I'm thinking the guys before me don't even practice parkour in the first place...

Parkour is not a sport, in that there are no rules, teams, or points. It is not about competition or showing off.

It shouldn't be confused with freerunning. Freerunning is more about free-movement and involves more tricking.

Parkour can be thought of as being chased by someone. You want to get away as fast as possible, right? But lets say you begin running into rails or walls or other obstacles as such. If you go around them you're only wasting time and energy.

The trick of parkour is to use as little wasted movementt while going past an obstacle. This is why most consider tricking and flips "not parkour" as they simply aren't necessary and will most likely slow you down in someway.

To parkour is to be able to control your body and mind into one being, so that you can find a path quickly, and move your body in a way that the path can be followed into the next path you're given. If you're running towards and obstacle and start to slow down in order to maneuver around it, most likely you need to practice more.
"This guy was chasing me but completely gave up when he realized he couldn't keep up with the path I was going."
"The bus didn't come, and I only had 10 minutes to get to work. I realized it was the perfect opportunity to put my parkour-training to work."
by Danny Day October 15, 2006
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Parkour is a discipline not unlike martial arts, but rather than practicing fighting or self defense, it is about moving efficiently

Parkour is a way of moving from one place to another as quickly and as efficiently as possible by means of jumping, vaulting, climbing and other such things.

Parkour is not to be confused with freerunning, which is more focused on aesthetics (i.e. flips, aerials etc.) rather than efficiency. Freerunning is considered an extreme sport, wheres Parkour is a practice for personal benefit rather than showing off.

One who practices Parkour is known as a traceur
I saw this guy using Parkour to get to wherever he was going. I saw him climbing walls, vaulting shorter walls and jumping to get wherever he needed to be as quickly and as efficiently as possible.
by InfiniteSingularity November 27, 2008
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Le Parkour (also known simply as Parkour, PK, or free running)was invented in 1988 in the Parisian suburb of Lisses by a group of teenagers including the legends David Belle and Sebastien Foucan, who formed a clan called the "Yamakasi", or new (modern) samurai. it is a sport in which practitioners, called "traceurs, run, jump, climb, and roll rhrough rooftops, gaps, pipes, practically anything in an urban environment. it demands great physical agility, and masters of PK, such as Belle, are able to jump over cars, leap 9-meter distances from one rooftop to anotherIt has been described as "obstacle-coursing" or "the art of movement". the fluid art of parkour is sometimes combined with the smooth flow of such arts such as capoeira and Xtreme martial arts. examples of such hybrid practitioners are Team Ryouko, the famous Toronto martial arts stunt team, and the mysterious Xyndicate, a tiny, underground clan located in the eastern United States.
"PK is as 1337 as break-dancing!"
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Parkour (or 'le parkour'; 'freerunning'; 'pk' or 'pking') is the sport of fluid urban movement. Invented in 1988 in the Lisses suburb of Paris by a small crew of traceurs including the ledgendary David Belle and Sebastien Foucan who recently featured in the BBC documentary 'Jump London', the sport (or art) of pk is essentially a conbination of running, athletics and acrobatics in urban environments.

It includes such techniques as the tic-tac (wall step/run); kong (a form of vault); and precision (two-foot to two-foot jump) among myriad others. Most watching traceurs pk would describe their movements as series of of actobatic techniques fluidly integrated into a continuous run from A to B, past, over under and through any obstacles in their path. However, that would be during a run (most of which are filmed, as with skaters). Most often, if you saw traceurs practicing they'd be honing individual components of their technique.

Certain individuals have chosen to explore alternative forms of parkour, such as running through traffic or passing through crowds quicky, while others, such as Team Ryouko or Xyndicate have attempted to blend pk's unique ideals with other forms of martial and athletic arts.
'want to come pk tonight?'
'i do parkour'
by Flamsmark January 4, 2005
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(sometimes abbreviated to PK), or l'art du déplacement (English: the art of movement) is the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one's path by adapting one's movements to the environment.

In short, it's the French art of "running away". Early iterations were witnessed in the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II. The key is to lay down your weapons, and run away from Germans.

If you recall - the French haven't won a combat engagement since Napoleon. They have folded 3 times to the Germans in the last 100 years. Their "resistance" sold out more of their friends and family than actually provided real resistance.

All of this led up to the development of parkour - the French art of running away.
Look at that weak and pasty buttdart running from that scary rabbit... he is practicing parkour.
by Flaccid Tallywhacker December 20, 2010
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Parkour (also called Le Parkour, PK, or free running) is a quasi-sport in which participants attempt to clear all obstacles in their path in the most fluid manner possible.
A traceur is a participant of parkour. The term free-runner has been commonly adopted by the media following the use of the term by Sebastien Foucan in Jump London. The same program led to the use of another term, free-running. The term free-running has been widely used by journalists to describe parkour-like activity, but which commonly features more emphasis on 'showy' moves than are a feature of genuine parkour.

The ultimate goal in parkour is to ‘flow’ along one’s path, for the entire journey to be as one fluid movement with no pauses or breaks. A principal rule of parkour is to never go backwards. Traceurs believe that there is a path to every obstacle which is achieved through forward movement.

The magnitude and technicality of a move in parkour are secondary to the flow and beauty of it. Explains Jerome Ben Aoues, one of the traceurs featured in the acclaimed Channel 4 documentary Jump London, “The most important thing really is the harmony between you and the obstacle; the movement has to be elegant, that's what will make it prettier. Length and distance only add to the beauty of the move, if you manage to pass over the fence elegantly that's beautiful, rather than saying ‘I jumped the lot.’ What's the point in that?”

To many, parkour is an extreme sport, to others a discipline more comparable to martial arts, to others an art form akin to dance, a way to encapsulate human movement in its most beautiful form. Parkour also inspires freedom; being free in an urban environment designed to trap, not restricted by railings, staircases, even buildings. (See Situationist). It is for many people a way of life.
by www.valleyfreerunners.com October 2, 2005
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A sport that most consider to be fun to do or to watch, and that the three people before me are making look like a boring sport with their lengthy explanations. The only main objective is to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible in your environment, but there's a reason it's a "sport" and not an "obligation". Have fun in your sport- take a little time to perfect a jump over something if you constantly see that you're messing up on it, let yourself get sidetracked and go chase a squirrel, go out of your way to climb up on top of McDonalds and dance around on the roof to make a fool out of yourself and then run like a madman when the workers are chasing after you shouting that they've called the "poh-leece on you!!!" Have fun, do what you can, and learn what you can't. Climb up on a Church and watch cars go by, push your body to it's limits. That's the perfect world of Parkour... not just discipline, but enjoying disciplining yourself.
Parkour rocks my socks... and the socks prevent blisters. Lol.
by VineyardPK May 14, 2006
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