Freerunning

Freerunning

Brazilian freerunners move fluidly through urban environment
Also known as	Free running and/or FR
Country of origin	France
Creator	David Belle, Sebastien Foucan
Famous practitioners	Daniel Ilabaca Ryan Doyle, Tim Shieff, Luci Romberg, Sebastien Foucan
Ancestor arts	Parkour
Olympic sport	Not currently; IOC discussions underway
Meaning	A version of Parkour that includes acrobatic movements that are purely aesthetic.

Freerunning (or free running/FR) is an acrobatic and athletic discipline founded by Sébastien Foucan, who wrote a book on the subject. Foucan started what he termed "freerunning" in 2003, which he developed as a more inclusive form of parkour. Parkour's development from military obstacle course training gives it and freerunning some aspects of a non-combative martial art. Freerunning is a version of parkour that includes acrobatic moves that are purely aesthetic, most practitioners do this art fluidly. Freerunning may also include some Tricking.

The word "freerunning" was first used in the documentary, Jump London. The name came about because of a suggestion by Guillaumme Pelletier, who was working with Foucan at the time. The reasoning behind the name was, to quote Foucan, "'Free' because it's free, and just 'running'." In the documentary, freerunning was defined as an English translation of parkour.

The central principle of freerunning is that one should express oneself by moving fluidly in one's environment; there are no limitations on the form of this movement. Foucan expands on a number of basic principles of the sport in his book, Freerunning. Other practitioners have suggested other principles. For example, Daniel Ilabaca encourages people to think positively, suggesting that practitioners of freerunning will sometimes fall—largely because they think they might.

In Western Europe the idea of moving past obstacles for personal development or sport originated with Georges Hébert. He observed untrained native tribes in Africa with fantastic athletic ability and created the 'natural method' system to train people using the same ideas. His ideas eventually led to the parcours du combattant ('obstacle course', literally 'assault course'), which is now a standard of military training.

These ideas were picked up by a young Raymond Belle, who used them to practical effect while separated from his family during the First Indochina War. When he moved to France and started a family, he passed on these ideas to his son, David. 30 years later, other young people were attracted to these ideas and a small group formed, the Yamakasi, which included Foucan. This group trained together for several years and in 1997, through David Belle's brother, Jean-Francois, they started to attract attention and be invited to perform at events. The Yamakasi eventually split apart, though, because some members sought to find more individual expressions of the discipline. Meanwhile, action star Jackie Chan had also been heavily incorporating the same concepts in most of his films ever since the early 1980s from the other side of the globe.