( CNN ) -- What if you saw your city as a giant obstacle course ? Buildings were there to be leaped from , railings hurdled over , rooftops rolled across . Suddenly the morning commute is n't so boring when you 're scaling concrete walls Spider-Man-style , or balancing along ledges with the stealth of Catwoman . There are countless ways to move through our urban spaces -- so why do we often plod along with the crowd ? A growing community sees things differently . This is parkour , a daring discipline where people bound around concrete jungles in the most efficient way possible -- if that means leaping from building to building high above the gridlock below , then so be it . They rely only on their bodies , using the city 's surfaces to powerfully propel themselves forward , reading the landscape with an almost animal instinct . t. School of hard knocks . Can anyone become a parkour pro ? I 'm about to find out -- starting from the inside . In a converted shipment yard in east London , ripped young men spring across concrete blocks with the ease of panthers . They are training in the UK 's first purpose-built parkour center -- a sign not just of how popular this once-underground activity has become , but how organized . A vast warehouse has been decked-out to resemble the urban landscape , filled with a haphazard assortment of steel railings , brick walls , and giant trucks tires . A gentle electronic soundtrack plays in the background . Why practice parkour inside , when there 's a whole world to explore outside these four walls ? `` We wanted somewhere you could train without worrying about residents complaining or being kicked off by the police -- and fair enough , if you are jumping on somebody 's walls , they might not like it , '' explained 27-year-old James Adams , who four years ago quit his job as a high court civil servant to teach parkour full-time . `` We do n't expect people to stop training outside , and we would n't want them to . But especially for those starting out , this place can be really useful -- it 's a community of people to learn from . '' An ideal introduction for those like myself , whose sporting prowess is limited to running after the bus or squeezing myself onto a train at rush hour . There are no soft furnishing in this cavernous concrete building , and before I attempt my first challenge -- leaping over a waist-high steel railing -- I 'm giving a word of warning . `` This is n't a gymnastics center , '' says Adams . `` You ca n't fall on your head here and be fine . '' Urban acrobats . Twenty minutes later I find myself hanging upside down from a four-meter-high concrete wall , gripping on for dear life . `` It really pushes you mentally to face fear and overcome it , '' says Adams , who first took up parkour because he was `` bored out of his brain at the gym . '' `` Once you start training , your vision expands . It frees you in a huge way . You see a railing on your way to the train station and think ' I 'm not going to go three feet out of my way . I can go over that . '' Even in my panicked state gently rolling backwards down a wall , blood rushing to my head and the center swimming before my eyes , a strange thought looms before me . 'This is so much cooler than the gym . ' Lights , camera , action . Since it emerged in France in the 1980s , parkour has been as hard to pin down as the people who practice it , used as everything from a way to keep fit , to security training , and even film stunts . In the opening scenes of James Bond film `` Casino Royale , '' Daniel Craig leaps , rolls , and hurdles after a bad guy through a bustling construction site -- culminating in a spectacular dive between two cranes . This is no ordinary villain , but Sebastian Foucan , one of the founders of parkour , and the pair perform moves so death-defying , you might think they were the work of special effects alone . `` It 's almost expected now that when a superhero is traveling across the city , they 'll be able to do parkour , because it looks cooler for them to run down the street and vault over a bin , than to just run in a straight line , '' says Adams . `` People do a class and assume the first thing I 'm going to ask them to do is a triple backflip -- it could n't be further from the truth . Most of the training we do is low and safe . '' Power and beauty . The academy now hopes to train uniformed forces . As Adams says , a police officer who can chase someone over a wall , is going to be much more valuable than one who struggles to keep up . Despite his bulky physique , there is an elegance to the way Adams lightly leaps over wooden barriers , and it 's easy to see why parkour is also increasingly being used on stage -- the group is currently working on a performance of `` Alice in Wonderland '' . One thing 's for certain , parkour will make that journey down the rabbit hole a lot more interesting . Learn : Freerunners find their feet in Baghdad .
Urban parkour , a discipline where people leap , roll , hurdle across obstacles . Made famous in film stunts such as James Bond film ' Casino Royale ' UK 's first purpose - built parkour centre opens in east London shipment yard . Plans to train security forces , police and other groups .