Sébastien Foucan

In 2001, Sébastien Foucan formulated his own philosophy with the term Freerunning (“follow your way”). In some cases, this discipline was also written as Free Running. The first media references to the term Freerunning include the English documentaries Jump London (2003) and Jump Britain (2005). These documentaries, which are also considered to be important testimonials of the Parkour movement, were a milestone for the emerging Parkour and Freerunning movement in England. Inspired by the documentaries, the first English groups formed in the footsteps of Sébastien Foucan.
There is debate over whether Foucan’s term Freerunning was considered the universal term for the movement form Parkour and for l’art du déplacement, in order to make it more accessible to an English-speaking public, or whether Foucan even then was aiming for a separate development of the
movement form of Freerunning. This is where opinions in Germany and England differ.
Regardless, Sébastien Foucan is considered to be the founder of the movement discipline of Freerunning. However, author Dan Edwardes attributes the idea for the term “Freerunning” not to Foucan but to Guillaume Pelletier, who had collaborated with Foucan on the Channel 4 documentary Jump London. Furthermore, the existence of the term dates from 2003).
At this time, terminological chaos reigned. The relatively young movement forms had now spread beyond the borders of France and a varied and colorful scene had sprung up, which along with efficient escape techniques also practiced creative and acrobatic movements in urban terrain. The definition of Parkour as efficient movement by David Belle excluded acrobatic movements. Sébastien Foucan’s Philosophy of Freerunning on the other hand offered a much more open interpretation with regard to which movements belonged to Freerunning and which did not.
This led to creative and acrobatic movements in urban settings being termed Freerunning. Whether or not it was Foucan’s goal right from the start to differentiate between Parkour and Freerunning is open to question. The movements that Foucan and Belle presented for their different movement philosophies are not actually that different from each other and make their common origins very clear. Since then, Freerunning has been considered a separate discipline.