Thursday, May 20, 2010

Free Running - Just Watch!

Like many others, I used to think a lot of the "extreme" stunts shown in soda commercials were faked using sophisticated video editing software. However, I recently found out many of them are actually performed by athletes engaged in an activity called "free running" (sometimes called "parkour"). Besides perhaps a decent pair of athletic shoes, no other equipment is needed, as participants use their natural or man-made surroundings as obstacles with which they interact by jumping, scaling, and running on, around, over, and under.

Unlike a gymnastics competition, participants aren't required to stick and hold a landing. It's not actually meant to be a competition against others anyway; it's meant to be a way for individuals to express themselves. And because the athletes are often going from one obstacle to another, it wouldn't make sense to hold the landing anyway.

Please enjoy the following video, and for goodness sake, don't try most of these stunts!

2 comments:

joan said...

Funnily enough, this trend seems to give back some "coolness" to gymnastics and trampoline as sports.
Because, well, you need somewhere to exercise your moves without risking too much :-)

Some are even clearly from a gym background.
http://www.youtube.com/user/damienwalters

Dennis Ho said...

Hi Joan - I agree completely. Yes, with some of these athletes, it's clear they have a good deal of gymnastics experience. It's very entertaining to see these skills put to use in non-traditional (albeit less controlled) settings.

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