The Cycling Freak and the Parkour kids

This morning, about 7 am I guess it must have been, I was on a bicycle, as it went down the gentle slope from the house I grew up in towards the dairy.

   I was balancing on one hand – the left of course – on the bicycle seat, it must have been, extending my legs up in the air with good form and adjusting to keep my centre of gravity over my hand, my balance helped greatly by the compensatory movement of the bike.

   It was easy - much easier than the two-armed handstands I used to do as a National Fitness instructor when I was 17. I found that centre of gravity and enjoyed the ride.

   Freud THAT, my shamans!

I suspect some of this dream actually came from watching the DVD on Parkour that Christian got for his birthday two days ago.

   Parkour?

   OK, I don’t blame you if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. A couple of months ago, I would have reacted the same way, with a blank stare.

   You can look it up on google (it’s worth it!) but let’s just go with the good ole Wikipedia explanation for the moment.

Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK), l'art du déplacement (English: the art of displacement) or sometimes freerunning, is the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one's path by adapting one's movements to the environment. It is a non-competitive, physical discipline of French origin in which participants run along a route, attempting to negotiate obstacles in the most efficient way possible, using only their bodies. Skills such as jumping, climbing, vaulting, rolling and swinging are employed. Parkour can be practiced anywhere, but areas dense with obstacles are preferable, and it is most commonly practiced in urban areas.

The term freerunning is sometimes used interchangeably with parkour. While parkour aims to enable the practitioner to be able to move quickly and efficiently past obstacles, freerunning has a greater emphasis on self-expression within the environment. Freerunning includes tricking moves such as aerial rotations and spins, while the purist definition of parkour founder David Belle would not consider these part of parkour because the moves are merely for show, not efficient, and do not help the participant to get from place to place. Although Sébastien Foucan is considered a co-founder of parkour, his philosophy differed and grew to become known as freerunning .

I must admit I smiled a little when watching the video, as the young practitioners of the art were explaining their craft as if they had discovered some brand-new philosophy of life, when they were unknowingly applying the principles of Taoism (Daoism) to life in an urban environment. ‘...overcome any obstacle within one's path by adapting one's movements to the environment‘ as the description of Parkour says. A perfect beginning point for an explanation of Daoism to first year university students, I was thinking.

   Of course, quite a few of the PK devotees would have said, indignantly, that it’s much more than that; that it’s a training for life; a discipline for tackling life’s challenges.... it’s the vibe (to steal the classic line from The Castle).... but that’s OK. Daoism itself teaches the value of letting people think they have discovered things for themselves without any outside help!

   My point is that Parkour can make quite a difference to people’s lives. If you had seen Christian not all that long ago, you would have seen a kid developing the classic shape of one who sits too long at a computer or video game controller.

   Now when you look at him, having just had his 18^th birthday, the difference resulting from practising the first stages of PK are remarkable. He is much fitter and stronger and more confident. His friends have got interested in it as well and they go down to the park as a group to train and share what they are doing. It’s not competitive in the conventional sense and everything is tried at their own rate.

   I can see some big misunderstandings resulting from others’ lack of awareness of what they are doing, though. Some will look at them in the park and think they are up to no good. If they are jumping over benches or railings, they can be looked upon as hooligans, even though their own PK training is to be aware of and respect other people’s right to share the space, and not to get angry or cheeky if they are misunderstood. As they often are. 
   Even the police sometimes force Parkour practitioners to move on at times, thinking they might be vandals, yet these are the same young blokes who give up their time every week to train as SES volunteers, and who risk their lives in emergencies to save others.

   They’re not perfect. Their new-found skills could be put to evil uses, just as a gymnast’s skills would help a cat burglar. We don’t look down on gymnastics for that reason. We don't want to ban the PCYC for training kids how to box or press weights at the Police Youth Club gyms.
   You’ll often see the PK artists these days in movies, leaping across skylines and doing incredibly dangerous things - though these are really just the show-ponies of the discipline, and few reach that degree of skill or want to tackle that level of danger.

   But their intentions are honourable and good, and would you prefer them actually to be getting up to mischief? I wouldn’t. They deserve encouragement.  A Parkour park set up with the right sort of obstacles would be nice!

Parkour 'hooligan?'