May 3, 2011 • 27 mins
The art of parkour is an astonishing combination of agility and physical strength pursued across the world -- but how does it work? Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the philosophy, history and pursuit of this unique form of artistic expression.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast on Josh Clark with me as always this
Charles w Chuck Bryant, and we are going to sit
(00:22):
still for this episode of Stuff you Should Know, not me, buddy,
Yes you are. I'm gonna do some cong vaulting. Hey, um, Chuck,
you watch The Office right? Yeah? Okay? Love it? UM
in season six, which I guess was last year. Second
episode starts out very funny, UM with Michael, Andy and
(00:46):
Dwight all engaged in a little something called Parkour um
and they shout parkour like every couple of seconds and
then Um. What struck me as funny, especially after we
decided to do this UM episode, is that Jim explains
what Parker is for anybody who doesn't know, and he
he cites it as the Internet sensation of two thousand four.
(01:10):
So it took you know, Michael six years to finally
catch onto it, taking us seven to finally start podcasting
on it. Yes, yeah, we've been had calls for this one,
uh for since we started the show. People have written in,
so what about Parker, dude, Yeah, I love it Parker,
and we know it's old, but we we've not just
(01:31):
discovered this. It's and this article clearly has been on
the site since about two thou six or seven, because
there's actually a date sited in it um as like
two thousand and six. And from the extra research that
we did on this, it seems like this community has strengthened, expanded,
and gotten more legitimate. Whereas you know, I'm sure with
a lot of the rest of the world it's like
the awe and an amazement of it, or the newness
(01:55):
is worn off. But I was I was hartened to
see that the people who do Parker are like, well,
we don't really care if you like it or not.
We're gonna keep doing this, and and they've grown and
gotten better. Yeah. I think most people that I know
have the same reaction though, when they see the Parker
videos for the first time, which is this is pretty cool. Oh,
it's very cool. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not saying like
(02:15):
anybody's like this sucks. It's like the newness is worn
off for the general public. Yeah, but people are generally
knocked out, uh, and then board right, so, Chuck, I
think we should begin to begin, right, great song? Uh.
In nineteen two on the little island in the Caribbean
known as Martinique. Have you ever been there? No? Yah?
(02:38):
Do you think I would tell you every couple of
days like, oh I've been to Martinique, you probably would. Uh. Yeah.
It's got a pretty interesting history in some trace the
birth of park. We're back to then French naval officer
name Lieutenant George Herbert. I don't think that's how you
say his name. What would you say Georgebert? Or Jabert?
H he? Uh? What happened was ofvolcano blew up in
(03:00):
nineteen o two there and heed Martinique, yea and Martinique.
He coordinated the rescue of locals and Europeans there and
had a chance to watch people fleeing this and saw
a decided difference I take it between some of his
European comrades and the local Caribbeans. Well, people are like
(03:21):
trying to get around obstacles, like you know, chunks of
flying rock that had landed right in front of them,
and running for their lives. Something about that scene struck
E Bear, like, Wow, this is really amazing. Well, he
saw a great deal of athleticism going on around him,
and he said, you know what, you combine that with
some courage, and what you have is what we're gonna
(03:42):
call in America to be strong and useful. How would
you say that in French? Dog strong? And that's what
I'm saying. And that's the basis of the natural method, right, yeah,
the natural method um, which in French would be what
method natural? And that inspired French military training. That became
(04:05):
the basis for French military terry training. Apparently they were
the first people to use obstacle courses or or what
the path of the warrior parkour dick combat town. So
you hear that word Parker with the C I heard it,
that's where it came from. Yeah. So and this basically
this guy is like this French um physical fitness guru
(04:29):
that you've never heard of, but really has inspired a
lot of the probably cleaner cut quarters of France. Right yes, um,
So that formed the part of the basis for the
philosophy of what came to be known as Parker because
it inspired this kid named David Bell right. Well, first
(04:50):
it was his father, Raymond Bell, was a soldier in
French Special Forces. He learned all this stuff, passed it
on to his son David and said, it's pretty cool.
I wanna learn this. Yeah, and we left out a
very important point. Um. The natural method is basically like
physical fitness is um. All you need is what you
(05:11):
find in nature. Do you want to do some chin ups?
Could find a tree branch jerk? You want to like
work out your upper body, push a huge rock up
a hill and isometric and push against the wall. Right,
And then the point of that, this is the other
big point. The point of being physically fit is, like
you said, so you can be useful to society in
case of an emergency, in case an old lady needs help,
(05:33):
like you can pick her up and carry her across
the street with one hand. That kind of thing. There's
something be said for that. Okay. So David Bell is
fifteen years old. It's he lives in Liza's, France, which
is a suburb of Paris Um and his dad's been like,
check this dude out, and he is just inspired. But
not only e Bear but also again named Bruce Lee.
(05:56):
That's right, Bruce Lee's fluid movements um not not as
rigid as a lot of martial artists were before him.
It's about adaptability, adapting to the situation. Somewhere in that
um in in David Bell's brain, he'd put that together.
He put Bruce Lee, Georgie Bear, and a mailbox in
(06:21):
front of him all together and decided to leap over
it with his hands rather than walk around it. Boom, Parker.
That's the Parker he changed. He added a k instead
of a sea, got together with his best buddy, Sebastian
Foucam and they established a group um. They were called
themselves tresseurs, which means to leave a trail in French.
(06:43):
Tray ser is slang in Paris for hurry. Well there
you have it. Yeah, hurry up and make a trail. Yeah,
that's what you're doing. So they organized a group, the
first group of parkour enthusiast basically called the Yamakazi, not
to be confused with yamazaki, which is san tori time.
It's Japanese single malt whiskey. Yeah, it's good stuff anyway.
(07:07):
I had it in an Econo Miaki station. Chances are
if you type in Yamakaze on the Internet, it'll bring
up the other Yamasaki and you'll be buying liquor before
you know it, and then you can watch some cool
parkour videos while you and bud. That's right. Uh. Luke Bisson,
famous French filmmaker, made a film called The Yamakazi Um
(07:29):
definitely kicked up the awareness about what park war was, right,
and prior to that, he included it in his UM
film Taxi Too. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that was the
first time parkour was introduced to the general public in
mass media. And because Luke Bisson apparently was a huge
(07:49):
uh DE vote very early on. So in two different
movies in two successive years, he made you know, Parker
part of the theme. Yeah, and if you recognize Bells
Buddy's name, Sebastian fu Kan, he was the dude who
was chased in Casino Royale, the opening awesome parkour chase
that Daniel Craig chases this dude. Yeah. So it starts
(08:11):
to kind of percolate into um to the public consciousness
in the early two thousands, the late nineties, we should say,
by the late nineties, there's already uh rift in the
um in the Parker community. Yeah, the communities like this
always like the battle, like there's always purest it seem
like and then people who want to change it and
(08:32):
take it into what they feel like the next level,
like skateboarding. Same thing happened back in the seventies. So
with parkour. The the point is, if you're a purest
with parkour, you don't you never moved backwards. Everything is
for utility and you get from point A to point
B most as efficiently as possible, which often includes jumping
(08:54):
over a mailbox. Yeah. The main rule, and this is
what's cool in parkour is that obstacles are used to
increase your efficiency. It's not like this is something I
gotta go around. It's let me use this to vault
forward faster and possibly gain some momentum, maybe twade a
little little kinetic energy for a little potential energy, yeah,
and then turn that into more kinetic energy. And the
(09:15):
the Red Bulls, well, Red Bull actually sponsored one of
the what was it called the the Red Bull Art
of Motion Tournament competition. Yeah, and we'll get into that
in a minute, because the purest don't like the competition aspect.
But the motto of the w fpf UM, which is
the World Free Running in Parker Federation, I think that
was established an oh seven, it is no obstacle, no
(09:39):
freedom K and O W for both get it? I
do now, I didn't until you have told me about
the K. You know your freedom. Um, so that's so
part court A to b using obstacles, never going backwards.
Free running huge huge difference. You can go backwards. Now
going backwards? Does that mean like you, I get the
(10:01):
idea from park Ers that you you're running toward the
wall and you don't stop and go all right, let
me see, I should probably go like here here, you
just attack the wall, don't you. I think that's the
case with both of them. But really, honestly, one of
the main differences is like free running allows for movement
backward to continue going forward, where park cour is like, no,
you have to keep going forward all the time. And
free running also allows for movements that are purely aesthetic
(10:24):
and nature right and not necessarily just the efficiency of
moving forward. Those are the two differences between free running
and um park court. And if you think that's stupid, well, um.
The the reason behind it is that there was a
rift or separation and ideals between David Bell and his
(10:45):
as the UM uh the f P Wait what is it? W?
F p W w f PF. Yeah, yeah, as the
w f PF puts it, um his then best friend.
So that seeing fou Kong, yeah, they know they fell out.
I guess I think they're still buddies. But basically foukan
(11:05):
is like, no, you can move backwards, and Bells like,
no you can't. And they were like, well, it looks
like we have a problem here. And that's where free
Running came from. It split off from Parker. I bet
you there was a little bit of well I founded
it in you are in Casino Royale. Well that came
after So that split within the late nineties, so that
really cemented. And then yeah, and then a lot of
(11:27):
people are like, you know, food con is a big sellout.
He's an ads he uh, he's all flash and everything.
Um and that that Apparently that um argument doesn't hold
much water because David Bell has been has done quite
a bit to bring um parkour into the public consciousness. Specifically,
(11:47):
he introduced it to Britain in two thousand two, I
believe right with a BBC short Yeah, rush hour, Um
that did you see it? Huh? It's pretty awesome. Yeah,
it's on you know, he's sitting at it's much like
an ad. He's sitting in his apartment and his clothes
and then he gets up you know it, takes his
shirt off of course, and strips down to the like
the running pants, and then just climbs out his window
(12:11):
and takes off and there's you know, traffic going below,
and he's zipping all over the place like a you know,
Parker expert that he is. And then he eventually gets
back in his apartment and sits back down the couch.
It's like, yeah, I'm done. And so they showed that
on BBC one and everybody was like, what was that?
That was awesome? And then they found out, well, wait
(12:31):
a minute, the people actually do this. This guy is
real and that was the birth of Parker I think
a year later UM Urban Free Flow, which is like
the the fact though British wing of UM Parker and
free free running, free running. Yeah. And for some reason,
my brain just glitched and I was like, that's not right.
(12:53):
Well and almost immediately kids started getting hurt because they
didn't uh, I don't know if they didn't realize, but
Bell had a decade of training of learning this craft.
We're creating it, creating it and then UM, teenager saw
a rush hour and like let me go out and
like let me try to scale a wall. And there
were a couple of deaths. Um. Yeah, that was one
(13:14):
recently actually in California, right in Sacramento in two thousand nine.
The kid was into park Corps and he died from
falling off of an eighth story UM parking deck. Yeah,
and this is we should have frontloaded this. But this
is where we say park course very can be very
dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, can be
very dangerous even if you do know it. Yeah. It
requires a high degree of skill with like gymnastics, possibly
(13:38):
martial arts. Yeah. Yeah. If you look at Sebastian food con,
the dude is ripped like he's he's probably going to
be able to hang on to allege with one hand
if he really needs to. I can't. The average twelve
year old doesn't have that kind of upper body strength exactly.
But I average twelve year old the one who's like
really fascinated with this. Yeah, and if you are fascinated
(13:59):
in UM, there are a lot more It's been legitimized
to the extent that there are a lot more training
facilities indoor, padded things where you can practice this kind
of thing, so you don't just go out and hit
the streets and start jumping off of buildings. That's right,
we would not advise that. No, all right, so Chuck,
there's a I think in UM the public imagination, there's
a lot of comparisons with skateboarding, right, Others kids like
(14:22):
they're they're right there in front of the courthouse, so
and they're they're they're skateboarding and they're not using a skateboard,
but they like to be doing the same thing. Apparently,
especially parkour purists, find this very very offensive. That's not offensive.
That's a lot of offensive either using buildings, you know,
the same deal. They're basically like, no, skateboarders are bad kids.
We're good kids if we're doing this so we can
(14:44):
be useful to society when the time comes. Skateboarders are
great kids, agreed and Josh like skateboarding in the seventies, Um,
once the popularity increase, it started to be thrown or prostituted,
if you will, onto like ads and TV shows and
corporate events. They listed that I did not know corporate
(15:05):
events hired parker people. Corporate event if you've got enough
money to do everything. Okay, there's this great show of
Bruce Hornsby playing for the food JITs corporations like Christmas Party,
and it's awesome. It's like an hour and a half
long Bruce Hornsby show and he gets increasingly drunk er
to where like he does a little ditty and improv
diddy about his scotch. Yeah, it's really great. It's really great.
(15:28):
If you can never get your hands on the bootleg,
it's it's worth it. Well. And then up in the Air,
which I know you didn't care for, but when they
had hired young MC, you know that one corporate event
to perform those pretty funny us to move alright, Yes,
like skateboard, um also like skateboarding. Once competition started to
be mentioned, UM Purist said, no, no, no, no, it's
(15:52):
not about competition. We compete all the time against each
other on the streets. Man. But we don't need no metal,
we don't need no judge word. But you know, like anything.
Red Bull was like, oh you know what about this
stack of money? Red Bull in Barclay World Free Running Championships.
MTV has a show now, of course, called Ultimate Park
or Challenge um. The purists still aren't too happy about
(16:15):
most of that. To be honest, there's a lot of
complaining going on on parker boards. And here we are
representing both coasts, east and west. Let's talk about the moves.
Let's do it. You want to talk about the cat
leap first. Yeah, there's a few standard moves. So the
cat leap is basically like, say you're clut your eyes
(16:36):
unless you're driving right now. Uh. Say you are on
a the edge of one five foot parking deck. Okay,
all right, it's five ft off the ground, and then
there's another there's a gap five ft gap in between
it and the edge of another parking deck which is
seven ft off the grounds the wall in front of you.
So let's say you are um, you You're like, well,
(16:58):
I think a cat leap would be best for this.
What you do is you run off of the first
parking day, jump the gap, grab the ledge of the
um first of the second parking deck, and hit it
with your feet. Just plan it right there on the
wall and basically you're just hanging off the side for
a nano second before you you use the momentum to
pull yourself up with your arms and jump the rest
(17:20):
of the way onto the next parking you very cat like.
It's used to get onto a higher object than you're
currently on and it's a good way. That's much much better.
The role very common. You've seen stunt guys do this forever.
They jump off a building onto a lower building, and
they always you know, to absorb the shock on their legs,
they tuck and roll. They observe it in their shoulder
(17:42):
instead exactly tuck and roll, cover the head, pop back
up and keep going. Because it's all about forward movement
with Parker. Yeah, whereas I would jump off, I would land,
probably break my ankle, vomit, and then like later until
somebody found me. That's what Chuck would do. My favorite,
as you know, is the cong vault. Well, the cong
(18:02):
vault is the coolest. It's the coolest. It It looks
like what apes do in the jungle. Uh. You run
up on let's say a wall, and you leap forward
and you push yourself off with your hands, play with
your hands and don't let your legs touch at all
and just follow on through. And there's double cong rolls
where you tap twice. There's triples there. We saw a
(18:23):
quadruple in a gym. So basically, when your hand is
touching that wall, your your body is laid out behind you.
It's like you're diving toward it, almost exactly, but you
have like your two hands about just a little ahead
of your shoulders, and then right when your hands touched,
you bring your legs up basically through your chest in
(18:44):
the wall, and then you you just bound away. You
vault away. Hence the name cong vault looks very animal like,
and one of the early practitioners said that he noticed
that it's it's like witnessing an animal in the jungle aggressive.
That's one of the goals of park Corps is that
you can basically move as quickly and fluidly as an
animal and instinctually too, is what I understand. I will
(19:07):
never know that sensation, but it's it's what I understand.
Is the goal. You got the precision jump, which is
pretty easy. It's basically like a standing broad jump. Just
jump from one place to another. Yeah, but that's if
like I want to jump on that little two foot
section of wall, like you don't have the benefit of
a role because there's nothing else there. And then the
speed wall, Yeah, that's easy. That's basically to do that.
(19:29):
How any kid has ever jumped like a chain link fence.
You just put one hand down and throw your throw
your feet the opposite side over and uh, I guess
with part core the differences that you're doing this much
more quickly. Yes, and you keep running and uh, those
are just a handful of moves or many many more
Jim Kota like moves that you can do like side
(19:51):
wall runs and sliding, and people now are doing those
little half flips adding a little flare to it. I
guess the free runners are pretty cool. So, Chuck, let's
say that you are listening to this, You're like, I
have tons of upper body strength, I'm eighteen or older, um,
and regard for my own well being, right, and I'm
(20:12):
really interested in this. Where would one go to find
out more about parkour or to learn parkour? Uh? You
get a jam. Well that's one place. That's when they
get together and hit the streets. But if you want
to learn, like I said, you can go to the
there's gems all over the country. Now there are there's
academies where you can sure you can pay. If you
go to Parker dot com slash groups, you can look
(20:35):
up basically people who are doing it in your area,
and that's probably one of the most recommended ones if
especially if you don't have any cash to shell out,
because you're going to learn in the context of other
people who know Parker no more than you do and UM,
so you'll you'll learn, you'll learn safety as well, but
you'll be challenged to UM. And then yes, there's academies
(20:56):
as well. There's videos everywhere everywhere. YouTube has UM at
least six different channels according to parkour dot Com of
just parkour videos and UM basically, you want to wear
a helmet at all times. You want to wear knee
pads and one of those big sumo guy suits. To
see a park where people wearing any of that stuff,
(21:19):
I'm okay, CEO and yeah, beginners, you should always do that.
Oh also, I should have probably mentioned at the beginning
of this that by UM downloading this episode impressing play,
you immediately forfeited any rights to sue US or any
of our parent companies. You'll be careful out there. Yeah,
I want to. I'm gonna you know, my goal in
life should be I want to do a successful Kong leap.
(21:41):
That's not gonna happen. I want to do that, dude.
I will watch you try. I'm fast. I will watch
you try anytime. I'm a lot faster than you would think.
Let's go right now. I get these little legs pumping
and I can. I get my upper body leaning in
the right direction, and it's it's pretty funny. And remarks
about my my cat like speed for a guy with
a few extra pounds on him. I want to see this.
(22:04):
I'm gonna learn this. Okay, we're gonna want to. I
don't want you to see the final results. I'm gonna
perfect it. I want to see everything leading out to that.
Now you're not gonna do I'm gonna learn it in secret.
And then next time we're in New York, I'm just
gonna bust it out. One day You're gonna be like leaf.
That would be very surprising. I look forward to that
(22:25):
day too. If you want to learn more about parkour
type than P A R. K oh, you are now
at the sea, because then it wouldn't be down with
the street into the search bar at how stuff works
dot Com and I said search bar, I didn't say
handy um. Either way, it still brings up listener mail.
That's right, Josh, We're gonna call this and the winner
(22:47):
is because you and I have to decide. Did you
get this from Matt from England? He and his wife
twisted couple. You know when you put me on the spotlight,
it's okay, I know you read it. Um, Hey, guys
for up in great podcast. I love it. I'm a
watch commander in the fire service here in Leeds, England,
and my wife is an A and E nurse. Um,
it's an entertainment there. I think that's emergency room in England.
(23:10):
Maybe I'm guessing because you see some weird stuff right now.
We have always tried to tireslee one up one another
at the end of each shift, which with the worst
story of the day, because they both see odd things,
odd and horrific. Generally we tie on things like car
x fires, uh burn victims, suicides and by the way,
(23:33):
I'm acutely aware of how sick this is, but it's
the spice that keeps our particular chilli going. That's what
he says. The only ones he's talking shop about work. Basically,
the ones we really compete with are the extra disgusting ones.
So here's a conundrum um. On the last tour, I
was sure I had a winner. We had to assist
a morbidly obese gentleman from his house onto an ambulance journey.
(23:57):
Upon moving his portly frame, I felt something land on
my leg. I couldn't initially Jerry, he's getting grossed out already.
I couldn't initially see what it was because my hands
and face were pressed firmly into the mushy flesh at
the time, but I could hear the intakes of breath
and gipping noises from the firefighters on my shift. I
(24:17):
don't even know what a gipping noise is. On inspection,
it turned out that nine inches of this man's intestines
were draped over my wet legs. Stuck for what to
do in such an instance, should I push it back in,
carry it with me, tuck it into his pocket. I
opted to shuffle with him to his to the ambulance,
and then gently peel it free from my leg and
(24:37):
said it beside him, making sure to break with the
awkward silence with here you go, mate, you better take
this with you. Regardless of this incident, I was sure
I had my wife beat and then she hits me
with this. A guy walked into her triage department, pulled
his pants down and had the tail of a fish
sticking out of his rear end. Evidently it had been
(25:01):
frozen and then thought out. I get the feeling this
is one of those docket was a million to one
chance the type of things, and when it thought out,
the bones splayed out and it became stuck inside of
his butt. Uh. The boys that need your help, which
one wins? Which is worse? H? Chuck? This as much
(25:25):
like comparing apples two oranges. Um. In some ways they're similar.
They're both roundish, they're both fruits. But then they have
many distinctions. The apple skin is smoothed, the oranges is speckled. Um.
The oranges orange colored. The apple is generally red, although
it can be yellowish or green. You never see an
orange apple. I guess it's my point. I'm going to
(25:46):
say that, Um, while they're both extremely interesting, both entirely gruesome,
the fish story, yes, is far too comical to win
this one. In my opinion. I think the man's intestines
coming out and having to be put back in by
(26:06):
hand with a gentle here you go, mate, is by
far the winner. I agree. I feel like Judgejohn Hodgment.
All of a sudden we render our verdict and uh,
we're going with you, Matt, you are the winner. Matt
and Leads England congratulations, were enduring the Intestine on your leg? Yes, definitely,
(26:26):
And he said anytime if we want to, if we're
ever in Leads, he will let us ride on the
fire truck. Awesome. So I would take him up on that.
I would too. Um. Yeah, so we really should have
put that one after the Decapitation podcast if you asked me, Yeah,
it would have been fitting either way. Um. If you
ever accidentally stumbled upon something, say in your attic or
(26:50):
at a yard sale that turned out to be extremely valuable,
we love those stories and want to hear him send
them to us. You can post him on Facebook, Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff you should know, Twitter right uh
s y s K podcast or email it to us.
Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
(27:13):
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reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast on Josh Clark with me as always this
Charles w Chuck Bryant, and we are going to sit
(00:22):
still for this episode of Stuff you Should Know, not me, buddy,
Yes you are. I'm gonna do some cong vaulting. Hey, um, Chuck,
you watch The Office right? Yeah? Okay? Love it? UM
in season six, which I guess was last year. Second
episode starts out very funny, UM with Michael, Andy and
(00:46):
Dwight all engaged in a little something called Parkour um
and they shout parkour like every couple of seconds and
then Um. What struck me as funny, especially after we
decided to do this UM episode, is that Jim explains
what Parker is for anybody who doesn't know, and he
he cites it as the Internet sensation of two thousand four.
(01:10):
So it took you know, Michael six years to finally
catch onto it, taking us seven to finally start podcasting
on it. Yes, yeah, we've been had calls for this one,
uh for since we started the show. People have written in,
so what about Parker, dude, Yeah, I love it Parker,
and we know it's old, but we we've not just
(01:31):
discovered this. It's and this article clearly has been on
the site since about two thou six or seven, because
there's actually a date sited in it um as like
two thousand and six. And from the extra research that
we did on this, it seems like this community has strengthened, expanded,
and gotten more legitimate. Whereas you know, I'm sure with
a lot of the rest of the world it's like
the awe and an amazement of it, or the newness
(01:55):
is worn off. But I was I was hartened to
see that the people who do Parker are like, well,
we don't really care if you like it or not.
We're gonna keep doing this, and and they've grown and
gotten better. Yeah. I think most people that I know
have the same reaction though, when they see the Parker
videos for the first time, which is this is pretty cool. Oh,
it's very cool. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not saying like
(02:15):
anybody's like this sucks. It's like the newness is worn
off for the general public. Yeah, but people are generally
knocked out, uh, and then board right, so, Chuck, I
think we should begin to begin, right, great song? Uh.
In nineteen two on the little island in the Caribbean
known as Martinique. Have you ever been there? No? Yah?
(02:38):
Do you think I would tell you every couple of
days like, oh I've been to Martinique, you probably would. Uh. Yeah.
It's got a pretty interesting history in some trace the
birth of park. We're back to then French naval officer
name Lieutenant George Herbert. I don't think that's how you
say his name. What would you say Georgebert? Or Jabert?
H he? Uh? What happened was ofvolcano blew up in
(03:00):
nineteen o two there and heed Martinique, yea and Martinique.
He coordinated the rescue of locals and Europeans there and
had a chance to watch people fleeing this and saw
a decided difference I take it between some of his
European comrades and the local Caribbeans. Well, people are like
(03:21):
trying to get around obstacles, like you know, chunks of
flying rock that had landed right in front of them,
and running for their lives. Something about that scene struck
E Bear, like, Wow, this is really amazing. Well, he
saw a great deal of athleticism going on around him,
and he said, you know what, you combine that with
some courage, and what you have is what we're gonna
(03:42):
call in America to be strong and useful. How would
you say that in French? Dog strong? And that's what
I'm saying. And that's the basis of the natural method, right, yeah,
the natural method um, which in French would be what
method natural? And that inspired French military training. That became
(04:05):
the basis for French military terry training. Apparently they were
the first people to use obstacle courses or or what
the path of the warrior parkour dick combat town. So
you hear that word Parker with the C I heard it,
that's where it came from. Yeah. So and this basically
this guy is like this French um physical fitness guru
(04:29):
that you've never heard of, but really has inspired a
lot of the probably cleaner cut quarters of France. Right yes, um,
So that formed the part of the basis for the
philosophy of what came to be known as Parker because
it inspired this kid named David Bell right. Well, first
(04:50):
it was his father, Raymond Bell, was a soldier in
French Special Forces. He learned all this stuff, passed it
on to his son David and said, it's pretty cool.
I wanna learn this. Yeah, and we left out a
very important point. Um. The natural method is basically like
physical fitness is um. All you need is what you
(05:11):
find in nature. Do you want to do some chin ups?
Could find a tree branch jerk? You want to like
work out your upper body, push a huge rock up
a hill and isometric and push against the wall. Right,
And then the point of that, this is the other
big point. The point of being physically fit is, like
you said, so you can be useful to society in
case of an emergency, in case an old lady needs help,
(05:33):
like you can pick her up and carry her across
the street with one hand. That kind of thing. There's
something be said for that. Okay. So David Bell is
fifteen years old. It's he lives in Liza's, France, which
is a suburb of Paris Um and his dad's been like,
check this dude out, and he is just inspired. But
not only e Bear but also again named Bruce Lee.
(05:56):
That's right, Bruce Lee's fluid movements um not not as
rigid as a lot of martial artists were before him.
It's about adaptability, adapting to the situation. Somewhere in that
um in in David Bell's brain, he'd put that together.
He put Bruce Lee, Georgie Bear, and a mailbox in
(06:21):
front of him all together and decided to leap over
it with his hands rather than walk around it. Boom, Parker.
That's the Parker he changed. He added a k instead
of a sea, got together with his best buddy, Sebastian
Foucam and they established a group um. They were called
themselves tresseurs, which means to leave a trail in French.
(06:43):
Tray ser is slang in Paris for hurry. Well there
you have it. Yeah, hurry up and make a trail. Yeah,
that's what you're doing. So they organized a group, the
first group of parkour enthusiast basically called the Yamakazi, not
to be confused with yamazaki, which is san tori time.
It's Japanese single malt whiskey. Yeah, it's good stuff anyway.
(07:07):
I had it in an Econo Miaki station. Chances are
if you type in Yamakaze on the Internet, it'll bring
up the other Yamasaki and you'll be buying liquor before
you know it, and then you can watch some cool
parkour videos while you and bud. That's right. Uh. Luke Bisson,
famous French filmmaker, made a film called The Yamakazi Um
(07:29):
definitely kicked up the awareness about what park war was, right,
and prior to that, he included it in his UM
film Taxi Too. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that was the
first time parkour was introduced to the general public in
mass media. And because Luke Bisson apparently was a huge
(07:49):
uh DE vote very early on. So in two different
movies in two successive years, he made you know, Parker
part of the theme. Yeah, and if you recognize Bells
Buddy's name, Sebastian fu Kan, he was the dude who
was chased in Casino Royale, the opening awesome parkour chase
that Daniel Craig chases this dude. Yeah. So it starts
(08:11):
to kind of percolate into um to the public consciousness
in the early two thousands, the late nineties, we should say,
by the late nineties, there's already uh rift in the
um in the Parker community. Yeah, the communities like this
always like the battle, like there's always purest it seem
like and then people who want to change it and
(08:32):
take it into what they feel like the next level,
like skateboarding. Same thing happened back in the seventies. So
with parkour. The the point is, if you're a purest
with parkour, you don't you never moved backwards. Everything is
for utility and you get from point A to point
B most as efficiently as possible, which often includes jumping
(08:54):
over a mailbox. Yeah. The main rule, and this is
what's cool in parkour is that obstacles are used to
increase your efficiency. It's not like this is something I
gotta go around. It's let me use this to vault
forward faster and possibly gain some momentum, maybe twade a
little little kinetic energy for a little potential energy, yeah,
and then turn that into more kinetic energy. And the
(09:15):
the Red Bulls, well, Red Bull actually sponsored one of
the what was it called the the Red Bull Art
of Motion Tournament competition. Yeah, and we'll get into that
in a minute, because the purest don't like the competition aspect.
But the motto of the w fpf UM, which is
the World Free Running in Parker Federation, I think that
was established an oh seven, it is no obstacle, no
(09:39):
freedom K and O W for both get it? I
do now, I didn't until you have told me about
the K. You know your freedom. Um, so that's so
part court A to b using obstacles, never going backwards.
Free running huge huge difference. You can go backwards. Now
going backwards? Does that mean like you, I get the
(10:01):
idea from park Ers that you you're running toward the
wall and you don't stop and go all right, let
me see, I should probably go like here here, you
just attack the wall, don't you. I think that's the
case with both of them. But really, honestly, one of
the main differences is like free running allows for movement
backward to continue going forward, where park cour is like, no,
you have to keep going forward all the time. And
free running also allows for movements that are purely aesthetic
(10:24):
and nature right and not necessarily just the efficiency of
moving forward. Those are the two differences between free running
and um park court. And if you think that's stupid, well, um.
The the reason behind it is that there was a
rift or separation and ideals between David Bell and his
(10:45):
as the UM uh the f P Wait what is it? W?
F p W w f PF. Yeah, yeah, as the
w f PF puts it, um his then best friend.
So that seeing fou Kong, yeah, they know they fell out.
I guess I think they're still buddies. But basically foukan
(11:05):
is like, no, you can move backwards, and Bells like,
no you can't. And they were like, well, it looks
like we have a problem here. And that's where free
Running came from. It split off from Parker. I bet
you there was a little bit of well I founded
it in you are in Casino Royale. Well that came
after So that split within the late nineties, so that
really cemented. And then yeah, and then a lot of
(11:27):
people are like, you know, food con is a big sellout.
He's an ads he uh, he's all flash and everything.
Um and that that Apparently that um argument doesn't hold
much water because David Bell has been has done quite
a bit to bring um parkour into the public consciousness. Specifically,
(11:47):
he introduced it to Britain in two thousand two, I
believe right with a BBC short Yeah, rush hour, Um
that did you see it? Huh? It's pretty awesome. Yeah,
it's on you know, he's sitting at it's much like
an ad. He's sitting in his apartment and his clothes
and then he gets up you know it, takes his
shirt off of course, and strips down to the like
the running pants, and then just climbs out his window
(12:11):
and takes off and there's you know, traffic going below,
and he's zipping all over the place like a you know,
Parker expert that he is. And then he eventually gets
back in his apartment and sits back down the couch.
It's like, yeah, I'm done. And so they showed that
on BBC one and everybody was like, what was that?
That was awesome? And then they found out, well, wait
(12:31):
a minute, the people actually do this. This guy is
real and that was the birth of Parker I think
a year later UM Urban Free Flow, which is like
the the fact though British wing of UM Parker and
free free running, free running. Yeah. And for some reason,
my brain just glitched and I was like, that's not right.
(12:53):
Well and almost immediately kids started getting hurt because they
didn't uh, I don't know if they didn't realize, but
Bell had a decade of training of learning this craft.
We're creating it, creating it and then UM, teenager saw
a rush hour and like let me go out and
like let me try to scale a wall. And there
were a couple of deaths. Um. Yeah, that was one
(13:14):
recently actually in California, right in Sacramento in two thousand nine.
The kid was into park Corps and he died from
falling off of an eighth story UM parking deck. Yeah,
and this is we should have frontloaded this. But this
is where we say park course very can be very
dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, can be
very dangerous even if you do know it. Yeah. It
requires a high degree of skill with like gymnastics, possibly
(13:38):
martial arts. Yeah. Yeah. If you look at Sebastian food con,
the dude is ripped like he's he's probably going to
be able to hang on to allege with one hand
if he really needs to. I can't. The average twelve
year old doesn't have that kind of upper body strength exactly.
But I average twelve year old the one who's like
really fascinated with this. Yeah, and if you are fascinated
(13:59):
in UM, there are a lot more It's been legitimized
to the extent that there are a lot more training
facilities indoor, padded things where you can practice this kind
of thing, so you don't just go out and hit
the streets and start jumping off of buildings. That's right,
we would not advise that. No, all right, so Chuck,
there's a I think in UM the public imagination, there's
a lot of comparisons with skateboarding, right, Others kids like
(14:22):
they're they're right there in front of the courthouse, so
and they're they're they're skateboarding and they're not using a skateboard,
but they like to be doing the same thing. Apparently,
especially parkour purists, find this very very offensive. That's not offensive.
That's a lot of offensive either using buildings, you know,
the same deal. They're basically like, no, skateboarders are bad kids.
We're good kids if we're doing this so we can
(14:44):
be useful to society when the time comes. Skateboarders are
great kids, agreed and Josh like skateboarding in the seventies, Um,
once the popularity increase, it started to be thrown or prostituted,
if you will, onto like ads and TV shows and
corporate events. They listed that I did not know corporate
(15:05):
events hired parker people. Corporate event if you've got enough
money to do everything. Okay, there's this great show of
Bruce Hornsby playing for the food JITs corporations like Christmas Party,
and it's awesome. It's like an hour and a half
long Bruce Hornsby show and he gets increasingly drunk er
to where like he does a little ditty and improv
diddy about his scotch. Yeah, it's really great. It's really great.
(15:28):
If you can never get your hands on the bootleg,
it's it's worth it. Well. And then up in the Air,
which I know you didn't care for, but when they
had hired young MC, you know that one corporate event
to perform those pretty funny us to move alright, Yes,
like skateboard, um also like skateboarding. Once competition started to
be mentioned, UM Purist said, no, no, no, no, it's
(15:52):
not about competition. We compete all the time against each
other on the streets. Man. But we don't need no metal,
we don't need no judge word. But you know, like anything.
Red Bull was like, oh you know what about this
stack of money? Red Bull in Barclay World Free Running Championships.
MTV has a show now, of course, called Ultimate Park
or Challenge um. The purists still aren't too happy about
(16:15):
most of that. To be honest, there's a lot of
complaining going on on parker boards. And here we are
representing both coasts, east and west. Let's talk about the moves.
Let's do it. You want to talk about the cat
leap first. Yeah, there's a few standard moves. So the
cat leap is basically like, say you're clut your eyes
(16:36):
unless you're driving right now. Uh. Say you are on
a the edge of one five foot parking deck. Okay,
all right, it's five ft off the ground, and then
there's another there's a gap five ft gap in between
it and the edge of another parking deck which is
seven ft off the grounds the wall in front of you.
So let's say you are um, you You're like, well,
(16:58):
I think a cat leap would be best for this.
What you do is you run off of the first
parking day, jump the gap, grab the ledge of the
um first of the second parking deck, and hit it
with your feet. Just plan it right there on the
wall and basically you're just hanging off the side for
a nano second before you you use the momentum to
pull yourself up with your arms and jump the rest
(17:20):
of the way onto the next parking you very cat like.
It's used to get onto a higher object than you're
currently on and it's a good way. That's much much better.
The role very common. You've seen stunt guys do this forever.
They jump off a building onto a lower building, and
they always you know, to absorb the shock on their legs,
they tuck and roll. They observe it in their shoulder
(17:42):
instead exactly tuck and roll, cover the head, pop back
up and keep going. Because it's all about forward movement
with Parker. Yeah, whereas I would jump off, I would land,
probably break my ankle, vomit, and then like later until
somebody found me. That's what Chuck would do. My favorite,
as you know, is the cong vault. Well, the cong
(18:02):
vault is the coolest. It's the coolest. It It looks
like what apes do in the jungle. Uh. You run
up on let's say a wall, and you leap forward
and you push yourself off with your hands, play with
your hands and don't let your legs touch at all
and just follow on through. And there's double cong rolls
where you tap twice. There's triples there. We saw a
(18:23):
quadruple in a gym. So basically, when your hand is
touching that wall, your your body is laid out behind you.
It's like you're diving toward it, almost exactly, but you
have like your two hands about just a little ahead
of your shoulders, and then right when your hands touched,
you bring your legs up basically through your chest in
(18:44):
the wall, and then you you just bound away. You
vault away. Hence the name cong vault looks very animal like,
and one of the early practitioners said that he noticed
that it's it's like witnessing an animal in the jungle aggressive.
That's one of the goals of park Corps is that
you can basically move as quickly and fluidly as an
animal and instinctually too, is what I understand. I will
(19:07):
never know that sensation, but it's it's what I understand.
Is the goal. You got the precision jump, which is
pretty easy. It's basically like a standing broad jump. Just
jump from one place to another. Yeah, but that's if
like I want to jump on that little two foot
section of wall, like you don't have the benefit of
a role because there's nothing else there. And then the
speed wall, Yeah, that's easy. That's basically to do that.
(19:29):
How any kid has ever jumped like a chain link fence.
You just put one hand down and throw your throw
your feet the opposite side over and uh, I guess
with part core the differences that you're doing this much
more quickly. Yes, and you keep running and uh, those
are just a handful of moves or many many more
Jim Kota like moves that you can do like side
(19:51):
wall runs and sliding, and people now are doing those
little half flips adding a little flare to it. I
guess the free runners are pretty cool. So, Chuck, let's
say that you are listening to this, You're like, I
have tons of upper body strength, I'm eighteen or older, um,
and regard for my own well being, right, and I'm
(20:12):
really interested in this. Where would one go to find
out more about parkour or to learn parkour? Uh? You
get a jam. Well that's one place. That's when they
get together and hit the streets. But if you want
to learn, like I said, you can go to the
there's gems all over the country. Now there are there's
academies where you can sure you can pay. If you
go to Parker dot com slash groups, you can look
(20:35):
up basically people who are doing it in your area,
and that's probably one of the most recommended ones if
especially if you don't have any cash to shell out,
because you're going to learn in the context of other
people who know Parker no more than you do and UM,
so you'll you'll learn, you'll learn safety as well, but
you'll be challenged to UM. And then yes, there's academies
(20:56):
as well. There's videos everywhere everywhere. YouTube has UM at
least six different channels according to parkour dot Com of
just parkour videos and UM basically, you want to wear
a helmet at all times. You want to wear knee
pads and one of those big sumo guy suits. To
see a park where people wearing any of that stuff,
(21:19):
I'm okay, CEO and yeah, beginners, you should always do that.
Oh also, I should have probably mentioned at the beginning
of this that by UM downloading this episode impressing play,
you immediately forfeited any rights to sue US or any
of our parent companies. You'll be careful out there. Yeah,
I want to. I'm gonna you know, my goal in
life should be I want to do a successful Kong leap.
(21:41):
That's not gonna happen. I want to do that, dude.
I will watch you try. I'm fast. I will watch
you try anytime. I'm a lot faster than you would think.
Let's go right now. I get these little legs pumping
and I can. I get my upper body leaning in
the right direction, and it's it's pretty funny. And remarks
about my my cat like speed for a guy with
a few extra pounds on him. I want to see this.
(22:04):
I'm gonna learn this. Okay, we're gonna want to. I
don't want you to see the final results. I'm gonna
perfect it. I want to see everything leading out to that.
Now you're not gonna do I'm gonna learn it in secret.
And then next time we're in New York, I'm just
gonna bust it out. One day You're gonna be like leaf.
That would be very surprising. I look forward to that
(22:25):
day too. If you want to learn more about parkour
type than P A R. K oh, you are now
at the sea, because then it wouldn't be down with
the street into the search bar at how stuff works
dot Com and I said search bar, I didn't say
handy um. Either way, it still brings up listener mail.
That's right, Josh, We're gonna call this and the winner
(22:47):
is because you and I have to decide. Did you
get this from Matt from England? He and his wife
twisted couple. You know when you put me on the spotlight,
it's okay, I know you read it. Um, Hey, guys
for up in great podcast. I love it. I'm a
watch commander in the fire service here in Leeds, England,
and my wife is an A and E nurse. Um,
it's an entertainment there. I think that's emergency room in England.
(23:10):
Maybe I'm guessing because you see some weird stuff right now.
We have always tried to tireslee one up one another
at the end of each shift, which with the worst
story of the day, because they both see odd things,
odd and horrific. Generally we tie on things like car
x fires, uh burn victims, suicides and by the way,
(23:33):
I'm acutely aware of how sick this is, but it's
the spice that keeps our particular chilli going. That's what
he says. The only ones he's talking shop about work. Basically,
the ones we really compete with are the extra disgusting ones.
So here's a conundrum um. On the last tour, I
was sure I had a winner. We had to assist
a morbidly obese gentleman from his house onto an ambulance journey.
(23:57):
Upon moving his portly frame, I felt something land on
my leg. I couldn't initially Jerry, he's getting grossed out already.
I couldn't initially see what it was because my hands
and face were pressed firmly into the mushy flesh at
the time, but I could hear the intakes of breath
and gipping noises from the firefighters on my shift. I
(24:17):
don't even know what a gipping noise is. On inspection,
it turned out that nine inches of this man's intestines
were draped over my wet legs. Stuck for what to
do in such an instance, should I push it back in,
carry it with me, tuck it into his pocket. I
opted to shuffle with him to his to the ambulance,
and then gently peel it free from my leg and
(24:37):
said it beside him, making sure to break with the
awkward silence with here you go, mate, you better take
this with you. Regardless of this incident, I was sure
I had my wife beat and then she hits me
with this. A guy walked into her triage department, pulled
his pants down and had the tail of a fish
sticking out of his rear end. Evidently it had been
(25:01):
frozen and then thought out. I get the feeling this
is one of those docket was a million to one
chance the type of things, and when it thought out,
the bones splayed out and it became stuck inside of
his butt. Uh. The boys that need your help, which
one wins? Which is worse? H? Chuck? This as much
(25:25):
like comparing apples two oranges. Um. In some ways they're similar.
They're both roundish, they're both fruits. But then they have
many distinctions. The apple skin is smoothed, the oranges is speckled. Um.
The oranges orange colored. The apple is generally red, although
it can be yellowish or green. You never see an
orange apple. I guess it's my point. I'm going to
(25:46):
say that, Um, while they're both extremely interesting, both entirely gruesome,
the fish story, yes, is far too comical to win
this one. In my opinion. I think the man's intestines
coming out and having to be put back in by
(26:06):
hand with a gentle here you go, mate, is by
far the winner. I agree. I feel like Judgejohn Hodgment.
All of a sudden we render our verdict and uh,
we're going with you, Matt, you are the winner. Matt
and Leads England congratulations, were enduring the Intestine on your leg? Yes, definitely,
(26:26):
And he said anytime if we want to, if we're
ever in Leads, he will let us ride on the
fire truck. Awesome. So I would take him up on that.
I would too. Um. Yeah, so we really should have
put that one after the Decapitation podcast if you asked me, Yeah,
it would have been fitting either way. Um. If you
ever accidentally stumbled upon something, say in your attic or
(26:50):
at a yard sale that turned out to be extremely valuable,
we love those stories and want to hear him send
them to us. You can post him on Facebook, Facebook,
dot com, slash stuff you should know, Twitter right uh
s y s K podcast or email it to us.
Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more
(27:13):
on this and thousands of other topics, is it how
stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
of our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the
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