A new urban sport, parkour, is hitting the streets. It has evolved from obstacle course training into a fitness option for young people. In parkour, the outside world is the gym! The goal of parkour is a direct route from one place to another. You meet an obstacle, you overcome it.
Mark Toorock, who teaches the techniques of parkour at his fitness gym, says that parkour is a method to train the body and mind using obstacles as the medium. He says that this new sport is demanding and takes years to master.
But Toorock, who used to be a martial arts expert, says that everyone can benefit from learning the basic skills involved in parkour like running, jumping and crawling (爬行). These are the things that humans used to have to do all the time. The original idea of parkour was to return to running and jumping as basic elements in moving from one place to another.
Georges Hebert, a French navy officer, was so impressed by the effortless athleticism of African tribes that he devised a training method based on running, climbing, jumping, balancing and throwing. The word parkour comes from parcours de combatant, the French term for a military obstacle course.
Dr Kenneth Kao explains that the sport of parkour is not extreme – it is the environment which is extreme and dangerous. Being outside, jumping off railings and flipping over park benches can be quite frightening, so parkour courses in gyms concentrate on practicing all the individual moves to make everything easier. However, that is not real parkour because it's indoors with a fixed obstacle. The goal for everyone is to go outdoors.
A. Gyms provide thick floor matting (垫子) for rolling and rubberized boxes for jumping over.
B. The bridges, buildings and railings (栏杆) of each and every city are the equipment.
C. Every action in parkour is natural, so everyone must have the ability to move in this way.
D. Parkour was introduced into china in recent years and has gained popularity.
E. But today, due to modern transport, these basic skills are no longer used on a regular basis.
F. The French word for people who participate in the sport is traceurs or traceuses.
G. Beginners should realize that they won't be jumping over buildings any time soon!
