Kyle Johnson
Ms. Bellafontaine
ELA ll
4/9/14
In Depth Research and Explanation of Parkour and Freerunning
Parkour isn’t just something you do, it’s a life style! When you parkour, it’s not just movement; you’re training your body as well as your mind to become more confident in everything that you do.
Parkour in a simple definition is getting from point A to point B in the quickest way possible. Through exploring the history of parkour, various maneuvers, and the most effective ways to get your body in the physical condition needed to perform parkour, you can better understand the basic idea and why it is still a practical application of the human body. The basic ideas of parkour originated in the 1900s in France by a Naval officer known as Georges Hebert. While observing the locals of a French caribbean island called Martinique, he was inspired by the locals’ agility as they easily navigated through the environment before them. He used the style that he saw and mixed it with his own philosophy, and these teachings eventually became the standard physical training for
the French Military. Parkour today is most often credited to David Belle. He was heavily influenced by the French Military standard through his father, who had completed his military training in the 1950’s. In addition to his father’s impact on him, Belle was formally trained in martial arts and gymnastics. His athletic background combined with the philosophical teachings of the French Military parkour evolved into the practice that the world knows today( Discover parkour ). When someone is Freerunning they don’t feel like they’re just doing an exercise they feel as if they’re expressing them self through their actions. Parkour is more than just an activity it what makes someone who they are it’s apart of them. But, becoming a successful Tracer you must condition to become competent with your actions to be able to achieve the goals that it sets for everyone. When a normal person sees a wall they think they need to walk around a Tracer automatically sees an obstacle to overcome and so it sets a new challenge for him/her. But, conditioning is no easy thing you have to be determined and willing to make yourself better otherwise you won’t be able to go through with it and it won’t help you any. When you’re conditioning for parkour you need to focus on upper, lower, and mid body workouts because it requires all of those muscles in those areas to be able to complete the challenges in front of you. So, when you think about conditioning you want to focus on building muscle as well as your endurance for running and muscle endurance because when you go on a run it isn’t just
a couple things you find as many obstacles as possible so you must be able to continue going. Now, to the main part of Parkour, the vaulting. When it comes to vaulting there isn’t just one or two there is an excessive amount that are needed so that you can applying them to all different situations. When comes to getting over anything from picnic tables, benches, fences, walls, and more there are specific vaults that are better than others for these obstacles. For picnic tables and benches you can use anything from a Kong to a Reverse vault. To perform a Kong which is an intermediate vault you must jump while placing your hands on the obstacle and as you’re moving through the air your feet should go through your arms and as they go through you let go of the obstacle and land with one foot in front of the other to continue running.(Parkour) A
Reverse vault is a little more difficult than a Kong. For a Reverse you approach your obstacle the same as a Kong by placing both hands on the table but closer together.
Then, you jump basically over your body from the waist down spinning parallel to the ground and landing with both feet hitting the ground. With bigger obstacles such as fences you need a different approach. An easy way to
