by Tim | Jun 9, 2014 | Articles
The other day I watched some videos on parkour or freerunning. This is a new hit with many younger people, mostly in Europe and Russia but also in the United States. The concept is simple, find the shortest route between two points and take it. If this includes climbing over buildings, jumping from rooftop to rooftop or doing many other such maneuvers, so be it. Some of the videos online show much skill and indeed some of these young people have had gymnastics training. To take matters even further there are also a sect of these youth who will climb radio towers, using no safety equipment, and once at the top they will take and climb over the edge, doing pushups or hanging from the steel frame in a death defying act. When questioned about it most will give an answer that they enjoy the thrill and the rush of doing such things. If one digs a little deeper you will find that there are news articles that some of these participants do not make the jump across the buildings. Others fall to their death, some break their necks or injure themselves very badly. This is the side that you do not typically see when you watch a carefully crafted video showing only the successes of the group in what appears to be movie style moves. People have often done things like this, though this newest trend is much more dangerous than things of the past. There have always been people who have done skydiving, extreme boat racing, mountain climbing, etc. It is not the scope...
