L'Art Du Deplacement

This is amazing!

Have you ever heard of Parkour? PK? Art Du Deplacement? Freerunning? People doing insane jumps between buildings.. What ever you call it.. I freaking love it!!! Many questions are raised between the differences of parkour and freerunning but it is quite similar.. I read that freerunning is expressing yourself within your environment and parkour is aiming to get from A to B the fastest. Parkour is often combined with other forms of acrobatics, such as free running, street stunts, tricking and traditional Chinese martial arts like Qing Gong (light body skill). It is amazing and is becoming more and more popular.

Parkour has appeared in various television advertisements, movies such as the film Casino Royale, documentaries, comic books, video games and music videos. Remember Madonna's video for her song "Jump"? Also her music video "Hung Up" contains some clips of free running. For Madonna's Confessions tour, free running was used for the choreography of "Jump". Even the Militaries from different countries are looking for ways to incorporate parkour into training such as the British Royal Marines, they hired parkour athletes to train their members.

I think that this new sport kinda reflect our lives. The buildings and fences represent the obstacles that we face and that we see impossible to overcome.

I can't help asking myself.. what kind of shoes are they wearing to do this? I believe one of them is wearing Kalenji running shoe.. Kalenji has become a firm favourite in the scene as THE shoe of choice amongst Freerunner’s and Traceur’s alike. The shoes are ugly!.. but they seems to be the best! Free running founder, Sébastien Foucan (The Casino Royale dude) helped K-Swiss develop the first shoe for free running and parkour. The shoes are called the Ariake. Sébastien appears in a commercial for K-Swiss, free running. You can see it here.

Want more? Here is 2 great documentaries about Parkour and Free Running:

"Obstacles are found everywhere, and in overcoming them we nourish ourselves."

Quote by David Belle, Parkour founder.