I saw this yesterday in Central Park. Several groups of over 5-10 guys aged 16-20 something had gathered on one of the hughe rocks of central park and they were training jumps, stunts and acrobatics.
After they practiced, they roamed through the park like a pack of wolves, wearing nothing but black shorts/black pants and snickers, they traversed the urban obstacles with Parkour/Tricking movements.
(These are the guys practicing in central park, this one is about to do a frontal backflip)
It’s nice to see how these new urban sports spread in big cities, I would say this social trends now travel faster thanks to kids publishing short flics on the internet.
Check out a great sample of Parkour (It get’s good when the french rap soundtrack kicks in)
Parkour (pron. IPA /paÊ.’kuÊ/, often abreviated to PK) is a physical discipline of French origin in which participants attempt to pass obstacles in the fastest and most direct manner possible, using skills such as jumping and climbing, or the more specific parkour moves. The obstacles can be anything in one’s environment, so parkour is often seen practiced in urban areas because of many suitable public structures that are accessible to most people, such as buildings, rails and walls.
A traceur (/tÊa.’sÅ“Ê/) is a participant of parkour.
Tricking
Now, there seems to be another similar trend called Tricking, defined in Wikipedia as:
Tricking is a comparatively new sport with roots in different forms of Martial Arts and Gymnastics. According to Tricks Tutorials’ Jon Call “Tricking can be described as an aesthetic blend of flips, kicks, and twists.” Tricking can be viewed as martial arts power tumbling.
Tricking has only recently come into its own as a recognised activity, although the various skills practiced have existed much longer and a variety of theories have been put forward as to where the term originated.
It incorporates and variates moves from different arts such as the Backtuck from Gymnastics, 540 kick from Tae Kwon Do, Butterfly Twist from Wushu and Double Leg from Capoeira. In general, practitioners are capable of performing the majority of their tricks on grass, regular flooring or even concrete, without the requirement for mats or plyometric flooring.
If you want to see a real good example of Parkour mixed with Tricking, See this video, from 3Run, a “Tricking” group from UK.