Application

Many Parkour videos contain little creativity and originality. Most practitioners have short attention spans and quickly move on from area to area. Instead of being creative and truly adapting to the environment, these people are showing their limited “Parkour vision”. Too many people limit themselves to what they see in videos and from other people. Instead of fitting the world to your movement, mold your movement to the world.

Even if everything you do is not strictly Parkour, you will still be training yourself to be more creative and to see more opportunities for movement. In addition, all the different combinations and variations practiced will improve coordination, agility, step planning, the ability to link movements, and more.

Many parallels can be drawn between this idea of a Parkour creativity challenge and a short book entitled Tentatives d‘épuisement d’un lieu parisien (Tries of exhaustion of a Parisian place) by French author George Perec. In Perec’s book, he sits at the Saint-Sulpice Square in Paris and instead of describing prominent things like architecture, he writes about things that go unnoticed such as buses and people passing by. His idea was to observe every small thing the place had to say.

Instead of writing about the details of an area, this drill challenges a practitioner to discover every movement opportunity a place allows for. There is always more to find, see, adapt, create, vary, imagine, and combine. Most importantly, it is impossible to see every opportunity for movement in a particular area; an area can never be exhausted. Instead of leaving it behind and moving on, it will always remain in front of you with its secrets waiting to be discovered.

Obstacle and Equipment Checklist: For this drill, you need an area with several close together obstacles for linking and combining movements.

Preparation of Drill

1. Find an area with several close together obstacles for linking and combining movements.

1. Spend several hours in the area doing every possible movement you can.
2. Adapt to the environment and come up with creative, unique movements and combinations. Attempt to come up with several movements or combinations that you have never seen done before.

• For bonus points, make a short video (30-60 seconds long) containing what you came up with and share it online with the rest of the community.
• Be sure to practice all different movements in the area. Do not limit yourself to one type of movement, the goal is to come up with as many different movements as possible.

Display 17 of 17 comments