Parkour, Free Running - "Jump Britain"

Thursday night, Channel 4 showed an hour long documentary entitled "Jump Britain" (buy the Jump Britain DVD or the Jump London DVD) about the rise of Parkour, or the sport of Free Running. Great programme and an interesting sport with the co-founder, Sebastien Foucan, and a bunch of British guys doing some amazing moves.

The basic premise of Parkour is free running, jumping and moving in fluid ways with the environment and a lot of the guys doing Parkour on Jump Britain were climbing up walls, jumping over obstacles, rolling, balancing, vaulting in the most sublime ways, checking out the urban environment to see ways of using rails, gates, walls, pillars etc to perform some interesting manouevres; a bit like skateboarding without the board.
Anyway, the main feature of the show was these people doing their thing across Britain - free running the Giants Causeway in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, Edinburgh Castle in Scotland, the Bull Ring, Birmingham, Tyne Bridge, Newcastle, and Festival Hall, London amongst other national landmarks.

Last time I did a big jump was over a hedge and onto a busted concrete path - twisted my ankle LOL (and don't mention the BMX jump last year where I bit the dirt and chipped my shin bone in the process. Now I have 661 pads - just the job)

There's no doubt people will get into this parkour/free running thing because it's the new cool bandwagon to be jumped on, but just like BMX and skateboarding are cool, owning a board or BMX does not equal cool. Like BMX and skateboarding this is another sport that requires practice, skill, style and discipline.

There's some good info about on Parkour or Free Running, like the Urban FreeFlow Global Parkour Network and the UK Parkour Association. Don't know if it's for me, though, still need to get tricky with my bikes first :)