True. Look... with relevance to pure unadulterated "travel" parkour, a 180 wallflip has little to no purpose. That is to say, if it has an efficient purpose somewhere, that is a one in a million situation. I, however, do not think I'm alone when I say that my practice of parkour is not just for those situations. The pure, unadulterated parkour is, to me, an adaptable practice which holds it's purpose in combination with other physical arts in any real life situation.
Take, for example, the same situation Faulkner provided, then add an aggressor, perhaps multiple aggressors, all located at the bottom of the drop (the drop I'm picturing here is no more than a few feet. Now, if this drop is inaccessible further back in the direction from which one is running, for whatever reason, say a barbed wire fence along the drop's edge, or just as probable, a good old fashion wall, too high to pass, if in this situation it is necessary to pass through the drop area, but this mob of aggressors is simultaneously pursuing or awaiting you at the base of the drop area, then a 180 wallflip (the higher takeoff area to lower landing area style ones that you see all over the "brothers journey" video) would be as far as I see, a very effective means of escaping, passing said obstacles, and foiling your pursuers
Now that scenario took allot of thought and likewise would be nothing short of a rare situation to find oneself in at any time. So as has been suggested before, a purposefull situation such as this is rare enough to dub the technique inefficient, as you might be able to tell, I'm formulating and altering my opinion as I write
Let me try a simpler situation.
One on one, man vs. man, you vs. the aggressor in a street fight or an assault situation or something. Your faced with a wall and a pursuer closing in at your heels, in front of you there is just a nice big wall. Now you can take the direct path of ignoring the wall, stopping in your tracks and facing the opponent in flatland combat, or, bracing yourself against the wall take some other form of direct assault; or you take the alternate path, the one of passive self defence or evasion as is true to the philosophies of parkour... you run up the wall, 180 flip over the fella, and proceed running in the opposite direction. This, or any situation like it, is, as far as I can see, much more likely to come about if ever your faced with a crisis situation. It's just a guy chasing you, and a wall in front of you.
Think up any other movement here which is less "showy" and aesthetically pleasing, but when you facing an aggressor, a 180 wallflip will quickly convince any run-of-the-mill thug that you're quite the fitting adversary, and may persway him to abandon his attempts at subduing you. To quote from the many lessons of "Batman Begins":
"Theatricality and deception are powerful agents."
"You have to become more than a man in the mind of your opponent."
You see, the obstacles your faced with in parkour, don't always have to be static or inanimate, a man and his impressionability, are sometimes just as much of an obstacle as a rail or a fence.
Now what does this mean in correlation to your training? I don't know. You can't plan for these kinds of things. You can only ground yourself in a whole range of movements with which to refer to in a state of instinctive and momentary reaction based on the situation at hand. But I think what I'm trying to say is that a 180 wallflip, of all things, still holds a purpose somewhere in life
I don't know if here I've prooven it worthy of loosely holding the title of " legitimate parkour." All I have done is spill my thoughts out for analysis. So please let's not turn this into a "to flip or not to flip" debate, we've had more than enough of those. All I'm trying to prove is that, parkour or not, the technique can have a real purpose.
That and when I did it, there were a bunch of very attractive girls asking to see me do a "flippy-wall"
Yeah, a "flippy-wall"
So if, nothing else, it's not bad for impressing girls
