Thursday, April 27, 2006

French Ninja Workout

Le Parkour: Parkour (also called PK, free running and le parkour) is a physical discipline of French origin in which participants attempt to pass obstacles in the most smooth and fluid manner possible, using skills such as jumping, climbing, tricking or the more specific parkour moves. The obstacles can be anything in one's environment, but parkour is often seen practiced in urban areas because of many suitable public structures that are accessible to most people, such as buildings and rails, according to Wikipedia.

Or as Cindy puts it succintly, "Those without MAJOR SUPER NINJA SKILLS NEED NOT APPLY"

I first saw Le Parkour in a Nike commercial shot in Paris where an athletic man is pursued by a chicken that follows him as he darts, flips, climbs, and leaps around the labriynth of Parisian buildings with the chicken showing up at each turn.




Then I found out that this sport, which started in France, has recently become more popular in the United States. Go figure, I was reading the LA Times and saw that urban sprawl of a city has spawned its own Le Parkour practioners: No Strings Attached
I don't know if it could work in South Florida, some of the hot spots for Le Parkour in LA is around UC Irvine. I can easily see it being practiced at UM ~ The Physics building, Cox Science , and School of Business.

I just wish I could practice this. When I was a little kid, I'd pretend to be a ninja but these guys are totally free with their body movements. I'd just break into a sweat thinking about doing a back flip. Into a pool. LOL.

The guy in the video above is one of the cofounders of this sport. The guy in the video below is the other cofounder. He explains more about this sport and shows off
more jawdropping stunts around his neighborhood. French w/ subtitles.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

those moves look familiar...oh...thats right...thats how monkeys move! lol

Anonymous said...

well if I could move like that I'd have it made. I heard of parkour before though look at americanparkour.com if you really wanna learn how.