Parkour, stripped down, is the use of space. It’s how we fill space, how we move through it. It’s a process. And it has often struck me when training and moving that the vast majority of that space is filled with what most would consider to be ‘unspectacular’ movement: that is, the gaps and distances that exist before, between and after the obstacles we fly over and through, around and under.

Why do you do parkour? Why do you train the way you do? What do you hope to achieve? These are all very important questions that I think about not just relating to myself as a traceur but also to those I teach as a coach. In a documentary Stephane once did he spoke a little about this:

July 1998, I come back from holidays and my brother Stephane was really into a new sport, I didn't know what it was, he didn't talk much about it... I had the opportunity to watch a video called SpeedAirMan, it was about a crazy guy who was flying around, and this guy actually lived 5 minutes driving from where I used to live ! I looked at the video, I was amazed but nothing more really.