One of the fascinating things about locomotive movement is that the very deep basics of it, putting together running, jumping, climbing and crawling has prior to parkour never really been the focus of dedicated art in of it self, but it was always there. Early gymnastics was much more similar to modern parkour then the current incarnation, Methode Naturelle of course featured most of what is currently in parkour as part of its broader program, and traditional kung fu and many other martial arts included elements of running up walls, vaulting over objects and moving through trees, and of course all children explored their locomotive capacity to some degree. Another group that tended to do lots of parkour as an side to their primary focus is rock climbers.
Johnny Dawes in the 1980’s when parkour was just beginning to develop in Lisses and Evry, Johnny was adding wall runs, cat to cat, and tic tac movements to his climbing practice to come up with very unique solutions to the stuff he wanted to do.
This video shows some of his interesting movement practices. Take some inspiration and think about different ways to approach familar obstacles.
