martial arts. However, most traceurs are content to simply put parkour in its own category: “parkour is parkour”.
The most characteristic aspect of parkour is efficiency. The basic meaning of this is that a traceur must not merely move as fast as they can, but move in a way that is the least energy-consuming and simultaneously the most direct. In addition, since parkour’s unofficial motto is être et durer (to be and to last), efficiency also involves avoiding injuries, short-term or long-term.
According to founder David Belle, the spirit of parkour is guided in part by the notions of “escape” and “reach”, that is, the idea of using physical agility and quick thinking to get out of difficult situations, and to be able to go anywhere that one desires.
Inspiration for parkour came from many sources, the foremost being the ‘Natural Method of Physical Culture’ developed by Georges Hébert in the early twentieth century. French soldiers in Vietnam were inspired by Hébert’s work and created what is now known parcours du combattant. David Belle was introduced to the art as well as Hébert’s methode naturelle by his father, Raymond Belle, a French soldier who practiced the two disciplines. David Belle had participated in activities such as martial arts and gymnastics, and sought to apply his athletic prowess in a manner that would have practical use in life.
After moving to Lisses, David Belle continued his journey with others. “From then on we developed” says Sébastien Foucan in Jump London, “And really the whole town was there for us; there for free running. You just have to look, you just have to think, like children.” This, as he describes, is “the vision of Parkour.”
Over the years as dedicated practitioners improved their skills, their moves continued to grow in magnitude, so that building-to-building jumps and drops of over a story became common in media portrayals, often leaving people with a slanted view on the nature of parkour. In fact, ground-based movement is much more common than anything involving rooftops.
The journey of parkour from the Parisian suburbs to its current status as a widely practiced activity outside of France created splits among the originators. The founders of parkour started out in a group named the Yamakasi, but later separated due to disagreements over what David Belle referred to as “prostitution of the art,” the production of a feature film starring the Yamakasi in 2001. Sébastien Foucan, David Belle, were amongst those who split at this point. The name ‘Yamakasi’ is taken from Lingala, a language spoken in the Congo, and means strong spirit, strong body, strong man.
This is a main part of the physical art that most of the “non-traceurs” have not seen or heard about, yet according to the founding fathers of the physical art it is an integral part of parkour, in the words of David Belle and originally by Brendan Eiznekcem:
“I want to live and share what I have learned, not just write it in a book that will make it a dead activity and we don’t want the sport to die”.
It as much as a part of truly learning the physical art well as being able to master the movements, it gives you the ability to “overcome your fears and pains and reapply this to life” as you must be able to control your mind in order to master the art of parkour.
Andreas Kalteis, an Austrian traceur, has stated in documentary Parkour Journeys:
“To understand the philosophy of parkour takes quite a while, because you have to get used to it first. While you still have to try to actually do the movements, you will not feel much about the philosophy. But when you’re able to move in your own way, then you start to see how parkour changes other things in your life; and you approach problems — for example in your job — differently, because you have been trained to overcome obstacles. This sudden realization comes at a different time to different people: some get it very early, some get it very late. You can’t really say ‘it takes two months to realize what parkour is’. So, now, I don’t say ‘I do parkour’, but ‘I live parkour’, because its philosophy has become my life, my way to do everything.”
Sorry for the lecturing post, just gets annoying when people say “Whats that?“.
NiM
