The term Freerunning (or free running) was coined during the filming of Jump London, as a way to present parkour to the English-speaking world. However, the term has come to refer to Sebastien Foucan's method of parkour. Many misconceptions have come out of this, such as the idea that it is a form of competitive street-gymnastics or street-acrobatics, when it in fact, it was how Sebastien Foucan described his own parkour evolution. In a video on his official Youtube channel he explains freerunning as:

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Freerunning for me is my parkour evolution. I can't say anymore that I do parkour. Because if I want to be free to do flips, or let's say I'm learnng breakdancing, and I would like to incorporate it into my parkour expression; Not to say: I am doing capoiera, breakdancing, parkour and anything else. Freerunning is the way I choose to name my own expression. Now people recognize freerunning as doing parkour with flips (acrobatics) as freerunning but the action of doing parkour with flips - only that is not freerunning. Its the action of adding more stuff into your expression. That's the freerunning attitude.

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While Sebastien Foucan claims that freerunning is his way of naming his expression, it's important to point out that all of the founding members of the former group Yamakasi, including David Belle, have incorporated both acrobatics and dancing in their expression. David Belle is also a martial artist and in many of his videos he can be seen practicing martial arts with Stephane Vigroux. In various videos David Belle can also be seen incorporating acrobatics into his parkour, such as footage from Lisses in the early 90s. According to Dan Edwardes of Parkour Generations, all of the founders in the Yamakasi group incoporated acrobatics and such into their training since day one. However, it was only there for fun and never became the focus because it was rarely useful since their goal was to learn efficient movements to overcome obstacles, and that 90% of their technique was 'the basics', e.i jumps and vault. Many of the founders also deny any differences between parkour and freerunning at their rendezvous meetings, and Sebastien Foucan frequently uses the term parkour.
The founder and creator of freerunning, Sébastien Foucan, defines freerunning as a discipline to self-development, following your own way, which he developed because he felt that parkour lacked creativity and self-expression as a definition for each freerunner to follow your own way.