Parkour Case Study

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6.15 Urban Exercise Furniture
The American Parkour Academy refers to bodily movement as fun and joyful. This is an essential feature to communicate in the promotion of physical activity. Parkour is interesting for physical activity in the city, because it uses obstacles in the built environment to exercise.
In the past years, l’art du deplacement (parkour), and free running have become increasingly popular. Parkour is an urban based performance that has developed out of military obstacle training, with the intention to take the fastest way from A to B. “Briefly, parkour is a form of human movement that focuses on ‘efficient motion over, under, around or through man-made or naturally occurring obstacles by jumping, vaulting and climbing” (Glichrist and Wheatin 2013, p. 5). Academic research on parkour has described it as …show more content…

subway): variations of pull ups and upper body strength exercises.
• Benches: sit ups, push ups in variations, leaps, box jumps
• Stairs and hills: can be sprinted, leaped step by step, crawled up and down.
• Free rails: various push up versions, balancing, climbing, monkey style crossing, slalom crawls.
• Trees: pull ups, can be climbed, possibilities depend on the tree.
• Anything loose like rocks, tires, anything heavy lying around: lift it.
• Cars and bicycles: can be raced from the sidewalk, use as motivation to speed up.
Nevertheless, parkour and related movements are not something society is likely to adapt broadly. Hence, hints and encouragement in the city could encourage alternate use of urban features, e.g. signs that show possible exercises utilizing urban furniture, or slogans and questions that stimulate creativity. In some places in NYC people are more likely to use park furniture in alternative ways, e.g. in East River Park. Hence, role models or leaders who will be copied in their behavior by others may have an effect as

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