Does Parkour = Death Wish or Awesome?
Recently I’ve been looking into martial arts and yoga and pretty much anything I can do to take myself to the next level. Past discussions aside, which I may at some point come back to, I found Parkour.
I’m sure that plenty of people have seen the chase scene in Casino Royale (you remember the one where Bond crashes through the construction site chasing after a dude that might as well be spiderman). I’ll embed a video or set up a link as soon as I find decent footage of the whole thing. But the awesome bit is that spiderman just happened to be a guy who’s rather good at parkour and not the tight-wearing camera-man Peter Parker.
If you’re now wondering any assortment of who, how, why, where and when. I believe I can answer those questions in a swift and somewhat sardonic manner. Believe it or not the people who started this whole thing were the french, yes I said french. The best part is its not even french delinquents or hippies but a military commander who came up with the hair-brained scheme, all by his lonesome. Bugger the details, French guy A wants to be able to do an obstacle course as fast as possible and begins training himself and others in the ability to pass through an obstacle course as naturally as possible. He then trains his son who takes the thing to a whole new level, physically and philosophically. What would you have done if your father enticed you with the chance of being superman when you were in your younger years.
I for one would have loved to be trained from a young age to be a superhuman, hyper efficient, city traversing machine. Parkour is all about efficiency of motion with the goal of moving with complete fluidity to be able to overcome any challenge both mental and physical. To get a more complete low-down on the whole subject check out American Parkour
Now we get down to the heart of the matter being that I think I might want to give this a shot. The real question is am I crazy? It looks absolutely awesome.
But is hurling oneself through the air (often face first) above lovingly soft concrete to the general benefit of ones health. I think the mindset of the whole thing (passing through lifes obstacles with the greatest of ease) is quite the mantra but isn’t this kind of thing better suited for being over a trapeze.
I think I’m going to give it a shot, cus I want to be able to run away from James Bond if I need to, you never know. And I think I’d look a heck of a lot like batman if I did the whole thing in a cape. There will not likely be pictures as that would reveal my secret identity.
Little Disclaimer Here: Please don’t break your neck or any other bone if this post gave you any ideas. Also, don’t try and get your cat to do this trick, set a good example and learn how to do parkour first before making your cat into a guinea pig.
