The Art of Movement

You could say that these guys do dangerous things in dangerous places, and they do. You could say they are trespassers, and they probably are. You could say they are vandals. Eh. Although I do suspect that things get broken, aside from their bones, I wouldn’t necessarily call them vandals. Skaters and borders who deface buildings by intentionally scraping their wheels and boards against them are vandals. On the whole, I think it’s fair to say that free runners may be careless, or thoughtless, but most of them aren’t vandals.

Think of them what you will, but you have to admire their ability. It takes great discipline of body and mind to accomplish such feats. One must have physical strength and mental precision to put their feet right where they want to after tumbling and twisting in the air. They jump high, they jump far, and they fall farther than I would want to climb down a ladder.

I was never really this athletic. I was first chair trumpet, first chair baritone, and first chair French horn. I could run the bases in PE and lift weights and climb the hill at the academy. But never anything on the order of parkour.

There should be a free running sport at the Olympics.

dictionaryparkourHow many different math and science disciplines are they exercising without even knowing it? I’m sure they don’t sit stare at a group of buildings trying to figure out the squared hypotenuse of the radiant triangular degree of axial momentum. Or whatever. They see some buildings and surrounding features and just decide they want to jump it.

But what do you do to prepare yourself? How do you train for something like this? How many bruises and broken bones does one have to suffer?

I’m sure that they don’t start out on the high buildings, but even jumping from one cinderblock to another has the opportunity for a broken ankle or twisted knee. At what point do you develop the confidence and courage to jump, roll, twist, fall, and turn a hundred feet up or more.

There are videos of parkour fails. I don’t have the heart to watch those. As stupid as some people seem, although it appears that they deserve whatever is coming to them,  and as funny as they may be, I’m not into watching peoples’ pratfalls.  I’m sure they depict just how difficult practicing this sport is, just how dangerous it can be.

I called it a sport. It may be unorthodox, unorganized, and unsanctioned, but by any standard of definition, parkour qualifies.

stonedIt would be tough to be a stoner or a meth-head and still be able to perform like this. The mind has to be clear and sharp to do the gozillion calculations per nanosecond that it takes to successfully pull something like this off. Not that it would be impossible, but you can see where it would really inhibit performance.

I’m glad this wasn’t a thing when I was chasing bad guys all over town. I’ve been on a few rooftops (maybe I’ll tell you about them sometime), but I’ve never run into anything on this scale. I could hop a fence with the best of them, but wearing a bulletproof vest, boots, and I don’t know how many pounds of equipment around my waist, anything more would have been miraculous. I can tell you right now, they’d have gotten away.

You may think they’re hooligans. Some of them may be, but I admire their talent.


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