Saturday, September 01, 2007

Parkour, FreeRunning, its body surfing on land

Obstacle surfing on land with just hands and feet, it's parkour. Or freerunning. Whatever, it's the most amazing body sport and you won't believe it.

This one's for Thomas who likes the surf videos.

Oh so many years ago I did a baby version of this with college friends. Highlights for us were running across the tops of a long series of church pews (one nasty fall in a dark chapel at midnight), jumping across big gaps and over small (parked) cars, and climbing and spinning around poles. A fun start is finding the highest post you can jump directly up onto without doing any climbing (not touching anything except the top).

These moves are unreal, long series of linked runs, jumps, and manuvers up over through and around obstacles like railings, etc. Gotta see it to believe it. To paraphrase the immortal words of tres arboles for a family blog, this video got me excited.

1 comment:

David J. Hirsh said...

Great post, Marc. Thanks for the mention. There was an article on parkour practice in Seattle in the Post-Intelligencer last week. It appears as though there is a small community of gifted rock-climby/gymnastic/Seattle outdoorsy hippy athletes that are carrying the local Parkour torch. Having ruined both of my knees in 19 years of Rugby, I feel lucky I can still surf and run. I'll leave the free-running to the young and flexible!

Cheers...great blog.

David, Seattle