“This book, in short, is a ‘guide’, for beginners and non-beginners, on the meaning and tools to trace paths capable of a new look: that can see in every space (physical – urban and non-urban – and mental) possibilities of movement and new opportunities for movement, hidden invisibly in reality”.

Parkour/ADD (Art Du Déplacement)/Freerunning, a sporting discipline born in the French suburbs around 1980, fascinates more and more young people for its spectacular nature, but behind the jumps and reckless evolutions that can be seen on YouTube there can be much more: a metaphorical path of personal growth through the “challenge” that leads to the ability to stay within one’s limits, to self-determination, to the freedom to move through and beyond any type of terrain or apparent obstacle, even symbolic.

Federico “Gato” Mazzoleni, a pioneer of parkour in Italy and one of the main promoters of this discipline in our country and in Europe, who died prematurely due to illness, tells about it in this book. He was considered an inspirer and a guide by the founders of the movement and by all those he taught. His texts on the discipline, reflections, diagrams, interviews and videos were collected posthumously by a group of women who saved his legacy of knowledge not to celebrate it, but to continue to “transmit – as Federico writes – to a growing number of interested people, parkour in the right way, that is, not through easily misleading images, but through a personal relationship, which is the only way to transfer something that goes beyond simple movements”.

Federico "Gato" Mazzoleni, a pioneer of parkour in Italy and one of the main promoters of this discipline in our country and in Europe, was born in Bergamo on February 20, 1984. He began practicing Parkour in 2004 with a small spontaneous group that gradually grew. In 2010, he obtained the Adapt level 1 certification from Parkour Generations, which qualified him as an assistant teacher. In 2012, again in London, he obtained Adapt 2, which made Gato a full-fledged parkour teacher. In the same year, together with others, he founded the ParkourWave sports association in Bergamo, of which he assumed the presidency.
During his life, Federico promoted, together with the ParkourWave management group, a pioneering Parkour Manifesto and oversaw the project for the creation of the first open parkour space in Italy in the Malpensata park, in Bergamo. He was the UISP national training manager for the discipline, conducted courses for the training of new teachers and was part of the Parkour Generations team for the release of the Adapt certification in Italy and in various countries around the world. He died at the age of 34 from cancer on January 3, 2019. Since then, Federico has been recognized as an important figure for the Italian and world parkour scene and the development, as athletes and as people, of those he met.