Creative Commons photo by Alexandre Ferreira on Flickr

UPDATE: NZ Parkour Association established; offering classes in Wellington.

 

Ever been wandering around town and seen a group of youngsters behaving like a bunch of naughty monkeys? Whaddya know.. they’re probably doing parkour.

Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK) or or “free-running” or l’art du deplacement (“the art of displacement”) is an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body.

Founded by David Belle in France, parkour focuses on practicing efficient movements to develop your body and mind to be able to overcome obstacles in an emergency. It is also practiced by many as a form of entertainment or as a pastime.

As I hinted above, there’s a thriving parkour scene in Wellington; especially in and around the urban/recreational areas of the waterfront and Civic Square.

Here’s a couple of clips of some pretty shit-hot local practitioners:

Luckily our guys are a bit more skillful than this lot of unfortunates:

And so on and so on. There’s much more where that came from (Youtube, of course).

And if you’re keen to try it out, perhaps you could keep an eye on Meetups for parkour in Wellington.