The short story: It's okay if you haven't heard of Parkour or Freerunning before. They are very new, related disciplines, or arts of movement originating from France. Parkour is the discipline of training one’s body and mind to find the fastest and most efficient path between two points in any environment. In essence we take our surroundings and turn them into an obstacle course. Freerunning, on the other hand, involves creating your own unique path through your surroundings (benches, walls, railings, stairs, buildings, etc.). It can include things like vaults, balancing on railings, climbing up walls, flipping off objects, twists, swinging, sliding and any other type of movement you can imagine. Instead of an obstacle course, the world becomes our playground. Both require no equipment but a pair of sneakers.

If you have come so far as to be on my website then I will assume that you have at least seen parkour and freerunning before. Parkour and free running can both be considered the art of movement. In some ways they are synonymous, or in other ways they are like two sides of the same coin; two different ways of looking at the same thing. There aren't distinct freerunning groups and parkour groups. Although some prefer to call themselves freerunners, and others prefer traceurs (parkour practitioners) we all practice the art of movement.

They both originated side-by-side in the suburbs of France in the 80’s and 90’s by a group of teenage boys including David Belle, Sebastien Foucan, Yann Hnautra, Laurent Piemontesi and many of the other Yamakasi members. Their fathers taught them skills which they learned in the military, but instead of practicing on the military obstacle courses, these boys used the buildings and objects in their home town, Lisses.

This group trained and developed the art of movement for about ten years before it was exposed to the outside world. Then one little news piece on them sparked the fire. This eventually led to the Yamakasi movie in France and also the Jump London and Jump Britain documentaries in the UK, which caused an explosion in the popularity of the art of movement.

One of the members of that original group, David Belle, takes a lot of the credit for creating parkour, and the philosophy behind parkour. He taught that we train parkour in order to be strong so that we can be useful in any kind of situation. For example, this type of training was extremely helpful for firefighters in emergency situations. Because the end goal of parkour is to be useful, it focuses on efficient movement; simply getting from one point to another as fast as you possibly can. In parkour there are no extra, unnecessary movements such as flips or twists that are going to use up your energy and take time.

On the other hand there was Sebastien Foucan and he was the leading man in the “Jump” series that aired in the UK. Originally, the makers of that documentary chose to use the term “freerunning” instead of parkour just because they thought it would be more accessible for the English speaking Brits. Sebastien liked the term and decided to keep using it to describe his own philosophy on the art of movement. For Sebastien, the ability to move is all about being free and expressing yourself. It's about having the free will to choose any path that you want, rather than just following the same path that others have taken. This means freerunning can encompass almost any kind of movement you can imagine and often blends many different disciplines of movement with parkour, like tricking, martial arts, gymnastics, and break dancing.

Everyone has their own inspirations for their movement and their training. Some do it to be strong and useful, and others just want to have fun or express themselves. Some love to create their own path, and others do it to impress ladies. Some see it as a fun way to stay in shape, and for others it's a way to learn to out-run the cops (although I don't condone that last one!). No matter what it is that inspired you to move, it's all the art of movement and we're all one big community.