Um, first a quick hi. For those of you who don't know, I'm not actually an American, I'm British. 

Looks like a pretty cool site you've got going here, hope everything progresses in America rather than regresses, if you get what I mean.

Anyway, Mark's recently been making some comments elsewhere about people being too quick to criticise and too slow to contribute. I wrote an article a few days ago for my local site, and being as chuffed to bits as I am with it I have decided to contribute rather than criticise. So here you go. Please please free to copy, paste & edit to modify it, as always the best work is achieved through collaboration. 

~
Movement within a mindset: The mental processes of a traceur

Throughout parkour culture there is a tendancy to define what you do through how you move, leading to scissions within the community.

But there is no need to focus on the movements, parkour is all in the mindset, the reason, the driving force behind the movements. It's all about the why, not the how. Parkour is:

Movement within the mindset of escaping or reaching.

Months ago, in the PAWA statement, we were given this guidance by David Belle himself. Yet this concept, elegant in its simplicity, was again misunderstood, and misinterpreted and formed into even more obscure definitions. But all that stuff about efficiency and A to B was hopelessly confusing.

You don't need to be in an escape or reach situation to be doing parkour. You simply need to imagine you are in an 'emergency' situation, and then move as if you were in one of those situations. The concept of movement within a mindset is so simple, it doesn't tell you how to move, it's just a guideline to help you do parkour.

The mindset tells us not to get caught up in the movements, but to focus on the movement and the reason driving the movement. When you do this you will see just how simple parkour is. Within parkour there is still freedom of movement, you are free to move how you would move in an escape or chase situation, because parkour is not defined by movement but rather by purpose or intent.  What one traceur would do to get away is completely different to what another would do. Hopefully it's pretty obvious neither would just stop, turn around and backflip though.

Instead of getting bogged down in which movements are parkour, or relying on someone else to tell you, just ask yourself what you would do if you were running for your life. Then you will understand that parkour is all about mindset, and how you move within it.

"Parkour itself is freestyle, because it is down to you to decide how you run away"

eek. I know your general message says otherwise. But leaving that sentence alone.. is .. ya.

M2 worded it well in our conversation in the what is parkour thread. I think it should just be replaced with that.

Nice to see you here Button, the article is coming along well!

I'll try to find that quote and put it up, I think it's the word "Freestyle" that has people put off now


Found it, Button it's pretty much the same wording before our conversation before you wrote this article, so it may not add much for you, but kick it around, and let me know when I can put the article up, if I may!

Let's not go making off-colour remarks, the check is in the post.   

Can you actually submit the article yourself? That way it is attributed to you.

On the homepage, login. From the user menu pick "Submit Article"
Paste one descriptive sentence in the first text box, this shows up under the title on the homepage.
Paste  the "body" of the text in the second textbox. This is the article itself.


Once you submit, admins get an email, and have to "publish" it to allow it to go live on the site.


New FAQ created with this info!
Thanks!!

It's on a similar CMS called Joomla wiith Simple Machines Forums and several modules/ hacks installed.

Really good article. I must admit tho, when I PK, I never think about escaping or being chased. Sure it's crossed my mind that PK would be useful if I was ever being chased by the cops, but I really dont plan getting myself into that position anyways. I do it more for the freestyle aspect, even if some people consider "freestyle" a dirty word. I can't do backflips, but if I could, I would do them as part of a series of moves. I undertsand no one would do a backflip while running from the cops, but I'm not escaping from the cops. I'm out there cuz I want to be. Thus, "free"style.

Whose running from the cops, you bad person ? Be a man. lol 

Nice to see the Britt's ( ) aren't upset about this site. Good article though, liked.

Personally, I always think of K2's competant, yet comparatively bumbling thugs in escape situations.

For a real challenge, run from dogs. That really teaches you how to deal with the urgency of escape and how to manage your adrenaline.