Take Flight

Once featured on YouTube’s homepage here is another sweet little video from Parkour Generations. In this short documentary made by Julie Angel, Forrest and Dan Edwardes discuss Parkour and exhibit their skill in a dense undercover location in London. You may recognize this Parkour spot from some clips in a previous video post of Forrest. To view that video and see a transcribed copy of Forrest’s dictation from the film please click here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkHPQPozDRs

We are starting to have so many videos on this site that we aren’t always sure which ones we have already posted and which ones we still need to post! Yesterday’s post from the Parkour Generation’s Rendezvous I workshop reminded us of a few videos we thought we already had on the site but upon further investigation we found out that we did not. A fair amount of these videos are from Julie Angel and Parkour Generations, and as such we have decided to continue for a time posting a series of their work.

Starting today www.MisterParkour.com is beginning a five part series that is designed to answer the question, “What is Parkour?” Throughout this series we will be featuring videos with insightful explanations of Parkour from Stephane Vigroux, Forrest, the Yamakasi and of course David Belle. The fifth part of this series will showcase a rare video of David Belle where he speaks for almost four minutes about what Parkour is and what it means to him.

For the first video in this series we start with an excellent video featuring Stephane Vigroux. This video is currently being promoted on YouTube and it was prominently featured on the YouTube homepage a few days ago. In this video Stephane performs some incredible Parkour moves and directly answers the question, What is Parkour?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1FVnoLkfLA

A few weeks ago we posted a Parkour video featuring Forrest. It also does a great job of answering the question, “What is Parkour?” so we decided to include it in this post as well. The video is made in the same style as the video of Stephane above. In the feature Forrest performs some great Parkour moves and thoroughly describes what Parkour is and why he does it.

http://www.misterparkour.com/?p=45

This is one of the best and most concise videos we have ever seen that describes what Parkour is. The Tracer speaking is named Forrest. He is a Parkour instructor in London for Parkour Generations, and he is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the sport. Since some of his speech is hard to understand we have transcribe the clip below.

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“My name is Forrest. I come from France and sport is my passion. I went to university for four years and graduated as a physical coach. Now I live in London and I teach Parkour.
 
Parkour is an art of movement, a physical discipline but utilize this on your body and your mind
 
Parkour is not just a physical challenges, it allows you to discover yourself very deeply. I live to enjoy myself and to understand myself
 
Young people they told me, “But why you do this,” because it’s my passion. I like that.
 
I first began to learn about Parkour from Stepahen Vigroux, one of the best in the world. He taught me how to move, and how I could push my body farther than I had ever imagined.
 
Parkour is demanding and very complex sport where you work all the parts of your body. You have to control your abilities, the key is your mind. But most importantly you have to control your fear.
 
It’s necessary for you to be relaxed, relaxed.
 
I watched the other guys and they told me, “Oh, but it is very unusual, it’s very amazing”…
But I believe that I couldn’t do it. But just with practice, practice, practice. Now I love it.
 
There are no secrets to improving your skill in Parkour, other than hard training. Setting yourself goals and working towards them.
 
When I come in the new area, in new environment, I can visualize myself doing oh I can do this this this this this this this this. Because of that a few minutes later I be able to do physically. I think the creativity is coming with the level. I train up to 4 hours a day five days a week varying the type of work from physical conditioning to specific Parkour techniques. You can always improve
 
Parkour is competitive, but not against someone else. The first and most important competition in Parkour is with yourself.
 
For me the city is a playground. You have to see it through the eyes of a child.
 
Everybody can do Parkour, everybody if women, man, kids, old people. Everybody can do Parkour. You have to find your own way of doing Parkour. But you know for example, doing just walking on the rails, everybody can do it. It’s not necessary to be strong. It’s necessary to have a good balance. Just balance. And everybody can do it. So after that it just depends, what are you looking for, what do you want to do with Parkour or what do you goals do you want to reach that try to find your own way and be in joy and that’s it.
 
I hope people will see Parkour as a positive activity and more people will start practicing it in a safe and responsible way.”

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www.extremeparkourgear.com