There is also a debate about the movements which are considered Parkour or Freerunning. More than a hundred times I've read or heard that "Flips are not Parkour." "That is not Parkour, more like Freerunning" etc. So many quarrel about the true meaning of Parkour and how it's different from Freerunning, but do they actually know what they are saying?
I feel that there is too much talk about this, and ironically I will be adding to the argument in hopes of resolving it. I will try to define what Parkour and Freerunning is from my point of view and also explain why it is not so much the movements that makes the difference but the mindset. Before you continue, I hope you'd take your time to read to the end, as I will be expressing views about what is Parkour and what is not, but ultimately I do not wish to draw that line and will be hoping resolving it at the end of the post.
Parkour and utility.
So what is Parkour and what isn't? The discipline was adapted from a background of strict utility in firefighting and the military; it was inspired by the need to be "strong to be useful", to be able to overcome obstacles when we meet them in peril.
This is an attractive idea, very noble and heroic. Therefore, you'd often hear "traceurs" telling their friends that "Parkour is about efficiency, A to B, to overcome obstacles like in an emergency", this makes them feel like they are part of a bigger and deeper thing, and I feel this is the reason why so many defend themselves unnecessarily against "Freerunning" and isolate themselves from the other aspects of the art of movement.
Let's examine a few examples.
Kong/Saut de chat to Precision.
Is this a Parkour movement? It is highly debatable, as it depends on the skill of the practitioner. Is "nailing" a kong to precision a form of Parkour training? First you must ask yourself if you will use this movement in reality? The answer is quite clearly "no" for most of us. The movement has no easily found application in an emergency situation simply because you have to know where you're landing before you're going to vault over the obstacle.
There is very little chance you'd be able to show up at a totally new environment, running at full speed, vault over a wall and land on a tiny spot that you will only be able to see on the last 2 steps before jumping into the kong. Before you even spot your landing and perceive it's distance and analyse it's grip/texture, your jumping momentum would have already been decided by the run up. There is also a high chance that there is nothing to land on after the vault, which you wouldn't know until you're halfway into the vault. A kong to precision landing is a movement that few if any will ever be able to use in an emergency situation.
We realise quickly that we practise this movement mainly because it is challenging or cool, in the same way a flip or gainer is. Yet, we see this movement often practised as "Parkour". This is largely because Parkour is defined as "efficiently from A to B" and it seems to satisfy the criteria and passes off as a "Parkour movement", and we learn to accept that this movement passes off as Parkour anyway.
In looking at this example, I hope you see how such movements are practised in the same mindset as a "trick", but is disguised as Parkour simply because in action it looks like "A to Blablabla".
Running
How many self-proclaimed "traceurs" do you know of that run on a regular basis? Running is indeed the most efficient form of movement, and also the most common. TK17's Pilgrimage video examines this concept.
Running is painful, boring and takes time. There is little to show, it looks lame on videos, it looks lame in reality, no one will truly know how amazing you are are unless they try to catch up with you or you win some medal at a race. This is why few "traceurs" run to failure despite how important it is to Parkour.
A note about running.
Being a runner myself, I often see a run in the same way I see a gap jump. You can give up halfway, but in reality, the bad guys would have caught up and put you to sleep. It is as if the entire run up till the last step is you standing on one side of a gap deciding if you would like to jump. And the obstacle is only truly overcome, when you take the last step of your run and complete the distance, much like how you take the final step of your jump and arrive at your destination.
Choice.
At this point, I hope you see now even more clearly how most practitioners of "l'art du déplacement" choose what to call it by which one they can achieve more easily and is more fun. Few actually look at the real situations they encounter and ask themselves "what do I need to train in order to achieve what I want?". Instead they practise what is fun and cool, then figure out what it is they want to call it then defend their "principles" blindly and fiercely. "I do parkour, not freerun", "flips are not parkour".
So are we doing "Parkour" or just "something about Parkour"?
Now if you examine the training that goes around now, Parkour seems hardly the right word. In the same way that Boxing and Muay Thai is now a fun sport to keep fit with, Parkour is becoming the same.
Let's take a look at Basketball.
It is a game with a goal for each team. So the rules are obeyed and a game is played to see who wins. Simple. There are moves to learn, like dribbling and shooting, and there are tricks to learn, like crossovers and 360's. Would you call a person who practices ball handling a basketball player? Nope. He knows how to bounce and shoot really well, but no matter how good he is at playing with a ball, he isn't a basketball player till he plays games and then trains to win.
Similarly, would you call a person a traceur simply because he practices "precision jumps" and "saut de chat" and "wall pass"? Quite clearly, no. The founders of the discipline, and the military men before it, practised different movements because they wanted to become stronger and faster to save lives or escape. The movements that were created were purely a solution to the problems. The discipline ultimately is, problem solving with your body.
The movements that were created are peripheral to the underlying intentions of each person. In the same way punching does not make you a fighter, shooting guns does not make you soldier and going to church does not make you religious, doing movements done in Parkour does not make you a "Tracuer".
Videos, the Art of Splicing.
Most of the videos you see nowadays are showreels, and they mostly show multiple movements spliced together to form a few minutes of exciting footage. This creates a larger than life feeling of what "traceurs" can do. You just need to learn some movements and get a friend to film it for you and edit them together. Repeat the movements at various locations and you'd have a "showreel" that depicts you as an endless ball of energy that can climb up and down and jump and drop and roll for over 3 minutes non-stop. You can spend a whole day psyching up for a big jump, fail it multiple times embarrassingly before nailing it once, and it'd look like you've mastered it when you edit it for a video.
Therefore, judgement of what is Parkour or not is not something simply you decide on when watching a video, or hearing a few comments.
What's the rush and what's the fuss about?
As I come to the end of this post, I would like to stitch up the tear I've made in the seamless art of movement. Having broken down "what is Parkour" to such specifics, I would like to remind everyone that Parkour and Freerunning are the same discipline. Freerunning is definitely not "Parkour with flips" and the lack of flips certainly does not make something "Parkour".
A years or 2 into training, many practitioners will find a need to defend their "spiritual territory", that cannot be invaded by "other disciplines". They might feel some people are training for the wrong reasons, some people are diluting the discipline and so on and so forth... We've all heard it before, but who are we to debate this fact?
Common Inspiration and Unity.
The founders of the discipline gave me an inspiration. It was not an inspiration to be heroic, to be noble, to be free, to be strong or even to be useful. All these are goals that I already have naturally, who does not want to be all that is great? The true inspiration that I received from David Belle, Sebastien Foucan, the Traceurs and the Yamakasi is that whatever I want to achieve in life, there is a logical method that I can depend on to achieve it. Be it running fast, climbing up a high wall, nailing a flip or even just trying to wake up on time for school the next day, there is a training that would solve the problem. I just happen to agree with the rest of you that climbing walls and jumping off them is really awesome, hence the similarity in the stuff we practise.
Many worry about the dilution of the pure discipline and dissolving of the community into mainstream culture. The actual distinctions of functional movement vs freestyle movements can be clearly tested in utility, so there is little point in fighting over it. What we must realise is that We do what We want to do. If we look pass the movements, we will see everyone has the same primal fear when faced with something they'd like to achieve but am not able to. Once we have achieved something, the feeling of satisfaction that drives us to continue training is also common to all practitioners of movement of any kind. Isn't this the whole point?
My hope for everyone.
What I feel would be great for the discipline and world peace is that everyone starts training more outside and meet more real practitioners. Find people who are working on common things as you and learn together. Achieving a high level will be the expression of your passion to learn, so you do not have to be worried about it. Watch videos, chat online, but do not be fooled that the art of movement exists on Facebook or Youtube.
It is on the concrete, the railings, the walls, the heights, the mud and in the trees that you'd find yourself moving. The more time you spend with your environment the better you'd know yourself and the people who practise with you.
Thanks for reading :)
