Parkour cannot be stopped. That, in fact, is the entire point: parkour is the French martial art of escape, of surmounting every obstacle in your path in the case of an emergency. It is also known as l’art du déplacement, ‘the art of displacement.’

Get from Point A to Point B as quickly and as effortlessly as you can. This is the philosophy of traceuces, the hardscrabble, postmodern gymnasts that make up the ranks of parkour. Parkour was partly inspired by parcours du combatant, the classic obstacle course used in military training. In 1997, a group of friends in France founded a group called Yamakasi, a Congolese word that means ‘strong body, strong spirit, strong person.’ Parkour quickly spread beyond French borders – especially with the help of internet videos, which showed traceuces leaping from building to building like jungle cats.

Parkour is also action movie gold. It made a significant splash in District 13, a dystopian French film that stared parkour co-founder David Belle and famous stuntman Cyril Raffaelli racing through Parisian slums as fast and as effectively as possible. David Belle, parkour’s de facto spokesman, once said this about his art:

“Our aim is to take our art to the world, and make people understand what it is to move.”