Culture and Leisure
Running free in concrete jungle
But when the group is going popular,
it has been criticised by other parkour
players that its members do not do the
genuine parkour as they have somersaults
in the drills, which look aesthetic but
reduce the speed of movements.
Doing the sport with art movements
is regarded by parkour purists as "free
running", a separate discipline that aims
at passing all obstacles in the path in a
smooth and fluid way with beautiful
movements.
To Zippies founders and members,
they do not mind whether they are doing
free running or parkour, as long as they
can perform the task.
Demir Bircan, a Swedish member, said:
"I don't care about it. I just want to learn
more."
He said he felt very excited when he
jumped from stairs to stairs, from the sixth
floor to the ground floor. "I feel like a
kid when playing parkour as I keep
leaping around," said the 25-year-old, who
is also stuntman.
There is no age restriction to join the
Zippies. Hiroko Toyama, a Japanese
woman who has lived in Hong Kong for
two and a half years, brought her
nine-year-old daughter to join the indoor
practice. The little girl, Nao, said she learnt
about parkour from a local television
programme and started to pay attention
to the sport.
Some women and girls play the sport as well as men do. Lisa Cheng Lai-sha, who has been a Zippies member for four months, said she could even apply the parkour skills to protect herself in daily life.
Thanks to the parkour skills, she did
not hurt herself when she was jostled by
a man in the street one day. "When I lost
my balance and fell, I ubconsciously
applied what I have learnt from parkour
and rolled. That prevent me from hitting
my head onto the ground directly," said
the year-three sports management student
of the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational
Education.
To learn to do parkour, club fans said
it was not necessary for one to have years
of training in kung fu or gymnastics.
Parkour requires the exercise of the
whole body, and if practitioners want to
improve their skills, they have to gain
muscles in their arms, tendons, legs and
waist, founder Joe Chan said.
A player will have a lower chance to fail in doing parkour if he is practised in the basic skills, he added.
Demir Bircan leaps over a block in a split second.