About Parkour
Parkour is not a sport, it is a movement art
Parkour is a form of movement that encourages practitioners to adapt to their surroundings. They navigate from point A to B in the most efficient way and without the use of equipment.
If we delve a little deeper into Parkour, we find a lot of interesting things.
Read along here:
Parkour - History and origins
The art of movement is called parkour. Parkour must be understood as a new and unique activity. It thrills and has a strong positive impact on children and young people.
Parkour is a form of movement, originally known as l'art du displacement, was developed in the 1980s in France by a group of nine young men under the name “Yamakasi". "Yamakasi", a word in the Lingala language, means "strong in body and spirit", which reflects the core purpose of sport - to nourish the individual both physically, mentally and ethically.
Yamakasi's founders are David Belle, Sebastien Foucan, Yann Hnautra, Bye Belle, Laurent Piedmontesi, Guylain N’guba Boyeke, Charles Perriere, Malik Diouf and Williams Belle.
David Belle first introduced the term “parkour” in 1998. The word “parkour” is derived from the French word “course“, which means route or path in French.
Parkour is a powerful, dynamic and exciting physical discipline that encourages participants to interact with their surroundings in innovative and effective ways. It is an art form that combines aspects of self-discipline, creativity and physical challenge.
What is Parkour?
The following is an insight into parkour, written by a researcher in Sports and Movement, Signe Højbjerre Larsen.
Most people have seen it on TV, on the Internet or perhaps out in the city. They move through the city at breakneck speed, overcoming benches, stairs, railings and walls in highly creative and fascinating ways.
The pictures above show two seemingly identical activities. The only immediate difference is that there are 100 years between them.
In today's gymnastics, many of the traditional exercises, as illustrated in fig. 1, slipped out, but on a street corner they suddenly appear again. A couple of young guys jump from wall to wall, do somersaults, land on their feet and run on, take off from new places, balance on railings and continue down streets and around the next street corner.
All over the world, performers fill the spaces of the city with wild and expressive movements.
Parkour started as a subculture that developed in the French suburbs, but has since spread throughout the world via the Internet. More and more people practice parkour, which is reflected in the fact that on the media sharing site www.youtube.com there are over 111,000 videos with parkour.
Growing interest in parkour
Interest in parkour is increasing, but despite this there is still only sporadic knowledge about it. The existing research has primarily dealt with the activity from a sports pedagogic angle
Parkour is thus a present and topical subject in our culture. At the same time, it is an untouched and unique phenomenon that deserves to be examined further.
Parkour as an activity shakes up the understanding of what movement activities really are and testifies to new trends in body culture.
Parkour reminds us that body-culture trends arise and develop as self-organised movement activities. To gain insight into how our body culture works, we must look in this direction. We must try to understand what parkour actually is.
Such a goal requires an investigation of what we as practitioners actually do when we do parkour. In other words: what do parkour practitioners experience when doing parkour? And how does this experience make sense to the individual practitioner?
Isn't parkour just gymnastics outside?
At the first encounter with parkour, one may be doubtful. Does the activity represent anything new compared to traditional jump gymnastics?
Is it an independent or new activity at all? The images on the next page demonstrate three almost identical movements. Parkour not only contains movement similarities with the traditional gymnastics that spread from the middle of the 1800s onwards, which the pictures illustrate, but also similarities in origin.
In the following I will try to shed light on what the practitioners experience when doing parkour. How does this experience make sense to us?
The analysis will begin with an explanation of the relationships that parkour as an activity has with the traditional Danish vaulting gymnastics.
Parkour - The historical relationships
Parkour was developed with a background in the "Methode naturelle" training system, which was founded by Georg Hébert (1875-1957).
The interesting thing is that "Natural method" has had a significant impact on the start and development of gymnastics in Denmark. It was under the inspiration of "Metode naturelle" that the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau developed his philanthropic ideas, which were fundamental for the constitution of gymnastics in the school subject circle in Denmark.
It was also Hébert's training system that inspired the Danish gymnastics pedagogue Niels Bukh to have his gymnasts perform in bare upper bodies and small black boxer shorts.ix Parkour is therefore based on some of the same ideas about development and formation of the body through natural exercises as the traditional gymnastics that was developed in Denmark.
When parkour is put in relation to J. C. F Gutsmuth's historic gymnastics grounds, parkour appears as traditional gymnastic movements, which have simply been pulled out of the historical textbooks and set free in our time:
The street space as an arena for movement
However, the two images contain a significant difference that attracts special attention.
Where gymnastics, as illustrated in figure 3, used defined spaces, parkour uses the arbitrary street environments of the city. Instead of bars, plinths and other classic gymnastic equipment, the practitioners move on the available objects in the street.
The activity is clearly about more than developing the body through natural exercises when it uses the street space. The question is then: about what?
In the past, street corners have been perceived as a potentially sinful place with the risk of falling into social awkwardness and bad company.xi With parkour, on the other hand, we see a revitalization of street corners as a place for physical activity. Despite the immediate historical and movement similarities, the two images in fig. 3 and 4, that these similarities only remain a series of common quantities, which of course contain significant meanings, but which do not necessarily give us a greater understanding of what parkour is really about.
Is it extreme sports?
The media often portray parkour as an extreme sport.
The media have taken advantage of the visual effects of speed, excitement and action-packed intensity that the parkour performers' rapid movements through the city create. IN James Bond the movie"Casino Royale” from 2007 includes parkour as part of an opening escape scene where James Bond, leaping from crane to crane at dizzying heights, chases the villain.
Parkour contains an aesthetic element of excitement, speed and action. It is therefore not surprising that the media want to make use of it.
Looking at the real-life practice of the activity, parkour also seems to contain the same orientation towards boundary-crossing. It is found in most forms of extreme sport.
The rapid movements of the parkour performers around the street space create risks. These risks are linked to an understanding of parkour as a culture of limit-seeking and testing that prompts self-development through physical and mental transgressions.
Most practitioners, however, distance themselves from the label extreme sport. Instead, they call parkour an art of movement and a lifestyle.
The question is thus whether it is really about boundary-seeking and self-development. Or is it merely an immediate categorisation brought about by the media's use of the visual effect?
The experience of body control and continuous self-development
Parkour is about challenging yourself physically and mentally. The movements around the hard, often high-lying objects of the street space create the risks that the practitioner must constantly deal with.
It is precisely this process that is central. Parkour is about examining and assessing one's movement limits and finding the right way to overcome them. In parkour, it is always necessary to carry out a thorough analysis of the challenge by measuring the physical distances and putting them in relation to one's movement capacity.
This process trains an ability to anticipate situations carefully. As a practitioner, you thereby gain experience of your limits and their nature.
The challenges must therefore always be seen in the light of the exercisers' movement abilities. The central aspect in the practitioners' experience with movement limits and their thematization of the nature of their movements is that the challenges are not something that parkour practitioners throw themselves into blindly and without consideration, but something that is continuously put in relation to one's movement abilities.
What do the challenges mean?
The question is, however, what meanings lie behind the challenges, in other words: why do we do it? For parkour practitioners, it is about continuous development and transcendence, as well as making full use of one's body. The risks that jumps several meters above asphalt create are meaningful to the athletes because they stimulate physical development.
On the other hand, it is irrational to "waste" one's movement possibilities. It is about living one's physicality to the fullest, and to do this one must constantly push the limits to ensure a continuous development of abilities and control.
Overcoming the movement challenges makes sense not only because it is rational. It also creates immediate excitement and euphoria.
When a movement challenge is overcome, it feels like overcoming something intangible.
Overcoming brings a surprising new experience of one's movement ability. The excitement and euphoria that appear in overcoming matter not only in the moment. They also give a feeling of self-development.
So there is more at stake than the subjective bodily feeling of excitement and euphoria that the victory creates in the present. The parkour practitioner's formation and cultivation of excitement and adrenaline through the movement challenges is thus a way to play with - and explore - the body's movement abilities and ensure a continuous development of these.
Through parkour, those who exercise experience their body as a size that transcends boundaries and is capable of learning.
The flow experience
When practitioners talk about their movements, it is usually not the challenging movements that are at the centre. Instead, it is about the ability to move efficiently and in flow through the surroundings.
In parkour, it is about achieving the expressive expression, which can be defined as 'flow.'
Flow appears as an unbroken and fluid movement rhythm that is built up through the body's adaptation to the location in question. Flow is orientation towards an expressive expression, but the question is, is it the only thing at stake?
The concept of flow in psychology
The American professor of psychology Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the founder of the flow theory, describes flow as a state where there is a balance between the size of the challenge and the person's ability to tackle it, which gives physical and psychological enjoyment to the individual.xiv According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow therefore contains a bodily and emotional dimension of experience.
In the flow movements, a balance between challenges and physical abilities is experienced. The experience of flow is felt as a bodily, pleasurable sensation of a fluid and continuous movement rhythm. It is the feeling of being able to continue over the wall, over the railing, on to the bench, one continued movement.
Once this rhythm is experienced, there is no doubt about how flow is experienced. The mastery of movements in flow contributes to the fact that the movements feel liberated, effortless and in accordance with an inner flowing rhythm. In a historical perspective, the gymnastics pedagogue Niels Bukh in his primitive gymnastics also worked with a bodily experience of rhythm in the movements:
"Students can learn an unknown form of work by demonstration or by knowing that all the individual movements are carried out on command or by counting. On the other hand, the effect of work cannot be learned, but must be experienced, and in most cases this does not happen during work on command or counting, but in free trials, where the individual determines the speed and rhythm themselves."
Form and effect in movement
As can be read in the quote, Bukh distinguishes between a work's "Form", which can be interpreted as the type of movement, and its "Effect", which can be interpreted as the meaning of the movement for the practitioners, i.e. the way in which the movement makes sense.
Bukh's description provides an adequate understanding of the practitioners' experience of flow as an enjoyable, bodily sensation in parkour. The bodily pleasure that the movement energy flow creates is the moment that gives the movements meaning. In the practice of parkour, one can therefore speak of flow as a fundamental bodily experience of pleasure.
The movements make sense because they feel good. Flow is a bodily pleasure that you immerse yourself in in parkour, and recreate again and again via repetition of the movements. Precisely the complete immersion is described as one of the most widespread and characteristic features of achieving flow in activities.
Are parkour practitioners narcissists?
On the media sharing site www.youtube.com there are over 111,000 videos with parkour, and the actual use of samplers must therefore be said to be a large part of practicing parkour.
A sampler is edited together of small video clips of the performer making various moves. The performer edits the small video clips together with one or more pieces of music into a rhythmic mosaic of movement situations.
With edits and background music, practitioners create a particular image. At first glance, this can make parkour appear as a narcissistic practice of self-staging.
Is parkour then about using the city as an arena for displaying one's individual physicality and abilities? In any case, our use of urban space differs from the other people who move around here.
It's about seeing challenges and alternative movement possibilities, where others see limitations and unique functionality. However, it is not only about staging one's bodily individuality, but also one's distinctive style. This aspect links to street culture, where the worst you can be is mainstream.
Individual style and community
Parkour can be understood as a self-centred practice about creating and exposing one's own style. This, however, meets a counterpart in the form of group formation.
As in street culture, parkour is practiced in groups, which shows that there are also social aspects at play.
The question is thus whether it is only a social element that is a necessary stage for self-staging and recognition. Or is it about close and committed communities?
To answer this question, it is necessary to account for an important dividing line. It can be drawn between the movements of parkour, the so-called vaults, and the standardised movements of jump gymnastics.
Parkour and gymnastics
The exercises of gymnastics contain anatomical, physiological and aesthetic standards for the correctness of the exercises.
The anatomical and physiological standards in gymnastics can be understood as the specific positions of the body parts. They help classify the exercises and make a back handspring a back handspring.
The aesthetic standards are linked to the correctness of the gymnast in connection with the performance of the anatomical and physiological standards. A vault in parkour is a named movement such as catbalance, monkey, dash or speedvault.
These vaults are not subject to the same radical anatomical and physiological standardisation as gymnastics. That distinguishes them from traditional mat and trampoline jumping.
The essential thing is not the specific placement of the practitioner's body parts. What matters is how they glide through the surroundings in the same movement and create flow.
Selvom gaderummet i parkour er statisk and stabilt, stiller det ikke de samme betingelser for alle udøvere. For at opnå flow i bevægelserne må man som parkourudøver modulere bevægelserne efter personlige kropsligheder.
Denne modulering finder ikke sted i springgymnastikkens traditionelle måtte- and trampolinspring. For at skabe de samme betingelser for alle organiseres gymnaster derimod efter niveau and alder, hvorved for ulige bevægelsesmæssige betingelser forsøges udlignet.
It is the body that must adapt to the movements and not the other way around. In parkour it is the opposite, and diversity is precisely what is cultivated. It is not about approaching some correct movements. It is about developing a personal movement style in accordance with one's physicality.
Community in parkour
The question now is what relation this movement ideal has to community in parkour. Are there close and committed communities? Or is the social merely a necessary stage for individual self-staging and recognition? The answer is that the close relationships in parkour do indeed arise. Developing a personal movement style is, after all, not an individual but a collective project.
I parkour ”ledes” udøverne ikke som i gymnastikken, and som udøver må man derfor selv udforske and vurdere omgivelser and bevægelsesmuligheder, af hvilken grund gruppen kommer til at spille en mere signifikant rolle for den enkeltes udfoldelse.
Som udøver hjælper man hinanden med at overkomme and opnå beherskelse af bevægelsesudfordringerne. Den enkelte udøvers personlige bevægelsesudfordringer er altså et socialt projekt for hele gruppen.
In parkour we cultivate personal physicality and movement style. Even so, the movement ideal of personal style helps create close relationships and a meaningful community. This happens through the mutual engagement in each other's movements.
Close relationships and belonging
De nære relationer er ikke blot centrale for dannelse af personlig bevægelsesstil, men også i forhold til oplevelsen af identitet and tilhørsforhold til et fællesskab. Hvordan skal vi forstå parkour? Parkour har altså en række umiddelbare ligheder med både ekstremsport, springgymnastik and andre streetaktiviteter, men helt centralt er det, at parkour må forstås som en unik aktivitet, der på en helt ny måde bidrager med nydelsesfulde and overraskende oplevelser af kroppens bevægelsesmuligheder.
Parkour creates positive experiences of competence in overcoming challenges. It also makes it possible to create your own identity and a sense of belonging to a committed and meaningful community.
It is essential for the development of the activity that people understand that parkour is an independent and meaningful activity. It can contribute countless wonderful experiences for children, young people and adults alike.
Parkour har en helt unik tiltrækningskraft på flere alderstrin, and der er ingen tvivl om, at aktiviteten vil brede sig endnu mere i løbet af de næste par år. På Team Jiyo arbejder vi for at skabe den bedst mulige grobund for denne udvikling gennem workshops and konsulentarbejde.
Filosofi and metode
Kernen i parkour er ideen om effektivitet – at bevæge sig fra punkt A til B på den hurtigst mulige måde ved at tilpasse sig and overvinde fysiske forhindringer. Dette kan involvere løb, spring, klatring, rulning, and en række andre bevægelser.
Det er imidlertid vigtigt at bemærke, at parkour ikke bare handler om fysisk kapacitet; det handler også om mental smidighed. Udøvere af parkour, kendt som traceurs (for mænd) and traceuses (for kvinder), lærer at se deres omgivelser på nye måder and udvikle problemløsning and hurtig tænkning sammen med fysisk dygtighed.
Træning and teknikker
Parkour-træning involverer typisk konditionering ( conditioning ), styrketræning and tekniktræning for at forberede kroppen på de krævende fysiske udfordringer, sporten indebærer. Basale bevægelser som klatring, spring and rolls er fundamentale, men mere avancerede teknikker som præcisionsspring, kong vault (en type hænder-først spring) and wall runs kan også indgå i en traceur’s repertoire.
Parkour i dag
Siden sin oprettelse har parkour bredt sig globalt og er blevet en anerkendt og respekteret disciplin. Det er også gjort sin vej ind i popkulturen, med fremtrædende optrædener i film, tv-Shows, og videospil.
Mange byer har nu parkour parker and faciliteter, and det er også blevet inkluderet i mange skolers fysiske uddannelsesprogrammer. På trods af sin stigende mainstream popularitet, er parkour dog stadig meget tro mod sin kernefilosofi om frihed, kreativitet and selvdisciplin.
Kort sagt, parkour er en unik and inspirerende disciplin, der udfordrer både krop and sind. Det er en måde at engagere sig med verden på, der fremmer både fysisk kondition and mental smidighed, samtidig med at det skaber en dyb forståelse for vores egne begrænsninger and potentiale.
Hvad er Freerunning?
Freerunning is a fascinating and incredibly dynamic discipline that originates from parkour. It takes a unique turn by including creative and aesthetic elements in the form of movement. Parkour is often about finding the most direct and efficient route through an environment. Freerunning is about exploring creativity and artistic freedom in movement.
Oprindelse and filosofi
Freerunning blev oprindeligt udviklet af Sébastien Foucan, en af de oprindelige medlemmer af den franske parkour-gruppe “Yamakasi”. I modsætning til parkour, hvor hovedformålet er effektivitet and hurtighed, opfordrer freerunning udøvere til at udforske and interagere med deres miljø på mere kunstneriske and individuelle måder. Med andre ord, det er mindre en sport and mere en form for kunst, der udtrykkes gennem kroppens bevægelser.
Teknikker and træning
Freerunning inkluderer en bred vifte af akrobatiske bevægelser, herunder flips, spins, and tricks, som ofte ikke findes i traditionel parkour. Derudover lægger freerunning stor vægt på flydende bevægelse and æstetik, hvor det er lige så vigtigt, hvordan en bevægelse ser ud, som hvordan den udføres.
Træning inden for freerunning involverer ofte at udvikle styrke, smidighed, balance and koordination, samtidig med at man lærer and perfektionerer forskellige akrobatiske teknikker. Freerunning-udøvere træner typisk i både urbane and naturlige miljøer, alt fra byparker and bygninger til skove and klippeformationer.
Kulturel betydning
Freerunning has grown in popularity since it was first introduced to the public in the early 2000s. Freerunning has not only become a recognised discipline in its own right. It has also had a significant influence on pop culture and is often seen in films, music videos and video games.
Freerunning has become more popular. Even so, it remains deeply rooted in its original philosophy of freedom, self-expression and creative exploration. For many practitioners, freerunning is more than just a sport or a hobby. It is a lifestyle and a way of seeing the world.
Kort sagt er freerunning en unik and kreativ disciplin, der handler om at udforske verden omkring os gennem bevægelse. Det er en form for kunst, der giver udøvere frihed til at udtrykke sig selv på deres egen unikke måde, and udfordrer dem til konstant at skubbe deres egne grænser and prøve nye ting.
Parkour and Freerunning i Danmark
I Danmark har flere brands and parkour Teams været med til at påvirke bevægelsesformerne i en positiv retning. Team JIYO var de allerførste i Danmark and har dermed haft en vigtig rolle i forhold til, hvordan danskerne betragter parkour and freerunning i Danmark idag.
Det handler om at finde glæde, frihed and befrielse i bevægelse.
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