Johannesburg — THERE were only so many times Specs was willing to vault over the metal hand rail. He jumped into his white VW Polo, reversed it several metres, got out and began taking a long run- up to his vehicle.

"Try to King Kong it!" shouted a bystander.

Specs charged towards the side of the vehicle and, in one fluent motion, leapt over it like a giant frog. He landed into a forward roll and turned back to survey the obstacle he had just conquered.

Emile "Specs" Sievers attended his second ever Parkour jam session at Fourways Mall, north of Joburg, on Wednesday night.

The 22-year-old from Pretoria was clearly addicted to the excitement of going back to his childhood days, using objects such as trolley stands, concrete dustpans and staircases as his personal playground.

He climbed a brick wall Spider-Man-style, flew from rail to rail across a 6m drop like Tarzan and dangled on the edge of a roof like Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger.

Parkour, French for "route", is a non-competitive but highly athletic sport. Practitioners set challenges for themselves in the form of obstacles which need to be scaled or jumped effortlessly.

The key objective is to create a "run", overcoming any obstacles, such as rails and walls, in an acrobatic way.

Also known as PK, free-running and Le Parkour, the urban sport was developed in Paris in the late 1980s and is best described as the "art of movement through an urban environment".

But as Ray "X-Ray" Bristol, one of Joburg's Parkour gurus, has explained to numerous security guards, all they really want to do is "muck about in the centre for a few hours".

The new sport remained underground for many years until the release of a video called Jump London in the UK last year. In the movie, three French traceurs (experienced practitioners of Parkour), including founder of the sport Sebastien Foucan, leap across the rooftops of some of London's most famous landmarks, including the Globe Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall.

The documentary is credited with triggering Parkour's explosive growth across the globe.

In South Africa there are about 45 known traceurs, of whom about a dozen are in Joburg.

"The sport is still very new," said Bristol.

"My goal is to take it to the masses, to show people that it's about fun, fitness and freedom. It's what you used to do as a kid."

During jam sessions, held in shopping centres and their parking lots, traceurs practise individual moves and train towards performing runs.

Jam sessions in Joburg are usually held on Wednesday nights in the Fourways area and on weekends at various venues.

A run can be pre-selected or totally spontaneous, depending on the traceur.

As one traceur manages to overcome an obstacle, he shows the others how to do it.

"It always takes one guy to get a trick right and then everyone tries it," said 18-year-old Xandor Schiefer at this week's session.

Parkour has also attracted interest from several women, who use equally amusing nicknames such as "Soopamom" and "Carrot".

While Parkour is growing in South Africa, Sievers said the sport hadn't reached an "extreme level" due to a lack of experience.

Bristol agreed, and stressed that people had to learn the basic landings and rolls - which include a variety of moves such as the "cat leap", "dash vault" and "monkey plant vault" - before attempting anything extreme.

"If you feel comfortable jumping over a pot plant, then do it," he said.

"But if you want to leap from rooftop to rooftop, then you can do that too."

Bristol, together with traceurs such as Dane "DC" Grant, Neil "B.I.G" and Craig, have set up South Africa's first official Parkour website and are associated with the international organisation called Urban Freeflow.

Bristol has been organising "jam" sessions every week and is busy arranging to send several traceurs to the X-Week to be held at Canal Walk in Cape Town in December.

This week the website also hosted the first South African-made Parkour video clip.

Rainer Schmid, a 21-year-old traceur from Bryanston, north Joburg, tried out Parkour for the first time on Wednesday. After two hours of running around and receiving a crash course in urban gymnastics, he exclaimed: "This is what I'll do every day. Jumping over rails and exploring. It's my first time here [at a jam] and I think I'll be here the rest of my life!"