I was trying to find nice quote from someone wiser than I to start this article off, but then I came across this little gem:

/*****When talking about the Urban Ninja video*****/
…God I hate that guy, think his name is socal ninja or something, real jerk. I don’t actually think his stuff is very good, his form looks so tense and jerky to me…

Wow, pretty crazy right? Being judgmental enough about someone you haven’t ever talked to or met to actually say you hate them, who could have said that?

Picture: It Was Me

Oh yeah. I said that a year and a half ago. And you know what? I was utterly wrong. I’ve now worked with Xin twice: once on the K-Swiss spot (he doubled me and Levi on some parts that never got in), and once on the Taurus World Stunt Awards.

He’s actually a really nice and fun guy. He went out his way a few times to make Janine and I feel welcomed and at home while over there and I respect him greatly for that. You know why I had such a strong dislike for him before I had even ever talked to him?

Why would I say that?

I thought his video was supposed to be a parkour video and I had been conditioned to not like parkour videos with flips in them (except for David Belle’s videos of course). Pretty stupid reason, eh? Especially since his video isn’t even meant by him to be considered a parkour or freerunning video, it’s an urban ninja video. Conditioned is a strong word and may not be what I’m looking for, but basically I was in a community with an unspoken tradition of placing freerunners a rung below traceurs. And I’m not just speaking about videos, freerunners in general were looked down upon by a large group of traceurs a few years ago and that view spread everywhere they had influence.

For example, I was talking to Jesse on the ride from the airport and he mentioned not liking Xin at first as well “for the basic parkour reasons.” That statement really stuck with me and made me wonder why in the world would parkour ever make someone not like someone else? In my history with parkour it has always opened doors to meeting new amazing people, it has never closed any. That statement doesn’t make any sense to me anymore, but here is the general theory of how it came about:

Some Parkour History

Parkour in France was developed with the idea of it being a useful thing. This is something that changes the way people think about obstacles and trains their bodies to be able to efficiently overcome anything in their path. For example, when David Belle was starting to form parkour he used to imagine his family in trouble somewhere he could see, and he would try to find the fastest way to get there using just his own body. When parkour started to drift away from France, however, mistranslations and misinformation spread with it and a lot of people just used DB’s videos to define parkour for them. You simply can’t understand the roots of parkour without being there in person. A video will never suffice, and most (if not all) videos are never even designed to.

This led to a lot of kids in the UK mainly doing large flips and extreme movements in the presence of the news media and calling it parkour. A lot of people then freaked out about this, and rightly so, because they feared that parkour would turn into a collection of extreme tricks/stunts and lose its origins in being a useful and absolutely amazing thing (I’m paraphrasing here, some day I’ll write an article about why I love parkour so much). So the term “freerunning” was adapted from Sebastien Foucan’s original meaning to become this “other thing,” and many in the community started working to make the two seem as separate as possible.

But here is where my greatest problem with the global parkour community began. Instead of putting their energy into creating and promoting positive information about parkour such as writing articles, teaching classes, creating definitions (because DB definitely wasn’t doing it at that time), the majority of people took the easy route and started to simply bitch at people who put flips in their videos, using freerunning as if it were an insult (implying that they didn’t understand what parkour was). Not that any of it is DB’s fault, I think he simply never wanted to become this huge global ambassador for parkour and it spread away from him too fast.

Let’s Fix It

But you know what? It’s time to move on. There are sooo many knowledgeable traceurs in the world today, the only people that get the two confused anymore are those just starting out and the media on occasion (and even that is getting a lot better). And the point is that no matter their differences, parkour and freerunning are both incredibly good for you mentally and physically. Whether you train for efficiency or creativity, the fact is that you are out moving your body and exercising your mind. Repetition training, conditioning, expanding our “vision,” experimenting, helping others learn, playing, thinking, teaching, running, jumping, etc… If you are passionate, this is what you do to become better than what you are. In the end it’s the love of jumping around and seeing/experiencing the world so differently that we all share, and it is what makes the community so great. Whether you are a traceur or a freerunner, your training is quite similar to my own and I would to love to come train with you and see what you have found.

If I had judged Skynative and PD with my old eyes of anti-freerunning, I might have missed out on getting to know two of the nicest and most considerate individuals I have ever met. I am being totally serious, go find a way to meet these two people right now and shake their hands.

There are still a lot of people out there, though, who share the old - almost draconian - parkour politics of exclusion and to them I simply say: “My friends, go outside and play.”

I think it’s important to draw the lines and have definitions, but I shudder whenever anyone uses parkour to act negatively to another human being. As long as people understand the roots of parkour and where it came from, how they personally train and what they choose to put in their artistic creations is totally up to them, as it should be. In the end it’s the responsibility of each individual to be able to describe what they are doing, but we should provide resources for them to learn rather than punish on a one-by-one basis.

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