Saturday, January 17, 2009

Parkour and CST/Russian Martial Arts

It turns out that I am not the only one who has noticed the similarities between the Russian martial arts, Scott Sonnon's CST and the practice of Parkour. Here is an article by Dan Edwardes over at Parkour Generations on the similarities between CST and Parkour:

Le Parkour (1), though crystallised into its current guise by Frenchmen David Belle and Yann Hnautra sometime in the 1980s, is a practice the roots of which precede records. It has drawn on a myriad of sources, been inspired by a number of notable individuals and evolved through several traditions to arrive at the modern discipline now referred to as parkour or free-running. Names and labels come and go, of course, and the outward visage of this discipline has shifted and modified itself countless times. However, behind whatever appearance has been fashionable at the time, at its core there has always existed an eternal constant – the means, the end, the method and the goal of parkour: Movement.

You can read the rest of the article here.

I have been thinking a lot recently that the combination of CST/Russian martial arts and Parkour would be the ultimate martial art. To bring it all together I would add the nature awareness training of Tom Brown Jr. (in particular the Scout training), and Jon Young.