Movement within a mindset: The mental processes of a traceur
Throughout parkour culture there is a tendency 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 back flip 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.
APK is grateful to people like Rob for submitting articles like this, it is the contributions of the community that make APK what it is.
the titles and messages in the comments are extremely confusingly set up
6.
01-04-2006 17:59
Unfortunately there's nothing we can do about it - know anyone who's exceptionally good at PHP coding??
7.
01-05-2006 13:53
Since I started learning the basics of Parkour philosophy from Parkour.Net, they wrote this article a while ago: http://parkour.net/modules/
articles/item.php?itemid=16
8.
01-11-2006 13:37
I guess imagining that you are in an emergency situation would probably benefit you because you may be more alert and aware, becuase of the adrenaline and such. I do parkour usually for fun, and endorphins usually do the same thing as the emergency situation mindset. Although, how dare I disagree with David himself?
Display 8 of 8 comments
Only registered users can comment an article. Please login or register.
