Awesome Parkour

Nico Fischer is an amazingly skilled parkour athlete. This clip shows Nico bouncing between two walls with such command that he looks like he’s defying gravity at times. He couldn’t decide if the moves were more Spider-Man or Prince of Persia, so his pal Aziz came up with a more appropriate superhero name, “Elevator-Man.” More wall-climbing antics here.

During parkour team STORROR’s “Floor is Lava” challenge, the team headed to Full Fathom Five, a seaside sculpture made of 108 granite pillars, then attempted to run from one end to the other. It’s incredible to see these athletes make it so far without being covered with scrapes and bruises.

The normal way to get to the top of a roller coaster track is to strap in and take a ride. But freerunners Jason Paul, Krystian Kowalewski, and Silke Sollfrank prefer to use their feet. The trio headed to Germany’s Erlebnispark Tripsdrill amusement park for a thrilling run through their large wooden coaster.

What would happen if three of the greatest adventurers came face-to-face in search of the same treasure? Devin Supertramp and crew headed to Uzbekistan to find out. This short action film stars stunt actors Braxton McAllister, Michaela McAllister, and Corbett McAllister as the heroes of Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Red Bull just built the world’s largest pinball machine. Then they turned freerunner Pasha ‘the Boss’ Petkuns into a human pinball, sending him sliding, swinging, and flipping his way through the 65-foot tall playfield which they set up at a 45° angle for an added challenge.

This experimental short film used artificial intelligence technology to stitch together action footage by the STORROR parkour team. The custom-written software identified similarities in their maneuvers and body positions, then manipulated and overlayed the imagery from various locations they’ve visited around the world.

Boston Dynamics continues to refine its ATLAS humanoid robot, which can now perform complicated actions like running through a parkour course at full speed. This is a big improvement over the robot’s earlier gymnastics, in which ATLAS appeared much less confident. We want to see an all-robot Olympics some day.

Dolos are specially-shaped concrete blocks that are used to protect harbors and breakwaters. Parkour athlete Brodie Pawson only sees them as an obstacle to be crossed. We watched in awe as he chased his pal Michael Khedoori across a field of the 80-ton blocks along the Australian coastline without slipping.

Take a thrilling run along the rooftops, streets, sidewalks, and beaches of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This vibrant and energetic first-person action footage was shot by the crew at AMPISOUND in collaboration with Picasso Parkour. This is officially the first parkour video we’ve seen with an underwater sequence.

Between the risks of injury and the often precarious locations, parkour and freerunning can be pretty exciting to watch. SciShow goes beyond the athleticism to the physics of the sport, digging into the things that need to happen mechanically to climb walls, vault over obstacles, and land without trauma.

From para-skiing to cliff-diving to rooftop parkour runs, there are lots of ways for athletes to get their thrills. Storyful compiled this 15-minute video featuring a dozen daredevil activities from the awe-inspiring to the downright foolhardy. Unless you count dizziness, the jumbo hula hoop at the end is clearly the tamest.

While shooting selfie footage on the roofs of Hamburg, Germany, freerunner Jason Paul drops his phone. Being the athlete that he is, he does everything in his power to hunt down his lost phone. This playful parkour clip from Red Bull is filled with action, humor, and great camerawork.

We have two dogs here at The Awesomer HQ, and all they know how to do is bark and demand belly rubs. But Omar von Muller’s Belgian Malinois dog, Monkey, is a bit more of a show-off, having honed his skills on this challenging obstacle course that includes balancing between two ropes and doing paw-stands along a beam.

Reminiscent of the POV action movie Hardcore Henry (and a little bit of Buttered Side Down), athlete Alex Schauer’s parkour short film puts us behind the eyes of a man as he finds himself in a puzzling situation, and facing off against a mysterious woman in black who he can’t seem to escape.

There are many things you can do while staying at home, but we didn’t think parkour was one of them. Freestyle ski champ Andri Ragettli proves us wrong as he performs a variety of balance and training exercises on his “floor is lava” indoor parkour course. Did he just use his laptop as a step?

DD Squad, the acrobats behind the world’s largest trampoline are back, and this time they’ve built themselves a playground filled with bouncy surfaces. Their freestyle trampoline park included shipping containers for them to jump off of and climb, and a crazy trampoline sandwich on the back of a moving 18-wheeler.