http://media.hugi.is/hahradi/fyndnar/monkey1.wmv

Yep, it's real. It's called "parkour", "freerun" or "street climb" and you can find tons more videos if you Google it.

BTW, the French text at the beginning says "We're always moving forward- and you?"

Awesome.

Go have a look at www.teamryouko.com aswell.

Awesome!
I have one question tho, how do they avoid breaking their legs when landing?
Again, awesome!

If you watch the guy as he's running in that video clip, he lands on his feet and does a shoulder roll as he lands. Maybe not the best way to land, but it's one of them.

I heard about this thing.. I think it's actually a tv show, a day or two ago from the forums at http://come.to/jeigo and I heard about that site from collegehumor (where I found the video clip of the dancing skeleton - which also came from here). So the circle is complete.

But now I've got a new goal... Be super-looking and super-strong alá John Stone. And be super-flexible and awesome jumping flips et cetera alá Joe Eigo.

And I ramble again.

Jeff.

With the high jumps, in less than the second that their feet touch the ground, they transfer the energy forward into a roll. Also you can train your bones to become stronger - this is why MAs can punch through brick, wood, and cinder blocks, etc. (I'm guessing so I may be wrong.)

Here are a few good sites:

http://www.teamryouko.com/
http://www.multilevelmoves.com/
http://www.bilang.com/
http://www.timpas.com/
http://www.urbanninja.com/

Look up Llan Rosenburg (aka Havok) at Team Ryouko, he has a body-builder's physique and a MA's skills and flexibility. Check out his videos, you'll see him parallel dipping with like four 45 pound plates and at a BB competition doing splits and flip and twisting out of them.

Was going to start a 'Parkour' thread but did a search first and this comes up.

It seems like the same thing that used to be called 'acrobatics' or 'tumbling' but is apparently very popular.

I love the idea in theory (running through a space in the shortest amount of time, using the obstacles in whatever way you can to maintain maximum speed)

There is also a 'parkour inspired' videogame recently come out called Mirror's edge.

Anyone here know/do parkour?

You should check at your local community college to see if they have classes there, my community college has it as a 1 unit course :P. One thing however i do know from watching videos and "attempting" it myself, is that you need to be strong enough to fully manipulate your body.

When I hear this, I always think of this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHU9dN0Itrk). There seems to be a lot of back and forth about whether or not what he's actually doing is parkour or free running or whatever you want to call it, but it's clearly similar and it's pretty cool anyways.

Either way, I'm sure that it has no doubt gotten a wider audience of people curious about it.