If anyone has seen free runners before, they know that what they do is both very visually enticing and also physically demanding. Free running is a form of running, which combines acrobatics, and jumping to make a wonderful amalgamation of the three. It may not be a sport but it is a discipline with many people practicing it around the world. It has cultural ties to things like skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding and street cycling. What makes it look so fun to watch is the fact that free runners have managed to find a way to make running cool. Running is usually a pretty solitary and boring activity, but free running is exciting and demanding and looks like it would be a lot of fun to participate in.
Free running is basically when people run and perform flips and jump off of high platforms while lading in a rolling fashion so as not to hurt them. It takes a lot of practice to do and people spend years doing it before they get really good at it. What I find really interesting about free running is how did it become so popular and why do so many people like it? I may have answered my own question earlier by saying that it is a much cooler form of running. But there is something more to this thing that makes it so captivating. Let’s delve deeper.
Free running seems to have been invented in France but is now popular the world over. The Wikipedia site on free running gives us this understanding of it, “It incorporates efficient movements from parkour, adds aesthetic vaults and other acrobatics, such as tricking and street stunts, creating an athletic and aesthetically pleasing way of moving. It is commonly practiced at gymnasiums and in urban areas that are cluttered with obstacles,” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freerunning). A lot of the moves in free running have been given names with some very cool ones like Dash Vault and Wallspin. Now this is one of the best names I have heard in a while; wallspin. I can just imagine people going flying into a spin after leaping off of a wall. These kinds of moves that take place in free running and the abandon and freedom that come with it make a lot of people want to try it for themselves. That could be another one of its appeals, in the fact that it is a sport that can be done anywhere, all that is needed is a few obstacles and there are plenty of those to be found in big cities
Free running as a concept is one that is all about the outdoors and connecting with an urban environment. It is all about people adapting their hobbies and sports to reflect their surroundings. Free running makes use of everything that people can find in any ordinary city centre. The effect of running through city centres and jumping over things and doing acrobatics lets young people who partake in free running the ability to give their creativity a free playground to roam in. Acrobatics has taken on a very urban arena, with it not being restricted to gymnasiums in schools but now being taken to the streets.
The way that free running can grow and mature is if it gets some big sponsors on board and people organise some large-scale competitions like the X-games for extreme sports. With large companies backing the sport it could move off of the streets where some residents might not be too happy with it, and into a controlled and managed arena of play. That might not make the free runners to happy because they are free spirits who might think the corporations are trying to stifle their creativity and take their sport away from them and commercialise it. It is a two way street that can be taken here; without sponsorship this tiny sport cannot grow but with it, it may lose some of its freedom and expressive nature. Where the sport goes from here we will just have to wait and see, but the future looks bright for this high flying and acrobatic endeavour.
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