Parkour, Free running, Ninja Training and Tricking

Posted on:January 29, 2013
Posted in:Extreme Sports, Free Running, Parkour, Sports
Posted by:Gabriele Academy

-Article by Hedy

What are Parkour, Free running, Ninja Training and Tricking?

Parkour (Abbreviated PK), also called as the “art of displacement”, is a training discipline that developed out of military obstacle course training.
Practitioners aim to move from one place to another, negotiating the obstacles in between. The discipline uses no equipment and is non-competitive. A male practitioner is generally called a “traceur“, a female a “traceuse“.
Developed by Raymond Belle, David Belle, Sébastien Foucan and other members of the original Yamakasi group, parkour became popular in the 1990s and 2000s through a series of documentaries and films featuring these practitioners and others.
Free running (FR) was evolved from parkour and includes combinations of gymnastics or acrobatics moves. According to its creator, Sébastien Foucan, “Free running is the art of expressing yourself in your environment without limitations: It is the art of movement and action.” He says free running developed from parkour when he started making it more personal to the individual, adapting it to each person’s strengths and weaknesses.
Both parkour and free running contain the ideas of overcoming obstacles and acting as an individual; in free running (“follow your way”), though, the greater emphasis is on acting as an individual.
Tricking : A form of acrobatics where practitioners focus mainly on linking together chains of acrobatic kicks, flips and twists in combinations, or combos. Trickers train and can be found in many locations, including fields, Martial Arts dojos, Gymnastics gyms, and even public locales. People who trick are known as Trickers or Tricksters.

My boys learned about parkour, free running, tricking from watching YouTube videos. In complement to a gymnastics class they were taking, they were pretty much self-taught.

Which reinforces the fact that children and people in general learn best when they have the will and desire to learn something that appeals to them. They are then so focused, put all their efforts into it and don’t count the hours spent learning said skills or activities.
I cannot tell you how many hours they practiced for because they practiced almost everyday : on the bed, trampoline, grass, gym, beach.. Well when you love what you do, you don’t count!

After less than six months of practice, they performed on the beach. Watch below their Tricking video combo performance on the Beach last summer!

Now that we have been able to locate parkour, free-running classes, they are fine-tuning their skills.

I recommend Stany-slav Boulifard Mallet @ ADD Academy Nantes and Thomas Le Groignec @ AIM Nantes. They both are excellent coaches and athletes.

Here is a video of a training @ ADD Academy Nantes :

Watch this great video with Stany-slav Boulifard Mallet @ ADD Nantes and Thomas Le Groignec @ AIM- Arts in Motion- Nantes

In this video, Thomas Le Groignec et Antoine Giri. Short parkour & freerunning film based on the Assassin’s Creed serie.
Thanks to Ubisoft.

As Parkour and Free running are becoming increasingly popular, it is getting easier to find classes. It is a well-rounded sport, safe, fun and for all ages.

You should be able to find a class in a city nearby. For instance, if you live in the USA you may refer to the American Parkour and you may refer to the Fédération de Parkour if you live in France.

The following facilities in the USA look great :

Tempest Academy in Los Angeles, CA has to be the biggest facility in the US! Wow, seems so nice!