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kottke.org posts about parkour

Parkour school

The Tempest Academy is a training facilty in LA for people interested in freerunning and parkour.

The world’s only indoor Parkour Playground, made up of more than seven thousand square feet of X Games genius! Why X-Games you ask? Well as you know, Tempest is all about going big. So, we hired our good friend Nate Wessel (world famous X Games ramp builder) to design and build our dream playground. With his creative genius, and our eye for style, we’ve created an indoor city that is unrivaled in the freerunning world. Next to Disneyland it’s the most MAGICAL place on earth!

(via โ˜…mathowie)


Parkour on rollerblades

This is Mathieu Ledoux doing things on rollerblades that you ain’t ever seen before.

See also yesterday’s parkour on a skateboard, parkour on a bike, parkour with ladders, proto parkour, and just plain old parkour. (thx, @eastofwabansia and sam)


Parkour with ladders

No idea if this is an actual thing outside of advertising New Zealand energy drinks; this article indicates that a few circus folk dreamt it up (hello, red flag). Welcome to 2010, when you can’t sort the ads from everything else. (thx, wade)


NYC parkour

Rocketboom recently profiled some parkour practitioners in NYC. Is 35 too late to take up a new sport?


Beach parkour in Kazakhstan

My pal Mouser is in Kazakhstan and took a bunch of photos of kids doing parkour on the beach. This shot is my favorite.

Kazakhstan parkour

Will parkour eventually join soccer as one of the world’s most egalitarian sports? You don’t even need a homemade ball to play, just stuff to jump over, through, and off. The whole world’s a course.


Free running

Free running is like parkour except that the former is more expressive than the latter. Whereas parkour is the efficient movement through space, free running adds acrobatic flair for aesthetic purposes. One of the more talented practictioners of free running is Levi Meeuwenberg; here’s a demo reel he made of his stunts.

Popular Science recently examined the physics of the jumps involved in both sports.

However, by bending and rolling, the time of impact can be increased to as much as 0.3 or 0.4 seconds. By decreasing his velocity over this extended period of time, the force is substantially reduced. Applying the above calculation with an acceleration time of 0.4 seconds we now get Fground = 2000 N (460 pounds). It’s still a significant force but as you can see in the video quite manageable for someone with the proper skill, strength and technique.

I’m behind on my Ninja Warrior, but Meeuwenberg did quite well on a recent appearance, advancing further on the show than any other contestant. (via justin blanton)


Jump London

Jump London, a 2003 documentary about parkour, is available in its entirety on Google Video. (thx, sacha)


Proto parkour

From a 1977 film called Gizmo, some urban tumbling from the 1930s that strongly resembles the contemporary sport of parkour.

The full film is available on Google Video. (via waxy)


The women of parkour

The NY Times reports that a growing number of women are taking up parkour.

“There are certain disadvantages to doing parkour as a woman,” Zanevsky said. “The most annoying is if you’re training alone, as I do in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, the unwelcome attention from guys. You get catcalls, because you’re doing these weird movements.

And there’s a video! (via fimoculous)


Parkour in New York

As part of this weekend’s New Yorker Festival, a parkour demonstration was held at Javits Plaza. Before the demonstration, Alex Wilkinson talked with David Belle, the inventor of parkour and the subject of Wilkinson’s NYer article about parkour from April. In the interview and the Q&A that followed the demonstration, Belle explained that parkour is not about competition or showing off or being reckless. It’s a test of self, of control, of deliberate practice. The journey is the point, not the sometimes spectacular results.

The demonstration consisted of a group of about 20-30 parkour practitioners, beginners and experts alike from all over the country. It seemed as though they included anyone with parkour experience who showed up and wanted to participate, and instead of a highly polished display of high skill (which is what I think the audience might have been expecting), we were treated to a more authenic look at the sport. The first five minutes were taken up with calisthenics and stretching in preparation of the jumps and vaults to come. After warming up properly, they began running through the course, each participant picking his way through the course according to desire and ability.

Experimentation was the rule of the day, not performance. With each pass, you could see the group learning the particulars of the course, where the good holds were, finding smoother combinations, and, much of the time, trying and failing. And then trying again until they got it. There was a single woman participant, one of several beginners in the group. When she had some trouble with an obstacle, Belle and his “lieutenant” stopped to show her some moves, a moment that revealed more about parkour than Belle’s jump across a ten-foot gap twenty feet off the ground. Belle himself didn’t do too much during the performance โ€” a couple of high jumps โ€” and had to be coaxed during the Q&A to perform one last big move for the audience. He shrugged off the applause and attention as he back-flipped down to the concrete, knowing that the true parkour had taken place earlier.


The New Yorker reports on the history

The New Yorker reports on the history and philosophy of the urban sport of parkour. David Belle, the inventor of parkour and the main subject of the article, demonstrates his sport in this 11-minute video. Lots more videos of parkour are available.