Freerunning

This article is about the physical art. For other uses, see Freerunning (disambiguation).

Dash vault and wallspin

Free running or freerunning is a form of urban acrobatics in which participants, known as free runners, use the city and rural landscape to perform movements through its structures. It incorporates efficient movements from parkour, adds aesthetic vaults and other acrobatics, such as tricking and street stunts, creating an athletic and aesthetically pleasing way of moving. It is commonly practiced at gymnasiums and in urban areas (such as cities or towns) that are cluttered with obstacles.

The term free running was coined during the filming of Jump London, as a way to present parkour to the English-speaking world. However, the term free running has come to represent a separate, distinct concept to parkour — a distinction which is often missed due to the aesthetic similarities. Parkour as a discipline emphasizes efficiency, whilst free running embodies complete freedom of movement — and includes many acrobatic maneuvers. Although the two are often physically similar, the mindsets of each are vastly different.

The founder and creator of Free running Sébastien Foucan defines free running as a discipline to self development, following your own way, which he developed because he felt that parkour lacked enough creativity and self-expression as a definition of each free-runner to follow your own way.

Overview

Free running was inspired by Parkour and embraces elements of tricking and street stunts, which are considered by the parkour community to be inefficient and not parkour. They may jump building to building, scale walls, and a lot of other maneuvers that they perform. Initially, the term "free running" was used by Channel 4 in their documentaries called 'Jump London' and 'Jump Britain' in an attempt to "translate" the word parkour to the English speaking people. Although Free running is a slightly different sport as it is not all about efficiency and is more about an art and finding your own way (be it the use of acrobatics, parkour, etc.). Also, one of the world-wide recognized founders of parkour, Sebastien Foucan said that free running is more about finding your own way, and free running is what he called his own way. However, as free runners became interested in aesthetics as well as useful movement, the two became different disciplines. The term Freerunning was created by Guillaume Pelletier and embraced by Sebastien Foucan to describe his "way" of doing parkour. Foucan summarizes the goals of Freerunning as using the environment to develop yourself and to always keep moving and not go backwards.

While Freerunning and parkour share many common techniques, they have a fundamental difference in philosophy and intention. The main aim of parkour is the ability to quickly access areas that would otherwise be inaccessible and the ability to escape pursuers, which means the main intention is to clear their objects as efficiently as they can, while Freerunning emphasizes self development by "following your way". Foucan frequently mentions "following your way" in interviews, and the Jump documentaries. He explains that everyone has their way of doing parkour and they shouldn't follow someone elses way of doing it, instead they should do it their way. Freerunning is commonly misinterpreted as being solely focused on aesthetics and the beauty of a certain vault, jump, etc. Although a lot of free runners choose to focus on aesthetics, that is just "their way", the goal however is still self development. In Freerunning you may employ movements of your choosing. You might also do certain movements solely for their aesthetic value and the challenge of execution. Freerunning is essentially complete freedom of movement.

It must be noted that not one of the founders and developers of the discipline, apart from Foucan, see two separate disciplines in parkour and freerunning. L'Art du deplacement, the original name, was practiced by the founders in the same way as it is practiced today by those same individuals. The discipline was not originally about 'moving from A to B' but rather was a way of testing oneself physically and mentally, to see if one was 'strong' (hence the Lingala term Yamakasi meaning 'strong man, strong spirit'). Parkour Generations, the largest global collective of first and second generation traceurs, explains in several articles and video interviews that while acrobatics is indeed a separate practice, Parkour, Freerunning and L'Art du Deplacement are all different names of this discipline.

Basic movements

See also: List of flips

Moves specific to free running are not easy to define, as most free runners use a combination of street stunts and parkour techniques. Free running focuses on freedom and beauty of movements, so many parkour techniques, such as vaults, may be carried out in a more aesthetically pleasing way, despite the fact that it may decrease the efficiency of the move.

Street stunts tend to be performed on flat ground or off a height, whereas free running movements tend to involve the use of obstacles or the general idea of movement from one place to another.

Due to the nature of free running, moves can be subject to the environment as well as ones own interpretation. Because of this there is virtually a limitless amount of "moves" one can perform. Some basic examples of movements which are more likely to be classed as free running moves than parkour or street stunts include:

Movements

Name	Description
Reverse Kong Vault	Instead of vaulting over a railing with a Monkey Vault, which may be the most efficient way, the athlete adds a 360 degree spin along the horizontal axis to make the movement more aesthetically pleasing, as well as increasing their coordination.
Diving Frontflip/Eagle Flip	A frontflip is executed over a wall or other obstacle, usually with a large drop on the other side. It is referred to as a diving frontflip (or dive front) because the athlete is required to dive over the obstacle before initiating the tuck.
360 Wallrun	This is similar to the wallrun parkour technique, in which the athlete runs at a tall wall and pushes against the wall with their foot to propel themselves up the wall. The only difference between this movement and the 360 wallrun is that a 360 degree spin is carried out after kicking off the wall and before grabbing the top of the wall.
Wall Spin	This is an advanced form of the palm spin. The athlete runs to a wall, jumps, places both hands on the wall, and vertically rotates 360 degrees while remaining in contact with the wall. Pushing off with one hand helps the rotation.
Wing Spin	This is basically a one handed wall spin. The non-contact hand and arm is spread away from the wall, much like a wing.
Wall Flip	The athlete runs to a wall, places a foot on, and does a backflip off of the wall.
Broken Arm Spin	This is a wall spin in which the athlete rotates around the top arm, or arm closest to the wall. Essentially a Wing Spin done with the opposite arm rotating in a backwards motion rather than a forward one.

palm Flip this is a advanced flip where the athlete pushes on the wall andflips over

Controversy

Another contentious issue that may either continue to make a rift between the parkour and the free running communities or possibly strengthen their bond is the idea of professional and amateur competition. From the start the parkour community has been always against the idea of serious competition as it violates the foundations of the philosophy of parkour. Sebastien Foucan mentions in an interview that although they do hold competitions, he doesn't like competition, and it's not "his way", but it may be someone else's "way".

The perceived conflict between free running and parkour occurred when the term parkour was translated as free running for the English-speaking public, and the misconception arose that they were separate disciplines. Some state that free running is a variation on parkour, and that the definitions are interchangeable. This argument has validity due to the fact that the creators never specifically defined the disciplines as "separate". However, free running does employ superfluous movements which would seem to be in conflict with the original ideology of parkour.

Media

Film

• The French film Taxi (1998), produced by Luc Besson, features the first on-screen appearance of free running. Besson's film Banlieue 13 continues on-screen examples.
• Many martial arts films produced in Hong Kong in the 80s, particularly the ones involving Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao and the Hong Kong martial art stunt teams, often used free running like flips, stunts and movements mixed into modern martial arts fight choreographies.
• The French film Yamakasi (2001) and its sequel are about a group of titular free running specialists.
• The 2003 documentary Jump London and 2005 sequel Jump Britain follow French free runners such as Sébastien Foucan (who appears in 2006's Casino Royale and co-directed its running sequence), Johann Vigroux and Jérôme Ben Aoues.
• The 2003 Thai film Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior starring Tony Jaa contains various scenes of free running and parkour coupled with Muay Thai fighting.
• An upcoming film called Freerunner starring Sean Faris, Danny Dyer, Tamer Hassan and featuring British freerunner Ryan Doyle is slated to be released sometime in 2011. The plot is about a young freerunner who must race against the clock with a ticking bomb locked around his neck. He has to evade enemies out his way freerunning thought the city to save himself and rescue his kidnapped girlfriend. The film will be directed by Lawrence Silverstein.

Video games

• In the Prince of Persia saga, the prince uses freerunning tricks.
• Core Design released a free running game, under the same name in 2007, for the PSP.
• Mirror's Edge: a critically acclaimed Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC game with the main focus being on a gang of outlaws called "Runners," who excel and specialize in parkour.
• Try-Synergy has developed a Wii game called "Free Running" in which you use free running techniques to complete goals.
• The MMORPG Urban Dead has "freerunning" as an acquired skill.
• True Crime, a to be released sandbox game set in Hong Kong is to feature a blend of parkour and freerunning style movements mixed in with the game's combat, reminiscent of the Hong Kong action genre.(Character is seen in early gameplay videos of being able to lazy vault over objects and kick enemies or other objects while doing so).
• In the free to play MMO FreeJack, Free Running is the main focus of the game and its races.
• The various main characters in the Assassin's Creed franchise use free-running and parkour to get around the environment.

Music videos

• Madonna has released a video for her song "Jump", which features parkour and free running extensively throughout. Also her music video "Hung Up" contains some clips of free running. For Madonna's Confessions tour, free running is heavily used for the choreography of the single "Jump".
• Eric Prydz has released a video for his song "Proper Education", which features free runner Daniel Ilabaca.
• 3 Doors Down has Gabriel Nunez, a free runner from team Tempest, prevent a car accident in the video "It's Not My Time."
• Bon Jovi has a teenager using elements of parkour and free running to get to a party in the video "It's My Life."

Television

• A commercial featuring traceur David Belle, was made for the BBC.
• On Saturday 9 June 2007, free runners appeared on Britain's Got Talent, and made it through to the next round with their free running display.
• In 2007 an advert for The Friday Night Project featured two free runners from urban freeflow acting as stunt doubles for the hosts.
• In a 2007 Modern Marvels episode, "Sticky Stuff", free running is shown while the show features "Stealth Rubber".
• In the Heroes episode Truth and Consequences, Monica Dawson learns with her adoptive muscle memory ability how to do some free running stunts to break into a house. They used Team Tempest from Los Angeles to play the part.
• Free runner Levi Meeuwenberg participated in the 2008 20th Ninja Warrior anniversary, becoming the last competitor standing until being eliminated by the cliff hanger in the third stage.
• "3Run" the parkour and free running team began a fitness challenge in March 2009 documented on the online fitness channel 'LA Muscle'.

Literature

• In the second and third of John Twelve Hawks' books of the Fourth Realm Trilogy, The Dark River and The Golden City, free running and runners are featured as part of the story.
• In the William Gibson novel Spook Country, one of the main characters, a young Cuban named Tito, practices free running. He also had elements of Systema and a reference to the Orisha that mixed with the free walking mindset.
• In the Terry Pratchett Discworld novel Pyramids, the main character is a trainee assassin who enjoys "edificing", which is the local name for free running.