Dilution - The future of Parkour Rating Options

[Blane]

I posted this on my blog at http://blane-parkour.blogspot.com/ and it has generated a lot of positive feedback through email, Myspace and the blog itself. Someone suggested I posted it on here for more people to see so here it is. It's a guided tour through my mind regarding the current state of Parkour in the UK, and perhaps internationally.

It's a long read but give it a chance.

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Dilution

Dilution:
a) The process of making weaker or less concentrated
A dilute or weakened condition.
c) A diluted substance.


I've not posted for a while as my mind has been busy and it's only now that I feel I want to share the outcome of my thoughts. This entry may offend you, it may seem like it's directed at you and maybe it is.

I can live with being disliked for telling the truth, but I can not continue living with this opinion and not sharing it with the people I think it might help. I know I am not the only one who shares the following opinions and I feel it is worthwhile voicing them if it changes just one person's mindset and helps them. This is primarily for a friend of mine who I haven't trained with in a little while. A friend who seems to have become a little down with his training, a little distant, a little worried that he's not as good as other people. This is for him and all of the other people who feel disheartened watching the people around them do things they cannot... and also for the newcomers to Parkour.


Yesterday was my 1300th day of practicing Parkour. I'm not a big believer in anniversaries but it was on this day that the thoughts of two weeks came together and fused to become solid in my head.

I started training 1301 days ago on September 10, 2003, the day after Jump London aired for the first time on Channel 4 and it's amazing to think how much has happened and how much my life has changed since then.

I vividly remember the very first training session I had, 185 weeks and 6 days ago. It was with my good friend at the time, Tom, and we were both so excited from watching Jump London and wanted to jump right in and get started! I remember trying some vaults, small jumps through a gap in a moving swing and I remember the first real experience of fear in Parkour as I jumped off the roof of a local gymnastics club and rolled on the grass. It was terrifying at the time and I think it was around 12ft high. I did this because I thought this is what Parkour was, jumping off high things and living to tell the tale the next day. Oh how far we’ve all come since then... or have we?

Now as most people will tell you, the days after your first session are hellish. Who remembers that unspeakable sensation of pain just walking up a flight of stairs in the days following your first real hardcore session? I remember my quads feeling like they had been assaulted by a gang of angry thugs with baseball bats for 2 weeks.

These days there is a wealth of great information available for people starting out in the discipline that I did not have access to in the beginning of my training. It was mostly trial and error, with a large dose of the latter. But despite the benefits that learning from past experiences of veteran traceurs can bring, I can't help but wonder if there are consequences to this.

I realise how difficult it must have been for David Belle and all of the other original traceurs of Lisses as they plunged forward in darkness over 15 years ago having no idea what they were doing or where it would lead. They slowly carved a path in a new direction and lit it up along the way for people to follow. It took many years for those guys to create the most basic movements and refine them to the extent that almost any obstacle could be overcome using just a handful of varying techniques and it is a truly remarkable accomplishment. An epic journey that a new traceur of today can bypass, almost, as they learn 10 new techniques in 2 months, that would have taken perhaps 5 years worth of training back in Lisses in the early 90's to achieve.

So at the rate we are developing, progressing and learning, surely we will catch up to them carving in the distance and be able to help them light up the path, right?

No, I don't think so.

I think we are travelling so quickly along that same path that we are going to run out of fuel before we reach them. They are looking behind them and see us in the distance and I think they are probably hoping we reach them to help the discipline grow, but I don't think many people of future generations ever will.
To quote Stephane Vigroux, "I think for many people it has to be more personal... everybody's moving... I'm really happy for them... but too quickly, too fast, too easy, too much show... too much."

There are guys who have been training for less than a year that are doing bigger and further things than guys who have been training for four years and I believe this is mainly due to the library of knowledge available now. This may sound good in principle, that as the generations go on, we will have new guys able to sidestep the trial and error process and just stick to what has been proven to work, to get to a good level in Parkour. But I'm worried.

I think that the trial and error approach taught the original traceurs of Lisses a vast amount about themselves and injected them with a creativity and passion and courage that is being forgotten today and is being replaced with 'by the book' training. Not only do I believe that their mental and physical adeptness is far superior to my own, I believe this will be further diluted as the generations go by and the future traceurs begin their training. People now have lists of movements to learn and tick them off as they do them and quickly move on to something new, something bigger, something more impressive.

The best way to get respected in the Parkour community today seems to be doing the biggest and best things with the minimum amount of training to get there. As long as you do it, it doesn't matter how sloppy it was, how slow the climb up was, how precise the landing was or how much damage it did to the person. Everybody spreads the word that "X" did "Y" so they must be better than “Z” since they have only been training for “W” months! This approach can quickly escalate and recently I feel it has been destroying the true nature of Parkour. People are doing things to be recognised by other people and it’s tough for the people working hard and progressing steadily to see this going on around them. They feel pressured in to attempting things beyond their level when they see it happening and that’s not their fault.

To me, Parkour is a long and worthwhile campaign - not one short, epic battle.

I'm not only worried about the mental progression and creativity of new practitioners being sacrificed, I'm equally concerned about the physical costs of such textbook progression.

Like myself, some of you may have memories of a granddad who was the only one in the family that could open the pickle jar at dinner time, despite his advanced years. This 'granddad strength' I speak of was no miracle - it was the product of 60 years of manual labour and a strength produced from many years of repetitive muscle use.

I'm concerned that the shortcuts available to today's practitioners might rob them of the irreplaceable muscular development that the Lisses traceurs have, the deep rooted neurological pathways and the vast amount of muscle memory that no book, article or spoken word can give to them. The granddad strength.

We all know you can condition your body from the beginning of your training and this will help your technical ability but I still feel people are moving too quickly and progressing too fast. I regularly see things being done by newer traceurs that guys with years of experience haven't done and sometimes the more experienced guys feel bad... often they find themselves questioning their training and wondering why they aren't as good, wondering where they got left behind and wondering why everybody seems to be better than them.

People have come to me, literally depressed about their training and looking for advice and asking where they went wrong, wondering what the newer guys have that they don't. The answer I've given to these people is simple. The new practitioners doing the massive jumps, the impressive techniques, the big, the hard, the long, the far etc. have ignited a fuse that will see them burn out years before they might want to, simply because their bodies are not ready for what they are doing. It's not just a question of knees, what about the damage being done to the shoulders of new guys doing big drops from branch to branch? What about their elbows?

What will be the long-term effects of this?

What will be the long-term effects of doing 12ft level arm jumps when the shoulders haven't experienced 10,000 smaller ones?

What will be the long-term effects of dropping 15ft to concrete when the legs haven't experienced 10,000, 5ft drops?

Time will tell.

Look at the best traceurs in the world. Go to Lisses and see them, talk to them, train with them and learn from them. They are not the best because they are genetically gifted or were crazy to try all the new things when they were younger and they are not the best because they progressed quickly. They are the best and the strongest because the progressed steadily. They built layer upon layer of armour on their bodies over years and years, repeating things thousands of times and not rushing the process. They have deep rooted granddad strength and resilience and resistance to injury that comes from gradual progression.

Various interviews with David have all asked about injuries and David has shaken his head and said his knees are fine, his arms are fine, he has no pain. This is after 18 years of training. By contrast, today we have guys with one year of training behind them taking months out with knee problems, shoulder dislocations, tendonitis... surgery to repair the body before 20 years of age. Is this a coincidence? Or is this because we are pushing too hard, too fast, trying to be the best and compare to others?

Parkour is a personal journey and one that is hard work. There are no shortcuts and there are no quick fixes. If you want 'to be and to last' then I suggest you take a long hard look at your training and ask yourself if you are doing this for fun, for a few years until you can settle down and get a job, get married, have kids and retire. If so then do what you want, do the massive jumps, do everything you want to do and don't look back. Just be aware that you are having an effect on the others who are in this for the long haul and working hard to get strong. Try to bear this in mind when you say “I did this, so why don’t you?” to them.

But if you want to truly discipline your body, become strong and last in Parkour then you must not compare yourself to anybody else. It can be too tempting to get talked in to doing something beyond your level when you see less experienced people doing it. Be the bigger man/woman and realise the damage they are doing to themselves and take pride in knowing you didn't succumb to peer pressure. In 10 years when they're walking with a cane, you will be able to do that jump a hundred times without generating a bead of sweat.

I’m not sure how we can help the future generations of traceurs and the future of Parkour. By providing them with our experience we can prepare them but it must not become a substitute for trial and error or we will all become clones of our teachers. There must remain an element of trial and error and an element of exploration. They must also be allowed to progress in their own time without feeling the pressure of people around them. I’m going to make it a personal goal of mine to help the people I see feeling pressured in to doing something they don’t want to, it would be great if some people reading this could take the time to join me.


To summarise the two points in the above article...

1) If you’re new to Parkour, research as much as possible and learn from the people who have walked the path before you, but do not lose your creativity and ability to think for yourself. Try new things, explore different methods and progress at your own pace. What you need to remember is that the people before you have more physical experience that has built what I refer to as ‘granddad strength’ and that cannot be taught or passed on. You can rush the theory but you cannot take shortcuts on the practical stage if you want to last in this discipline.

2) If you are more experienced in Parkour and feel like newer people are better than you, do not feel pressured in to pushing yourself too hard or doing things just because they are. Try to warn them of the dangers of trying things beyond their bodies’ conditioned state - even if they can do something, doesn’t mean they should. They are learning faster than you due to the wealth of information before them, due to your hard work.

If you care for the future of Parkour then it is your duty to help them to progress sensibly and remind them that they should slow down when you think they are going too fast. If we do not do this, Parkour will slowly die as its practitioners become weaker and weaker duplicates of past traceurs due to injury, overtraining and joint destruction.


Are you going to help to dilute Parkour and the new traceurs, Or are you going help to concentrate it and strengthen them?

"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." - William Butler Yeats


-Blane

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-Blane

[Google Bot]

[RizLA.]

:10: for article

1) If you’re new to Parkour, research as much as possible and learn from the people who have walked the path before you, but do not lose your creativity and ability to think for yourself. Try new things, explore different methods and progress at your own pace

for young people this is hard task
cuz young people are lazy to research/try/explore and that is biggest problem
they just want to copy great movements..

If you care for the future of Parkour then it is your duty to help them to progress sensibly and remind them that they should slow down when you think they are going too fast. If we do not do this, Parkour will slowly die as its practitioners become weaker and weaker duplicates of past traceurs due to injury, overtraining and joint destruction.

how much people in this world have this kind of thinking,this kind of view on present and future things...only few
if u want parkour go that way,you need far more people like you

once again,great article like all you wrote on tt site
i hope that people will open their eyes after reading this ;-)

[Chaos]

blane, marry me...

hehe, great article expresses my feelings exactly. do you mind if I link this page from my website?

[TK17]

Blane, nothing you said was surprising or extraordinary or new, but you said it perfectly and it was enlightening to read.

As someone who came to parkour via freerunning, I have felt the effects of this problem even more strongly than many others. Although I've been training for nearly four years at something or other (different tricks and skills, this and that, copying vids), it's only in the last year that I've come to understand what that's been doing to my body. I heard people talk constantly about knees, so I said to myself, "Oh, okay, I'll just stay away from drops and everything will be okay."

Wrong. I'm fortunate enough that I haven't developed any serious problems, but I have a significant pain in my right knee from impact and explosive jumping (partly due to my weight, 15 stone) ... AND I HAVEN'T DONE ANY DROPS IN YEARS. What I HAVE done, is work extensively on concrete with poor leg strength and sloppy landing technique, and in the long run it'll be just as bad or worse as jumping off a 15-foot ledge.

Too quick, too easy. I'm reminded of a quote from Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm:

"I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!"

Because of the internet, because of videos, we can stand on the shoulders of geniuses like Belle, and we can accomplish things they have never accomplished. But we don't stop to ask ourselves if maybe the reason they never accomplished those things is that their wisdom told them not to. We don't like to remember that just because we're standing on their shoulders doesn't mean we're actually ten feet tall.

I've recopied your article on 3Run and on ncparkour.com, hope you don't mind. Thanks.

[Bro]

I liked your 'article', in search for a better word, very much. As a matter of fact, much of these thoughts have gone through my mind as well..
Though I doubt I am able to put it into such a well-structured and well-worded essay as yours

very nice indeed

[Blane]

Feel free to spread these words anywhere you like Chaos... but you will have to join the audition queue if you want to marry me!

Great quote there TK17.

-Blane

[RunCincy]

Beautifully worded, Same question as chaos. Do you mind if I post this on my site?

[Chaos]

crap, which number do i have in line ??

well i'll spread this around the dutch community. i'm sure it will help because there are a lot of misconceptions going around.

thanks again.

[Blane]

Yeah no problem, anybody can post it anywhere and everywhere they like. :-)

Chaos - you're number 54. ;-)

-Blane

[MoaWolf]

I admit i didn't read the whole article( for anybody who hasn't read this thread i read all but the last five paragraphs and later did read it and found nothing to change what i just said so don't even think of dissmissing what you are about to read) , and i am new to parkour but i don't think it is fair say that the new generation doesn't understand parkour and the length of the commitment. We have more information and know what the basic movements are so we are going to progress faster. Some of us are rushing to learn new movements and about half of us are completly missing the point and jumping of building and killing their knees. but i believe it is unfair to generalize about the "new generation" many of us started thinking of parkour us just jumping of buildings but i believe that i understand parkour now even at a basic level.

[Blane]

Well I don't think it's really fair to comment on something you didn't bother to read but you are entitled to your opinion either way.

For the record, I didn't say that the 'new generation' doesn't understand Parkour. At all.

-Blane

[RoKk]

Really great article Blane, i think it reflects exactly what is going on, very inspirational, thank you.

[Anan]

I really apreciate your concern for lack of interest in longevity in some peoples training. All to often you meet a person who will have you believe they were a top flight athlete when they were younger, yet now you see him, a middle aged over weight man who is no longer active because his knees are useless now. It's something you see quite often among extreme sports athletes, where willingness to "push the envelope" is considered a virtue and not a weakness. I think you come off a bit hard on new comers, because i don't think there eagerness to want to learn and try new things is always a bad thing. But you are completely right when you say that Parkour needs to be understood as a personal journey, and not a competitive one.

[Anan]

"I admit i didn't read the whole article, and i am new to parkour but i don't think it is fair say that the new generation doesn't understand parkour." - MoaWolf

ok......... this just emphasizes what Blane said about newbies not doing enough research about Parkour. If you didn't take the time to read it, are we really suppose to believe that you've actually thought about it before you rushed to hit reply?

[Spherix]

My thoughts exactly Anan.

Ontopic, great 'article' or better said, expression of thoughts. It got me thinking..

[AjGamerGuy]

Hey thats not cool anan. I don't like the word "newbies" its exactly what blane was talking about. As experienced traceurs we need to help the new generation to understand instead of insulting them, giving them titles and refuting their opinions immediately like that. I think maowolf made a pretty good argument despite the fact that he didn't read the whole thing. He was merely stating that he (despite the fact that he's technically a "newbie") felt that he is at a higher level of understanding than everyone would like to classify him. seriously he expressed his opinion despite it being slightly misguided but how about we stop tearing maowolf to shreds here and get back to the subject that is at hand. Lets all try to support and educate the younger generation instead of trying to shut them down and alienate them immediately. I've read a lot of maowolf's posts and he knows more than you give him credit for he is at least at a basic level of parkour understanding and it bothers me specifically that you ignored everything he said simply because he put "I didn't read the whole article". Blane- I really appreciated this article It emphasized something that I've been getting at for a while. Our art is being cheapened and we need to remedy this somehow. I for one am going to concentrate the new traceurs because I remember how hard it was to begin and to really have a sense of what parkour means.
On a side note you might like to post on the thread: "questions, wait a lot of questions" in general parkour discussion. That string is at least partially related here.
Excellent discussion everyone.

[ThePKoala]

Blane you already know what i think; i posted on your blog-but terrific stuff!

as for Aj; the way i see it, they weren't ripping moa wolf to shreds-they were clarifying. If he didn't read the entire article (how much i don't know, but w/e)then there is a chance that he didn't grasp the full concept and ideas of what Blane was getting at.

And blane never said that newcomers or less experienced traceurs (i didn't say newbies ;-) ) don't understand parkour; assuming i understood the article the first read-through, less experienced traceurs are rushing to do maneuvers and techniques that while are in their power to do, are detrimental long term to their health and progress. They haven't progressed through trial and error, and experimentation to develop themselves naturally in the mental and physical realms.

Once again, assuming i understood right, that's what he was getting at. not that "newbies" don't understand parkour.

[yves]

The Situation we are in is 'too good'. All the knowledge that has been gathered could be so usefull. In my opinion the task the new generation has to step up to is developing this. Using the knowledge that is already there as a basis instead of going to extremes with it. To be honest with all the knoledge around anybody can so huge cat leaps but the task 'we' have to step up to in my opinion is doing try and error with 'new' things. So parkour can be a developing art. Or should it stand still limiting the practitioners?


lg
yves

[Anan]

Hey thats not cool anan. I don't like the word "newbies" its exactly what blane was talking about. As experienced traceurs we need to help the new generation to understand instead of insulting them, giving them titles and refuting their opinions immediately like that.

Thats a fair enough point, so let me clarify. I didn't mean to use "newbie" as an insult, so feel free to replace that with any more politically correct word

-Anan

p.s. just for transparency, im only coming up on my first year of Parkour (started May 06) so feel free to rip into my relative noobness anytime
Anyways, back on topic...

[Faelcind Il Dana...]

Really great read Blane. The trend you point out is something that has been disturbing me too. Personally I think the problem isn't that we have the techniques handed to us, I think the techniques are mostly very simple much of what I see people do in parkour I see taught in gymnastics in a couple weeks or kids doing just naturally. I think the problem is more straight up information dilution, so many people have access to seeing parkour without any guide as to how to actually comprehend what is going on.

Without a guide of more experienced traceurs it takes along time for people to comprehend what their seeing or doing really means. I came on the forums right away I tried to study up and listen but I pushed myself to fast just like everone else in the beginning and know am in physical therapy for Chondromalacia. I went back recently and watched the Dvinsk Clan le parkour video, I remember when that first came out I was so impressed by it but now I see it and I see someone who is destroying them self.

We are so disconnected from our bodies today from the years we spend in school crammed into desks, or at home in our chairs and couches sucked in by computers and TVs. We have no sensitivity to our movement, I just started training barefoot recently and its a revelation, how many bad landings did a absorb in my knee's and hips and spine because my feet were collapsing into the ground and I didn't even know it cause I had cushion in my shoes to take that signal away.

I guess I am rambling but it is a really important topic and I think we all need to think about what we can do to improve peoples understanding.

One thing that really worries me is if you think the lack of understanding is bad now and people are pushing themselves far beyond what is healthy now. What do think is going to happen when large scale competitions develop. Thats one of the primary reasons I am against competition and it just scares me how many people are simply fatalistic about competition. Like there is nothing we can do about it.