Aside from helping innovate movement and gameplay in video games, however, there are a few other ways digital technologies and parkour work together. Below, we'll look at how people are using technology to improve their parkour experience or even experience parkour in new ways:

Smart glasses & Parkour

Given the amount of jumping, climbing, and running around, it may be odd to think how glasses — even smart ones — can fit in parkour. However, many new smart glasses developed today, like the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, have built-in cameras that can be used to record and live stream videos from a first-person perspective.

If you're wondering how this can be useful in parkour, think of how parkour-related video content, like parkour tutorials from Parkour.com, can be made more accessible and immersive for viewers. Even though first-person perspective videos for parkour are certainly possible without smart glasses, wearable technologies provide a more lightweight and safe means of recording or streaming.

Augmented reality, virtual reality, and Parkour

As mentioned in our introduction, many video games today borrow their movement from parkour techniques. With the help of smart glasses or AR glasses, for example, video game developers can virtually augment parkour challenges or games into the real world — maybe like the mobile game Temple Run, but in real life. While we weren't able to find verifiable information on this, there is supposedly an Assassin's Creed version of this AR-parkour combo.

Even so, Assassin's Creed, a video game franchise popularly known — and loved — for its parkour elements, among others, has recently released previews of its VR game called Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR. While directional movement is done by holding a button and pointing in the direction you want to go, parkour things done with your hands, like grabbing ledges or climbing up walls, require you to reach out and actually grab.

Robots & Parkour

Finally, who knew robots could play a role in parkour — or even perform parkour techniques? In 2021, robotics company Boston Dynamics released footage of its humanoid robots showing off their parkour and free running skills. While the footage does show the robots occasionally stumbling or falling, they are also capable of doing backflips and leaping over obstacles.

Of course, backflipping robots may not be much of a game-changer for people who actually do parkour. However, these robots were designed to be used as a research and development tool for companies like Boston Dynamics to learn fluid human movements and make humanoid robots move more, well, human-like. So, while not necessarily impactful for real-life human parkour artists, it's still interesting to see how valuable parkour is in the engineering and design process of robots.

As digital technologies continue to evolve and get developed, it'll be interesting to see more ways tech and parkour can work together in the future. Whether hands-free video content creation or virtually parkouring on VR, making the art of parkour more accessible to people is a great way to share the joys of free running. Even parkouring robots may come to serve their purpose in the distant future, maybe for teaching parkour or as a safe alternative to testing potentially dangerous parkour jumps and moves.

As of publishing, Parkour.com has produced 3 tutorials, all of which were produced by Take Flight founder Adam Dunlap, and one of which was filmed and directed by him. Tutorial #2 stars an old Take Flight athlete Brandon Latocki. In the video he is wearing one of our vintage Take Flight tees.

The first tutorial was on the step vault, the second was on tacing, and the third was on principles of landing.

These tutorials are quick, fun, and insightful even for advanced Traceurs. We definitely recommend checking them out!

In 2008, Take Flight founder Adam Dunlap decided he wanted to start a Parkour clothing company. No Parkour clothing companies yet existed in the world, so it seemed like an amazing idea. Amazingly, in his mind, the principle problem wasn't making the clothing. It was choosing a name and designing a logo!

For 6 months, AD worked on logo concepts. He had zero design background, but he did have some foundational concepts in mind to guide the approach. He wanted the logo to be:

-Gender neutral
-Race neutral
-Species neutral*
-Athletically neutral yet Parkour specific
-Powerful in black and white
-Easily drawable so that people could sketch the design on their binders when they were bored in school

In spite of the vision and countless hours of work put into the concept, AD couldn't make a logo he liked. He even did a Parkour photo shoot and hung those photos in a window to trace the silhouettes hoping to land on some cool design that was as inspirational as the original Parkour logo by David Belle. Nothing seemed to work.

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Then one day in spring 2009 AD was driving home, and, we kid you not, on the back of a dirty moving truck he saw a shape etched out in the dirt, presumably by the wind. The light bulb went off.

When AD arrived home he grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. This circled Flight Man? That is literally the very, very, VERY first sketch he made attempting to recreate what he saw on the back of that truck. AD added a head to it, and a few days later, an advisor commented that the logo looked like it was missing something. The advisor recommended adding an arm, which AD did.

In almost 14 years the logo has never changed which we think is pretty cool! And not only does it have a cool story, we still have the original sketch.

(The second image are other sketches made in an attempt to improve the logo. But AD ultimately felt it was perfect as originally drawn)

*Species neutral? AD has been quoted as saying he wanted a logo that would resonate throughout the universe, so that even aliens would relate to it.

More about Kefa Project…

The Kefa Project (pronouned kay-fuh) is a non-profit organization that works in Rwanda to empowers at-risk youth through sports. They work in community teams to prevent child homelessness, promote education, and they invest in children so they can discover their talents and pursue their passions and dreams in life. Kefa Project also runs a boarding soccer academy for formerly homeless kids to reach their full potential physically, spiritually, and educationally. Their kids are going to change the world!

How to support Kefa Project…

If you’d like to support the Kefa Project there are two ways:

#1. Go to KefaProject.org, find our more, and donate.

#2. Pick up a pair of our shoes! We now donate a portion of every shoe sale to the Kefa Project organization.

Thank you for supporting our brand as we work to support communities around the world.

We have been following this vision every since. If you haven't seen it, here is a video we made that talks all about it.

Thank you for being a loyal customer, fan, and Traceur all these years and supporting the TKFLT brand and all we do.

Jump. Fly. Dream.

In this video, Valentin is wearing our 1.0 Parkour shoes. We only have 3 sizes available in those (the rest have sold out). However, our newest Parkour & Freerunning shoes, the Stealth Ultra, are better than ever. We took everything we learned from the 1.0s and the Ultras to make a shoe that you will love. Click below to get your pair!