3RUN?

This is what some of the world renowned traceurs have to say on the aesthetic aspect of 3RUN, the Parkour/Freerunning group. [Copied from http://www.3run.co.uk/forum/]

Ours is a world of restrictions, of stereotypes, of discrimination and judgment in matters large and small, ranging from the everyday trivial to the crucially important. It is a world of choices that cannot be undone and rules that cannot be broken. It is a world in which few paths are truly new and more and more people find themselves moving through specified channels.

Some of us seek to change that.

3Run is the art of freedom, open to everyone who is like-minded in searching to push their physical, philosophical, and spiritual boundaries regardless of the discipline used along the way. It is also a place, a community designed so that those same people can meet and share and learn, wherever they are in the physical world.

At the core of the 3Run philosophy are three simple beliefs. First, that the human body was designed to move, and that to refuse to do so is to abandon a very important part of what makes one human. Second, that human beings should try for perfection even in the knowledge that they will never achieve it, and that to settle for any particular level of excellence is to abandon the potential for even more. Third, that no human being can live a meaningful life alone, and that through friendship and communication, every person can benefit from the successes of others.

These beliefs are not unique to 3Run. They are shared by many in the disciplines of parkour, tricking, and the martial arts, and indeed are central to many religions, cultures, and communities in the larger world. The kind of philosophy that 3Run exemplifies is not something that any one person or group can claim; it was invented by us all and belongs to all of us and none of us at once. 3Run itself, however, was developed in the minds of a small group of people and was given meaning by their effort. Started by a few, it has since been developed by many. In that way, it is a unique place and a unique way of life, different from its cousin disciplines and its cousin communities.

Imagine a group of people from all over the world gathered around a stone. Each of them sees the stone from a different angle, and notices different things about it. Each of them has a different word for ?stone? in their native language, and different words to describe what they see. Yet none of these words are the stone ? it exists without them, and would continue to exist if they all walked away. No one person among them can explain everything there is to know about the stone ? each holds only a piece of the larger puzzle.

If we could gather together the impressions of every one of those people, though, and combine them ? if we could strip away the barriers between the languages and blend the unique understandings of each individual, we would attain a whole new level of knowledge about the stone, one that is much closer to the real truth.

This is the goal of 3Run. It is not a singular concept; it has no boundaries or approximations like a single person?s view of the stone. It is a summation, a totaling of all other arts and disciplines in an attempt to reach the truth about movement and potential, about humanity and growth.

Dedicating your energy and time to a discipline is respectable, but the traceur is no more respectable than the trickster who works just as hard, nor is the trickster any more respectable than the martial artist. Nor are they more respectable than the artist who paints a beautiful picture, or the musician who composes a masterpiece, or the loving father whose children grow up strong and happy. We all have our own paths to follow, and 3Run is the ideal through which we hope to combine them all into something much greater than what you would get if you simply put each path side by side. 3Run?s founders originally took inspiration from the philosophies of parkour and the Chinese martial art known as Wu Shu, but since then they have broadened their own horizons with the addition of gymnastics, breakdancing, weight training, swimming, boxing, medicine, filmmaking, travel ? anything and everything that promises to enrich the total, to open their eyes and free their minds.

It is this freedom of choice that makes 3Run what it is, the belief that a human being may take any aspect of his or her life and make it part of a whole. We recognise and honour the purity of many separate paths in life, and we strive to maintain their boundaries for the sake of greater understanding and clarity. Yet we believe that a person is not limited to walking only one path at a time ? in fact, we believe that people who do so are stopping themselves from being all that they can be. The physical, the mental, and the spiritual ? all are needed to truly experience life, just as all aspects of the physical are needed to truly understand the human body in motion.

3Run is about pushing yourself to a higher level in every plane. It is about having fun getting there. It is about discovering who you are and who you will be, about finding and overcoming your own weaknesses and fears one at a time. It is about being an individual in a society of individuals, about respect and enthusiasm and progress. It is about life, not just as an abstract idea, but as the world that surrounds you at this very moment, a world in which we believe anything is possible to those who are willing to try.

Free your mind

Duncan Germain (TK17) -- Chase Armitage -- Scott Pallett (JingShen)