What is Parkour?

I wrote this awhile back,but it's still quite a good read. It's on the definition of Parkour.

What is Parkour? It’s a decent question to ask. I mean, you’ve seen it on TV. Some French guy explaining some deep philosophical point and then jumping off a building. I mean, where’s the connection? Exactly how do you get from philosophy to action? Everyone has their different idea. I’m not going to get into a huge discussion on exactly who’s right. I’m not going to go into any specifics. I’m not going to declare myself to be the fountain of all knowledge. First of all, I’m going to take the Universally agreed definition: “Parkour: The fast, efficient and fluid movement from any point A to point B” and then I’m just going to do what my University Lecturers taught me to do. Start with a simple idea and build it up to explain everything I can.
Imagine the world is incredibly simple. It is merely a one dimensional line so that travelling from any point on t A-B is merely following a straight line.

I don’t think there’s any argument that in this world the most efficient, fluid and fastest way from getting from A to B is to run from A until you reach B.
In our conceptual world, Parkour is running. There is no difference. Running is the one and only method of performing Parkour in this imaginary place.

Now, let’s make things a little more complex. Lets add a wall to our (now 2-D) world.
Right, so now we have this wall. Our goal though is identical. We want to get from point A to point B as quickly, efficiently and as fluidly as possible. Remember, this is a 2-D world. We can’t go around this wall; only over it. Depending on the size of the wall, there’s a range of motions we could use. We could use a speed vault, a kong, a dash, jump clean over it. If it’s higher, we could use a wall run, turn vault to dismount. We could do a pop monkey to drop and roll. There’s a huge range of movements we could use already and all we’ve done is add one wall to our imaginary world.
So let’s develop this idea once more before we start looking at the real world. We’ll keep the 2-D world. But this time let’s put two walls in the way.

I think everyone will now begin to notice the pattern. There’s even more possibilities here: Dash to Kong; Speed to Kong; Kong to Cat to Turn vault; Precision; Clean over to Cat leap; Kong to Precision. The possibilities go on and on. Depending on the size and shape of each of these walls, different combinations will be more or less effective. I mean if both walls are 2 foot high but 10 foot apart a running precision sounds perfect. But if the first is 6 foot and the other 3 foot a Kong to Precision would be excellent. With a second wall our variations have already increased exponentially.
Ok, enough with our lovely little imaginary world. In the real world there are more than just walls. There are rails and gaps and things to climb and interesting pieces of architecture and gates and steps and a million other things. Parkour is the movement from A to B through your environment. But our environment is so complex it’s easy to get distracted and often we need to break it down so that it is as simple as our 2-D world and we can see the simple solutions. And that is why people call Parkour a discipline and not a sport. Because there is a huge philosophical component to the movement you are learning and refining.
But we’re still forgetting about the variation. The simplest obstacle, one wall, presented a large variation in movement from the very beginning. And this is the other deeply important aspect of Parkour. There is no ‘correct’ way to do Parkour. Because one person will prefer the speed vault while another prefers a kong for the exact same wall. Each will find their own motion satisfying and ‘correct’ for them. But the other will disagree. Yet both are performing Parkour correctly as far as our new definition is concerned. So maybe we should all stop and have a think and maybe argue a little less.