By Clay Evans, for dirt | Wednesday April 5, 2006
Taken From
Dirt

They tend to draw crowds of curious onlookers: Young, fit and mostly male, they move like cats, swing like agile apes, even leap like squirrels as they practice their art, their sport - their passion - in public spaces.

Here's University of Colorado freshman Ryan Ford gracefully taking a run, bounding off a wall at the University Memorial Center, then sailing, body poised, over a railing, dropping to the pavement below.


::. CU freshman Matt Perry throws his body over a UMC ledge, displaying his finely honed parkour skills.

His landing is quiet, almost sculpted. His hands touch the ground, taking impact off his carefully bent knees. He rises like a gymnast after a nailed landing, and he's just another student walking with the crowd ... until he tries the move again.

Ford is a practitioner of the unusual and growing sport - as well as philosophy and lifestyle - known as parkour.

"It's a state of mind," says Matt Perry, another CU freshman who is among the 50 or so dedicated practitioners of parkour in Colorado. "It's a sport, but it's also a philosophy."

Perry and Ford practice parkour for about two hours a day, five days a week, and meet other practitioners for weekend "jams." A Denver jam on March 5 drew 35 people.

"We do it for fun," Ford says on a sunny, windy afternoon. "But it's about the progression. Pushing your mental and physical limits. It's about telling yourself, 'I am capable.'"

WHAT IS IT?

That's as succinct a definition of parkour as any, but it's not something you can describe in just a few words. Here's how the burgeoning Web site www.americanparkour.com - started in November, it now has 1,500 members -puts it:

"Parkour is the art of moving through your environment using only your body and the surroundings to propel yourself. It can include running, jumping, climbing, even crawling, if that is the most suitable movement for the situation. Parkour could be grasped by imagining a race through an obstacle course, the goal is to overcome obstacles quickly and efficiently, without using extraneous movement. Apply this line of thought to an urban environment, or even a run through the woods, and you're on the right path. ... (I)t is better to consider parkour as defined by the intention instead of the movements themselves."

"I think of it like, if I am surviving in the wild, how do I get around?" Perry says. "Like a mountain lion, jumping rock to rock."

But all that only gets at the physical aspect of parkour.

"Many people take the principles they learn through parkour and apply them to their lives, the art of navigating obstacles efficiently. By challenging themselves physically, it becomes easier to deal with everyday life situations," according to the Web site.

Although "the sport has been around as long as man's need to hunt and avoid being hunted," according to the Web site, it began with Raymond Belle, a French soldier who fought in Vietnam. Belle and his comrades were trying to develop efficient methods of movement or escape. Belle's son, David, now 34, developed that idea into the principles of parkour.

"David Belle said most people are living their lives on autopilot," Perry says. "But (in parkour), you discover you can move around and do more things with your body."

CATCHING ON

The sport is just beginning to catch fire. A commercial for a cell-phone company that aired in Canada during the recent Super Bowl featured some top parkour practitioners, known as traceurs.

"In the past five years, it's gotten big in the (United Kingdom)," Ford says. "In a year or two, I think it will be popular in the U.S. It's still kind of in its infancy."



Perry and Ford vividly illustrate one surprising aspect of the sport: Respect. They look like college students - Perry sports a mohawk, Ford's head is close-shorn; they wear T-shirts and running shoes - but their humility, evident in every word and gesture, is more appropriate to Marines. They don't curse, showboat or argue, and they respect private property.

"Sometimes we are asked to leave (private property), and we do," Ford says. "But on public property, we feel we have the right to be there."

Traceurs scout for what they call "hotspots," urban - and sometimes natural - geography that presents obstacles. In the Denver metro area, Red Rocks Amphitheater is a favorite spot, as is Skyline Park in Denver. Colorado, especially Denver, is considered by many to be the top parkour venue in the nation.

CU, with its close-set stone buildings, rails, walls and parking structures, offers plenty of opportunities to perfect individual moves, though not long series of moves.

"We haven't really scouted Boulder other than CU" and the Pearl Street Mall area, Ford says, eyeing an 8-foot-high beam atop the UMC parking garage.

Suddenly, like a squirrel, he shimmies up a support post. He spider-crawls across the top of the beam, then coolly drops back to the pavement.

"Your moves are sloppy the first time you try," he says. "But another thing I like about parkour is going somewhere nobody else has gone before."

SAFETY FIRST

If all this sounds dangerous or barely removed from hooliganism, watching Perry and Ford in action quickly dispels any such notions. They carefully spot their landings, yield to others and consider each move from a safety standpoint. Their focus and patience are intense.



At the parking garage, Ford takes a running start, slips over a rail, drops about 12 feet, and sprints away, with Perry "chasing" him, repeating an exercise they recently came up with. By the time Perry reaches the rail, Ford is long gone.

"Being chased and how to escape is one way to think about it," Ford says.

Moments later, Perry takes a crack at a new move, leaping gracefully from the same garage level and landing in a mulch-covered area 15 feet away. He slips over a rail, leaps up the stairs, and he's gone.

"But you don't want to be doing anything over 10 feet very much," Ford says.

BRING THE PAIN

But is it dangerous?

"It's not so extreme as long as you stay smart about it. You'll get cuts and bruises, maybe a sprained ankle, just like any sport," Ford says. "The best safety equipment is your head."

Perry says his parents are concerned that he might get injured, but says the philosophy behind the sport keeps "true" practitioners from taking crazy risks.

"Today I'm going on two shin splints," he says. "Like any sport, you're going to deal with a little bit of pain."

Competition is explicitly not part of parkour. Practitioners stress cooperation, encouragement and self-improvement, not triumph.

"The competition is with yourself, to be better than you were before," Ford says.

But they know that in America, when any pastime becomes popular, someone is bound to try to organize it and turn it into competition. Ford says introducing competitiveness would destroy the essence of parkour.

"When it becomes competitive, and somebody tries to make money out of it ... I see a lot of the top talent not taking part," he says.

Posted by minion on Thursday, April 06, 2006 (09:38:00) (1816 reads)

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