Jump First, Ask Questions Later
Imported from France, a growing sport known as parkour is driving people up walls

By Colin Bane
Sunday, January 13, 2008

AS IF RUNNING FOR HIS LIFE, Mark Toorock sprints away from his pursuer and directly toward a dead end: a 12-foot-high concrete wall with another three feet of metal railing on top. Toorock's split-second advantage is enough to allow him to plant a foot waist-high on the wall, spring up, grab the edge of the concrete with both hands and boost himself up to and over the rail without getting nabbed. By the time this series of fluid movements is complete and the chase scene has ended, Toorock has attracted a crowd and inspired at least a dozen young people milling about in Silver Spring to take up the art of parkour on the spot.

"Damn! I could use that when I'm running from the police!" jokes one teenage passerby. After watching the drill repeated by 60 other parkour "traceurs" in town for an event last spring dubbed (B)east Coast Parkour Jam, the new recruit makes four failed attempts tracing the route himself before committing to enroll in the parkour boot camp class at Primal Fitness, a Northwest Washington gym that Toorock opened last January. There, the new student will be joined by police officers, SWAT team members, military personnel and Department of Defense contractors equally interested in stepping up their foot-chase technique for their own reasons: Nearly everyone comes into Primal Fitness with his or her own parkour fantasy, inspired, in part, by the hundreds of videos available online or the spectacular, stunt-filled chase scenes in recent movies such as "Casino Royale," "Live Free or Die Hard" or "The Bourne Ultimatum."

Toorock, 37, is partly responsible for the new vogue of parkour, serving as a parkour consultant and stunt choreographer for an ongoing series of TV commercials for the sneaker company K-Swiss, which features traceurs sprinting, vaulting, zigzagging back and forth off walls to propel themselves upwards, climbing, flipping and leaping through obstacle-filled urban landscapes. Still, he bristles at recent media coverage of parkour as "the sport of stunts."

"It's not about taking stupid risks," Toorock says about a week later, lecturing a gym of 18 eager new traceurs -- male and female, from 15 to 45 years old -- who have enrolled in the boot camp class. "It's about discipline and training the body in a series of constantly varied functional movements so that it will work in the way you need it to, when you need it to, and then using that body to move through the world in more creative and efficient ways, simply because it can and should."

First developed in France in the late 1980s by David Belle, Toorock sees parkour (the word is derived from "parcours," the French word for route) as the physical art of moving through the world quickly, efficiently, elegantly and playfully. Though it might not be immediately apparent in some of the online videos depicting massive leaps off buildings, Toorock says it's also about moving safely.

Parkour practitioners meditate long and hard about the most expedient ways to move from one place to another in a given environment, mentally outlining the route, then physically practicing the specific movements required before attempting to put it all together and "trace" the route. Toorock says the appearance of spontaneity and risk-taking you might see in videos is possible only because of the traceurs' strength and precision training: The practice, preparation and repetition of movement that come before are as important to parkour as is the final act.

"The human body thrives on challenge," Toorock says later, on the third night of the boot camp. His students are panting and sweating profusely from a grueling warm-up in which Toorock has sent them running through the neighborhood, crawling back and forth across the gym with 40-pound weights in each hand and doing sets of pull-ups. "Adversity is the only way that a human body actually grows and survives. Its reaction to the stresses and forces it encounters? That's life. That's growth."

UNTIL THE DAY HE DISCOVERED PARKOUR, Toorock says, he had been running all his life.

"They didn't really call it ADD or ADHD, or whatever, when I was growing up. They just called me a spaz," he says. "From as far back as I can remember, I was always running around, climbing all over stuff, jumping off of things. And I was running in other ways, too. I was just an angry, angry kid. I was adopted, never felt like I fit in and always used to base my self-worth on having been abandoned by somebody, even though my adoptive family was really great. All the cliche stuff, right up to when I ended up running away in high school.

I look at the work being done by young people in my gym now, and I have to think: If had done something like this -- martial arts, running track, anything -- much earlier, maybe I could have skipped the whole hooligan [expletive] part of my life."

Toorock grew up outside Boston, but he first encountered parkour in 2002, while living in London and working for a stockbroker, where he was shown a video of Belle running rampant in France. The experience of watching Belle's movements was transformative."I was just blown away by it," says Toorock. "I don't want to be David Belle, and I know I'll never be physically capable of doing some of the same things he has been doing, but I will give myself credit for this: I saw something; I was inspired by it; and I knew I could do at least some of it, so that's what I set out to do."

Belle got the ideas that led to the development of parkour from his father and grandfather, both rescuers in the French fire service, and from his own training in gymnastics and martial arts and a brief stint in the French marine infantry. Because of that background, he says in various videos, he prefers to think of parkour as play with a purpose. Parkour movements are useful skills, he emphasizes, based on maneuvers that his father used to rescue people and to save his own life.

After watching the video, Toorock and his friends went out to give it a try. In retrospect, Toorock says, they're lucky they didn't kill themselves.

"Like a lot of people who get interested in parkour, we had no idea what were supposed to do," says Toorock, who in his early experimenting suffered only a few twisted ankles and nasty scrapes. "It was just ridiculous. Picture a bunch of guys running around like idiots, trying to jump off of the highest things they could find. We didn't have the tools, the training or the knowledge to do it safely, and we didn't have any idea what we were supposed to do to get from where we were to what David Belle was doing. Without any guidance, we were just making it up as we went. It wasn't until we met S¿bastien Foucan that we finally got some useful training."

Along with Belle, St¿ve Harrison and Stephane Vigroux, Foucan was one of the creators of parkour and its offshoot, "freerunning," more than 18 years ago in Lisses, France. Parkour, as practiced by Belle, is a purist's pursuit: Point A to Point B, as expediently as possible. Freerunning is its more playful, flashier form -- Point A to Point B, with as much dramatic flair as possible -- and Foucan is its chief stylist. Foucan was responsible for the first wave of mainstream exposure for the sports in the United States in 2002 with his "Angry Chicken" ad for Nike -- which featured him scrambling over buildings to avoid a perturbed bird -- and, later, as a performer in a music video for Madonna. He is credited with coining the term freerunning and has been the most recognizable face of the activity internationally.

Foucan says that parkour and free-running initially grew out of the childish ninja and superhero games he and his friends, including Belle, invented on school playgrounds and around their town but that they have evolved into a discipline as focused as any martial art. Foucan's philosophy about his training activities helped form the basis for Toorock's approach to parkour instruction and his efforts to build a parkour community in the United States.

"The traits you display in life are the same traits you display in freerunning," says Foucan, in a voice-over for the documentary "Jump London." "The doubts and fears you have in everyday life are the same you find in the discipline. In everyday life, though, they can be more difficult to combat. Freerunning is a way of fighting one's fears and demons, and then one can apply this to life."

Toorock took the lesson seriously: Seeing Belle in action made him realize how little of his physical potential he had been using. Meeting Foucan at a parkour jam in London helped him see that he hadn't been using his head, either.

"In the beginning, I really didn't see the depth of it or what it could be," says Toorock. "But when you get around these guys and see that they are playful, physical, philosophical and incredibly disciplined about everything they do, you start to get a better idea about how to treat this machine the way it's meant to be treated."

AS TOOROCK PROGRESSED IN HIS TRAINING, he became increasingly aware of the physical and psychological benefits -- and of the business potential in parkour. By day, he was working for a stock brokerage firm, always on the lookout for the next big thing. Outside of work, as he began to approach superhuman feats in his own runs around the city, he realized he might have already found it. So he left a career he'd begun to hate to take a shot at opening a gym back in the United States, with the aim of bringing the underground French sport into the American mainstream.

"From the beginning, I realized it could be lucrative," says Toorock. "In parkour, you have a dramatic and visually stunning sport that requires no equipment, that essentially replicates the experience of playing on a playground and that combines the best workout elements of running, jumping and climbing. I figured if I could make a lot of money by helping a lot of people get fit and have a lot of fun, I'd be a very happy man." In addition to his efforts at Primal Fitness and creating the Web site AmericanParkour.com, he has pulled together a national team of traceurs called the Tribe to help spread the concept of parkour. He serves as de facto agent, manager and promoter for the 10 athletes leading the Tribe.

Parkour is huge in France and London, where it started, and is catching on in urban areas in the United States, such as Chicago, New York, Washington and Phoenix. Toorock might very well be the most accomplished traceur in America. Still, when the producers of "Survivor: China" came looking for someone with a parkour background to add to their tribe on this season's installment of the reality TV series, Toorock directed them to Michael "Frosti" Zernow, 20, a freerunner from Chicago, instead of offering himself.

"I'm not trying to fade into the background; I'm trying to push everyone into the foreground, myself included," says Toorock.

"There are some people in parkour who have called me a sellout because I relate business to it at all. They see me as a businessman who is in it for the money, and they say they just want it to be free. Well, that's all true and correct. Parkour is free, and it always will be. You can do it on any street corner. But it's also true that parkour is marketable, it's extremely hot right now, and I personally have an interest in seeing it get as big as it can possibly get while remaining true to its origins."

TRIBE MEMBER BILLY HUGHES, a student at American University who has been practicing parkour for two years, is the organizer behind the (B)east Coast Jam, an exhibition intended to attract parkour practitioners from around the country for a three-day weekend of running wild in the streets of the Washington area. More than 60 people show up; many of them sleeping on the gym floor at Primal Fitness during their stay.

"At this jam, we have people who are martial artists, rock climbers, gymnasts, skateboarders, even ballet dancers," he says. Their coming together "creates a chance to expand the possibilities for parkour for everybody."

As the traceurs "jam" around the Silver Spring Metro station, a Metro police officer accustomed to shutting down skateboard sessions comes out to break up the scene. But he ends up watching, intrigued, as the entire group progresses in a single-file tightrope-walking formation along a railing under the Colesville Road Metro bridge, then proceeds to launch flying "kong" leaps over the station's covered bicycle racks, running and diving over the obstacles, with traceurs using their arms to finish the movement the way a giant gorilla on the run might maneuver through a movie set. Eager to avoid a confrontation, and used to run-ins with police and security guards, Hughes moves into PR mode, describing parkour and the movements the man is witnessing. Once the officer has established that the traceurs aren't damaging or defacing anything or getting themselves killed, he decides the jam isn't worth breaking up and calls several colleagues over to check it out. The point is moot: Traceurs never stay in one spot for long, and the giant posse of people running, climbing and bouncing off the Metro station walls quickly makes its away along.

"It's like skateboarding without skateboards," says the officer. "It's pretty crazy, but at least they aren't messing anything up."

TRIBE MEMBERS STAR IN TOOROCK'S "PARKOUR TUTORIAL" DVDS that he sells online and at the gym, and Toorock has helped to place Ann Arbor, Mich.-based freerunner Levi Meeuwenberg in a K-Swiss commercial; snagged a stunt gig for Primal Fitness training assistant Will Schultz in the Will Smith movie "I Am Legend"; and helped score the "Survivor" role for Zernow. Meeuwenberg and Zernow also appeared as stunt doubles in the pilot episode of "Chuck" on NBC.

Last spring, K-Swiss invited Toorock and members of the Tribe to collaborate on the design of the Ariake, a parkour and free-running sneaker now on the market. The Tribe members dutifully reported that their shoes, the only real gear worn in parkour, were taking a real beating in the midst of all that activity and abuse. As a result of that input, the Ariake features a durable, new high-grip rubber sole first developed for rock climbing, as well as extra padding to support landing impacts. K-Swiss has become a sponsor of both the Tribe and the Primal Fitness gym and has featured Meeuwenberg, Zernow and Seattle-based traceur Tyson Cecka in two television spots with tennis player Anna Kournikova.

"I think it's inevitable that some of the sneaker companies are going to try to get a piece of the action with parkour and freerunning," says Toorock. "I'll admit I was wary. Obviously, they want to sell shoes. But they also came to me and said, 'We want to support what you're doing and help you grow this sport in the way that you think it should grow, and if we do it right, we'll all benefit.' If they want to work with people like me, the Tribe and S¿bastien Foucan -- not to change us but to enable us to do more -- then I'm happy to have some extra money, and I'm happy to be doing it while wearing their shoes."

David Nichols, executive vice president of K-Swiss and the son of the company's CEO, agrees that there is enormous potential in parkour as the workout regimen of the future.

"Mark is really focused on the training aspect of parkour, and one of the first things he said to me was, 'It's not just about tying on a pair of shoes and going out and doing it,'" says Nichols. "We were really drawn in by the beauty of it, the artistic layer and the expression that it brings. But it's also obviously a really great way to get in shape."

PAUL MEDEROS, A STUDENT AT VIRGINIA TECH, grew up in Northern Virginia and has made a name for himself as one of the most promising members of the Tribe. Thin, wiry, acrobatic, spring-loaded and full of thoughtful Zen-like pronouncements about parkour, Mederos provides a counterpoint to Toorock and the other Tribe traceurs. Where the others are concerned with speed, power and agility, Mederos speaks only of "flow" and the Buddhist notion that, with intense practice and meditation, he might make himself move more like water.

"It turns out that the most natural and graceful way of doing something is also usually the best and most efficient way to do it," says Mederos.

Mederos's overall affect is one of effortlessness. Using training in dance and martial arts, he quickly and quietly flips, rolls and flows under, over and around obstacles.

"For me, parkour is getting into that state of mind where your instincts take over," Mederos says, "where there are no obstacles, just movements to be made."

Mederos is a leader of Gymnasty, the parkour and freerunning club at Virginia Tech, which includes members of the school's gymnastics and track and field teams, along with a wide range of students with varying abilities. Mederos says Gymnasty and events such as the parkour jams provide a valuable social component to parkour. Still, he says, he sees parkour as primarily a solitary, meditative and personal activity.

"You can look at videos online, but it doesn't really give you the full sense of what different people are doing or how they might help or influence you," he says. "To be honest, though, mostly I'd rather just go off and explore [alone]."

At the end of the summer, Mederos and many of the same folks who converged upon Washington for the (B)east Coast Jam find their way to Colorado for a National Parkour Jam hosted by Tribe member Ryan Ford. Inspired by Toorock's work at Primal Fitness, Ford now leads parkour classes at the Spot gym in Boulder and makes parkour presentations in high schools around Colorado.

The D.C. contingent, including Toorock and Billy Hughes, immediately notices a regional difference in the way Ford and other Coloradoans practice parkour: Natural elements are used as freely as urban obstacles, and the Colorado traceurs appear to have more experience as rock and tree climbers. Suddenly, trees and rocks become fair game in the parkour landscape, and the usable environment expands exponentially.

The line between natural and manmade obstacles is blurred further when the jam makes its way to Denver's Skyline Park. The Modernist masterpiece designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin in the early 1970s looks for all the world like a custom-designed parkour training facility, and Ford leads the way, leaping around on the park's tiered monolithic rock faces and water-falls. Soon enough, the rest of the traceurs are following suit. As if to smash Mederos's vision of parkour as a quiet Zen activity, an incident later that day on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder brings the inherent risks of climbing and jumping around on urban architecture back to reality when Anthony Spoon, a traceur from Arizona, puts his hand through a plate of tinted glass. Following the lead of other traceurs at the jam, Spoon wedges himself between two adjacent walls, pushes against one wall with his hands and against the other with his feet, then "stem" climbs horizontally along the designated route. The route's leaders carefully plant their hands on the sturdy window framing along one wall as they move along sideways; Spoon misjudges, sending broken glass cascading down a stairwell on the other side of the window, and falls about eight feet to the ground. The other traceurs abruptly halt their climbing and jump down to see if he is okay.

Toorock and event organizer Ford take charge, administering first aid and calling 911. As they wait for the ambulance, Spoon, holding his arm in a tightly wrapped bloody T-shirt that a fellow traceur has offered as a temporary bandage, says, "This isn't the image we want for parkour." That sentiment is later echoed by his peers.

When the paramedics arrive, they examine Spoon and tell him it looks like he has cut a tendon in his wrist. Then they drive him to the hospital. He is later flown home to Phoenix for surgery.

After the group moves on to climb a nearby university parking structure, a campus police officer is left looking up at the broken window in bewilderment.

Spoon was lucky, says Toorock: With just a little bit more pressure in the wrong direction, he could have plummeted down the stairwell, along the same trajectory as the shattered glass. (The event's organizers take up a collection to replace the broken window.) Toorock knows it wouldn't take many similar incidents before people started trying to ban parkour in the same ways they have tried to curb skateboarders and extreme sports, and he feels personally responsible for protecting the sport's reputation. He wants to see the growing legions of traceurs leave no trace of their activities, and broken windows aren't in his plan. More important, he is trying to promote these daredevil activities, in which the traceurs do not wear any safety gear, as essentially safe. In his worst nightmares, he says, people get hurt or even killed by trying to imitate things they see in parkour videos without any of the necessary preparation and physical training, the way copycats of the MTV stunt show "Jackass" did a few years ago. Toorock says injuries in parkour are rare because participants rely not on what they can't control -- wheels or the icy surfaces of snowboarding and skiing -- but their own hands and feet.

"It's really hard to get people to report these kinds of injuries," says Lanier Johnson, executive director of the American Sports Medicine Institute. "We have not seen any injuries from parkour or freerunning that I know of. It's not even something that has come to our attention at this point."

AT THE NINTH ANNUAL NEW YORKER FESTIVAL IN MANHATTAN IN OCTOBER, Toorock is brought in to consult on the set design that his hero Belle is using for a performance. Belle was featured in a New Yorker profile by Alec Wilkinson last April, and he joins a festival bill of authors, musicians and artists pulled from the pages of the magazine. Toorock, the Tribe members and other traceurs from around the country are also invited to train with Belle and participate in the demonstration at the towering Javits Center fountains sometimes referred to as Stonehenge Park. Belle leads the other traceurs through a series of warm-ups and training exercises, then looks on approvingly as Toorock and the rest of the group showcase this first wave of parkour in America.

Toorock's design contributions include two wooden vault boxes and an elevated stage with steps and railings, but Belle has his eye on the fountains themselves: four towers that Toorock says look like a blank canvas to an accomplished traceur. After a quick survey of his surroundings, Belle begins to climb.

"The difference between what David Belle is doing and what anybody else is doing is like the difference between a planet and a marble," says Toorock. "He just ran up those towers like they were steps. You see him run, and climb, and jump, and hang, and pull himself up, and he's just up there in a flash, not even seconds. Then he does a huge precision jump over a gap between towers, climbs partway down the next tower, drops 12 feet to the ground, pops up, springs up to a five-foot-high platform, does a beautiful back flip . . . and then turns and smiles with a slight nod. It was over in an instant, but it was more than anybody could have asked for."

Colin Bane covers skateboarding and other action sports as a freelance writer and participated in the six-week parkour boot camp at Primal Fitness during research for this article. He can be reached at cjbane@gmail.com.