In 2017, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) approved ‘Parkour’ as the 8th governing event at the Swiss Executive Committee and General Assembly. Following mechanical gymnastics, tumbling, rhythmic gymnastics, acrobatic gymnastics, aerobic gymnastics, trampoline, and living gymnastics, ‘Parkour’ was added as an event under direct jurisdiction. It is a competitive urban sport that moves from one point to another in the fastest, most efficient and agile way using various obstacles in urban and natural environments. In terms of the military, it is like ‘guerrilla training’.
According to Wikipedia, ‘Parkour’ is derived from the French noun ‘Parcours’, which means road, course, or journey. If expressed in Eastern Chinese characters, it has a similar meaning to ‘Do’. In 1998, David Bell’s friend Hubert Kunde, known as the founder of parkour, suggested the name ‘Parkour’ to Bell by replacing the ‘c’ in the middle with a ‘k’ and removing the silent ‘s’ at the end.
The name ‘Parcours’ means ‘courses for fighters’ and is derived from the French word ‘Parcours du combattant’, which refers to military obstacle training. One of the major developers, Georges Hébert (1875-1957), a former French naval officer, established a personal training system that improved physical abilities by observing the behavior and lifestyle of African natives with excellent strength and agility. It spread and was adopted as part of French military exercises and expanded into outdoor exercise programs for the general public.
According to David Bell, parkour is ‘a training method that helps people overcome various obstacles in cities and natural environments quickly and efficiently with pure human power’. In the early days, the goal was to move quickly and efficiently to the destination through various movements such as jumping, rolling, running, and climbing. focus on It is seen as one of the extreme sports due to movements that are difficult for the general public to imitate, such as jumping between buildings without any equipment and climbing buildings in the city center naked, but traceur refers to parkour trainers. It emphasizes that it is not a competitive sport, but a mental and physical ‘discipline’. 스포츠토토
On the other hand, parkour is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘free running’, which has the same root but is different. If parkour focuses on efficiency, ‘free running’, founded by Sebastien Foucan, focuses on expressing creative and splendid movements based on challenges and aesthetic values. ‘Freerunning’ was created in 2003 by Guillaume Pelletier, who was the producer of the British Channel 4 documentary ‘Jump London’, which featured parkour trainers representing France, for the purpose of widely publicizing the new exercise to the English-speaking public.
In Korea, ‘Parkour’ is also called ‘Yamakashi’. However, this is the name David Bell used in 1997 when he was active in a team called ‘Yamakasi’ with Sebastien Pukang and others. Perhaps because it is a new sport, the term parkour is not often used in the domestic media yet. That’s why it didn’t spread well in Korea. The Korean Gymnastics Association posted the concept explanation and introduction process of parkour on its website due to the influence of the International Gymnastics Federation’s designation as the 8th governing event. In Korea, parkour and free running were introduced at the end of 2003 and spread around clubs. In 2011, the Korea Freerunning & Parkour Federation (KFPF) was established.