Parkour for fitness

scoby

Has anyone here heard of Parkour?

Parkour at first glance is a kind of urban gymnastics.
Some people say it's like skateboarding without the board and it's also been called freerunning.

The idea is to make your way through your environment and use whatever means available to you to overcome obstacles such as walls, railings, steps etc.
Most important is to maintain fluidity linking moves together and keep moving without breaking 'flow'

It's something I've heard of a while ago and though I've had some practise (I'm still really crap at it) I find I'm really self concious when I go outside and try to climb up walls jump off and go into a roll before running towards a wall and vaulting over it.

If you have broadband it's worth getting a few vids from le-parkour.com
People who have spent alot of time training in this discipline have amazing skills
Theres also a parkour community basd on the UK called urbanfreeflow
which has an excellent forum.

I'd love to met up with ppl who would be interested in doing this. I'm in the process of setting up a website:
Red Branch Knights for people in Ireland doing Parkour.

If the moves look too crazy don't worry, we all have to start somewhere. Trying to get the basics right is important but I feel like a bit of an eejit on my own.

roberteboot

some impressive stuff on there even if youve no interest in taking part yourself its well worth a look.

vengeance52

i saw a documentery on tv over a month ago on "free Running", it was totally crazy, people running across roof tops an jumping onto small walls and then 'skippin' across bollards. It was very impressive. the agility of the guys was astounding. it was like watching a spiderman movie

I cant wait to see it hit big in Ireland.

-V

CivilServant

Yeah I seen this a couple of times on e4 and channel4. Freerunning across buildings and landmarks. They did a freerun around london which was very impressive. Robert Pires was on the show chatting to them about this new form of expression. It's pretty cool, I wouldn't mind trying it out. You'd have to be very fit though, especially the 10foot jumps. That can't be good for your tendons

I noticed after they jump, they have to roll or else their joints will take the full force of the impact.

roberteboot

yeah thats what i was thinking.i dont think my ankle could take some of that stuff the ligaments have a nasty little habit of tearing.i dont even want to think about some of the landings.it uses alot of the same technigues as breakdancing with the spins off the walls and that i can see alot of those guys getting into it.

Stark

I'd love to do it, but only after loads of training

scoby

The thing about these guys is
that they biult themselves up enough to do Parkour
by doing parkour!

The founders began doing this as a game and just got better and better at it.

I'm the last person to be jumping from buildings but I reckon I could learn to do "the basics" with a bit of style.

Once the knees stop trembling and the beer belly disappears