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.