and my point is that if WE found it without competition, then so can everyone else. It can get plenty of exposure and reach just as many people as it could if it weren't a competition.

I highly disagree. My point is that with jams and training sessions brand spanking new people come out to learn and meet these people they talked to online in an easy going, at-their-own-pace enviorment. I'm talking about these new guys who go to their first couple jams and practice really really basic stuff with the help of other people in their situation and more experinced. I have known a good handful of traceurs that started off at thier first jam, rolling the entire time. Just learning their roll or other fundamentals. How many completly new people do you think would feel comfortable doing that during a competition?

To defend ahead of time- before anyone says "we can still have jams" please see my earlier posts in which I describe the possible crumbling of the communities once competiton comes. The crumbling of the communities would also obviously contribute to a drop in the quality of overall attitude and jams/training sessions.

Like A child- I would like to respond to your entire post, and I will, but for now, I am just going to respond to the last part before I forget.


Maybe it is a result of psychology, but so? Does that still not make it true? Wether or not it is "an intrisic element of competition" is completly irrelevent. The point is that these people would be participating at a jam, but not at a competition. Their psychological process has nothing to do with this point.

I think it should also be stated that not everyone has to be a hardcore practitioner.

I think it is also worth explicitly stating what has been implied throughout this thread:

The presence of competitions will not make jams go away. It is not an either/or proposition. If anything, competition will be an add-on to what already exists. It will not replace any aspect of parkour; rather it will add another layer/dimension to what is already in place.

In every discipline, there are people who engage in the discipline professionally, and at amateur and recreational levels. The amateurs may be inspired by the professionals, but may not necessarily feel the urge to go pro themselves as a result. My open division ballet classes are filled with people who have no desire to become professional dancers, but they have studied it their whole lives and want to continue to have it be a part of their life. They love to watch the professionals perform, because professional dancers are beautiful to watch; and then they come to class and work on their own thing because it's meaningful to them.

Those who do have the desire to go pro as a result of watching a professional should have every opportunity to do so, and to have access to good training as a result. We can't control the people who will provide bad training because of greed (and once PK reaches critical mass this will happen with or without competitions); however we do have control over what we ourselves do to counter that force: by being positive examples of parkour training, by providing education and good training, and knowledgeable expertise, to steer newly-inspired professional aspirants (whether they were inspired by watching a youtube clip of Belle, or by catching a competition on ESPN) towards good training and a sense of respect for the discipline.

I find it ironic that we're discussing whether parkour competitions could be bad when combined with people whose psychology stands to benefit the most from parkour. Either the competition aspect will leverage their psychological limitations, or the parkour aspect will enable them to transcend these same limitations.


I was answering your question: you asked how many completely new people I thought would feel comfortable "just practicing the basics" when it was a competition - not a jam. So, the point, really, is exactly the opposite of what you just described. That their psychological process is not an intrinsic element of competition, then, is extremely relevant, because it means the competitions do not cause or prevent such approaches (or their underlying psychology) simply as a direct result of being competitions.


Fears of what may happen have a very important place in anticipating future events. Our parents teach us to look both ways before crossing the street, because they don't want us to have to learn from experience what may happen if we don't. Here's a real-world example: you were saying that what he was doing didn't sound like parkour? After you'd asked around, you reported that he hadn't been part of any parkour communities you knew of? Remember how we distinguish between parkour and freerunning? As the cash flow from competitions is turned around and put into making parkour safer for practitioners, but some of the benefits are restricted to those who are part of the approved "groups" (being, of course, those who follow reasonable safety precautions), the bar will be raised. New standards will be established for "minimum safety", and what sort of ridiculous antics can still be called "parkour" (and what's just "insane"). That this will happen isn't in doubt to me, it's a natural consequence of making everyone more safe - everyone becomes less tolerant of what used to be adequate but eventually becomes far less than average efforts made to practice it safely. The important question, to my mind, is what other restrictions these leagues will impose upon their members, and this includes restrictions of privacy - if you have to give up some of your personal information, you're effectively being forced to give up your rights to that sort of privacy. Will those rules compromise parkour? Will practitioners be asked to choose between their civil rights and the freedom to practice parkour without facing discrimination from legal or medical (insurance rates) corners?


It's a basic principle of security (oft forgotten by heartless managers whose only concern is for the bottom-line profit), living things are at the root of all we protect. Living beings evaluate (and establish) everything's value, from their selves to someone else to the property they own. Computer systems that run banks should be hardened against remote intrusion, but we shouldn't dedicate so many resources to this that we have nothing left for when someone walks into the building and starts shooting employees. (Never mind that then the intruder has physical access anyway, the systems can be set up to self-destruct and prevent further loss.)


They also seem to enjoy nicer buildings and narrower streets


I agree that competition could backfire, but then, so could other methods. Some of it, as I noted above, is not part of the competition - it's part of the person. That sort of reaction could take place within any method (jams included!), because the psychology doesn't specifically (and only) trigger on competitions.


If we can, yes. But expecting them to go in on faith that parkour will justify their decision seems a bit shaky. If the ideas behind parkour are as strong as we hold them to be, it can afford to go out with a bit of a handicap. Do we believe in parkour's strength enough to trust that exposure to it will sway those who were not already halfway convinced of its merits?

To M2:
Again, you're putting words into my mouth. I didn't say "nobody would have Pk jams anymore" I said that the quality of community events-- the jams and sessions-- would be reduced and I belive they could be reduced dramatically.  

My fears of what may happen are based on my belief that the good that can come out of competition, can be achieved otherwise (without competiton) and that the bad that may come as a direct result of competition can be completly avoided without competition.

As for a real world example, I don't know how parrelell I can make it to Parkour because I don't know of any, or at least don't know enough about any, activites like ours that were quite like ours. (By "like ours" I mean, very largely community and member based and maintained) So I'm not sure if I'll be able to illustarte what I'm suggesting may happen, with another activity.

To Like A Child-
What kind of consequnces would result in the backfiring of the whole Jam scenario? Do you think those consequences would be as bad as they would be if it were an international competiton backfiring?

I meant scenario as being one of 2 ways to go (not that there aren't more than two, I'm just focusing on these two) either parkour exposure is dominated by big jams or events ( (we'll call this scenario 1)or big competitions (scenario 2).