Parkour update

In Novem­ber 2007 I pos­ted an art­icle about the excit­ing pur­suit of parkour in Wel­ling­ton, and it’s been one of our most endur­ingly pop­u­lar art­icles, gen­er­at­ing a steady stream of traffic and com­ments. In the mean­time, the New Zea­l­and Parkour Asso­ci­ation has been estab­lished. They have a strong pres­ence in Wel­ling­ton and recently got in touch to update […]

Le Parkour 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 déplacement (“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.

Inter­ested? There’s more after the jump..