Those stunts made by Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie, Prince of Persia, were simply astonishing. Crawling up walls, jumping all over the place and running on rooftops…I have actually wondered if these were all done with wires. But it didn’t look like the actor nor his director faked them. It was as real as the bleep sound of those barcode scanners in the cinema snack counter.

Now, I’ve learned from a friend that this particular style of death-defying fast movement is called “parkour”. Parkour is a French word which means l’art du déplacement or the art of moving. It is a physical discipline of French origin with an objective of getting from one place to another using only the human body and the objects in the environment around you.

David Belle, the 37-year-old French guy who created parkour, was hired by Disney to train Jake for his role as Prince Dastan.