Topic: Brevard County

[Blue Andy]

We'd like nothing more than to be able to train with everybody, but it's hard to hang with a group that encourages almost exclusively indoor "play."  I understand you're trying to go outside more often, but in the movement arts, "parkour" is pretty much synonymous with being outside.  It should be done, first and primarily, in an actual environment.  Gyms are a handy teaching tool, but there's no way to capture the feeling or the spirit of the movement without having cement under your feet and dirt under your nails.  No way to be creative without terrain to cross and a path to follow.  In a gymnastics facility you're, at best, limited to freerunning or the extreme basics of parkour.

Not to say that that's a bad thing, of course, but it's simply not the same.  Personally, and I think everyone at FLPK more or less agrees, the only problem I've seriously had with Zoic is that it preaches what it teaches as being Parkour, when that's a most only a part.  Like I said before, teaching kids to do individual vaults and jump from one point to another won't show them how to really move effectively, and the "safety" of padding can become a crutch that inhibits more than it enables in the long run.

None of this has addressed what i believe is the real problem at hand. The real problem is the lack of experience and understanding of your "teachers." From what i've seen, almost all of your "teachers" at zoic have extremely flawed fundamentals. Most of them seem to be kids that came into the gym, you saw that they had an athletic back ground and decided, "hey you should be a teacher because you have slightly above average athleticism." And thats not the way it works. The last time i came to your gym, I was cringing the entire time i watched. Teachers and students were jumping off boxes with a complete misunderstanding of how physics and body mechanics work, and how to apply it to their movement. They had such a lack of understanding of technique and the physics behind it that things like their rolls were, in reality, completely useless. The majority of your teachers were at a beginner to intermediate level at best and in my opinion were not fit to be teaching other beginners. Many of them struggled with basic techniques including vaults themselves, and could not thoroughly teach newcomers proper technique.

ok so we fully believe that parkour should be done outside. The ONLY reason that we dont have regular outside meetups is because, I havent had enough personal time or a regular enough schedule to be able to commit to another regular outside meetup. I run the inside class. and what i mean by that is that i have been at the gym on open gym time every single week for almost 2 years. I havent had the schedule to be able to host, on top of everything i do, another outside meetup. You know from when you worked with us gram that i constantly begged you teachers to host outside meetups.

The problem is not that Zoic Nation is "a group that encourages almost exclusively indoor "play." The problem is that the teachers/volunteers that have worked with us so far find it hard to maintain regular scheduled outside meetups for different personal reasons. Some have a problem with  rides, some have a chaotic schedule, some only have one night a week of free time, some feel that when they are hosting meetups all the time they spend to much time teaching and not enough time on their own training, etc etc.
It seems that there are 2 types of people in parkour.
One type is the guy that wants to do parkour all the time for him self. make him self better, faster, stronger, smarter, whatever. and this person doesnt shy away from helping others, he likes helping others, but helping others is not what his focus is. His focus is his personal development.
The second, very rare type, focuses on the community. He sees helping the scene as a way to create more opportunity in the scene for himself and others. The more opportunity's the more ways he can learn and the more places he has to train.

Seems like for every 1 person that we find that has the second mentality, we have to have spoken with 200 people with the first mentality.  And if they are of the second mentality then normally they are already involved in something like rowing or something random. Now I am not looking down on anyone for the way that they do what they love. I'm just saying that we havent had enough people to run the outside meetups, and thats the only reason we havent had them.

Now as far as teachers go, we dont look for some one with some physical skill and call them a teacher. We look for some one that has the second mentality to some level. After we find this person we test them on a list of moves that orlandos original scene came together and made (this includes gram and grant, and we got input from justice). And we test them on how to teach these moves, making sure they can do it the way that orlandos original scene all agreed each one should be taught (this includes gram and grant, and we got input from justice. we also got help from the guys at crossfit evolution and from various gymnastic couches. Everything was gone over and tested with people before everyone agreed that we were teaching it the best way).  Now this is the best possible thing we could have done at the time i think . But if you and others are not happy with the way it is being done then i think with all our resources, now woould be a great time to revise our system.

[Blue Andy]

As far as being in the gym goes. Thats fine if you're a beginner or trying to learn something new. But i have found that many of your students are scared to do things outside because of the lack of control they exercise in your gym. I've heard you all talk about doing a 15 foot "precision" in the gym onto a cheese mat from a vault box and having the people in the gym try it with you, and now they think they can do a 15 foot precision, when in actuality, all your doing is a 15 foot long jump on to a big squishy mat. This is not the same as doing an actual precision on concrete or railings. Your students are learning flawed basics right from the start from a combination of incompetent "teachers" and unrealistic learning conditions.

lol I dont know what you heard but anyone who thinks that jumping 15 ft to a big soft pad and jumping 15 ft to concrete is the same thing, needs to get his head examined. thats ridicules

[Blue Andy]

Essentially, our point of view is that we've seen Zoic misrepresenting parkour as a discipline.  I don't want to seem all haughty and uptight or anything (I train cause it's fun, after all), but this IS still something that we all feel very strongly about, and it's important to take into consideration how your organization is percieved, especially in regard to roof-jumping, trespassing, and general lack of consideration for the fact that we're borrowing public areas.  Stuff like that effects us all when we get "banned," like at Lake Island Park.  Not saying that was your fault, but I know WE certainly didn't cause it.

the reason that "par core" is banned at lake island park is because i paid to reserve the park for the jam you and i set up, and some one that didnt understand us at all decided that what ever "par core" was, it shouldnt be done there. zoic nation thinks since we are using other peoples property we should go thriough the proper channels to us it. not always try and hide under the radar. now what isnt as well known is that if the city banes a "sport" or something from a public area then they have to make it available some where else. so since the great "banning" has happened, zoic nation has been working with the city to get a special for parkour park created .

[Graham Hughes]

I’m glad to hear that you have people who are committed to the community.  For us, however, we want a little bit more qualification in a teacher than "wants to help."  That's great, and necessary, but for something like parkour, people who are in a leadership position should have a baseline knowledge of body mechanics (not just how this works but why this works), physical training (how to maximize your potential), and a thorough understanding of and passion for the discipline (origins/purpose/philosophy), in addition to the basic skill requirements you mentioned.  I don't want to judge any of your guys when I haven't trained with them in a while, but when we see zoic people doing things that are clearly lacking in technique and/or purpose, it makes me think something is fundamentally missing in the zoic formula.  Like that thing with the "15ft precision," where we saw kids posting videos of this "huge precision we did" that was really depressing cause they thought they'd actually accomplished something.

I don’t want to try to tell you how to do your thing, but I want to make clear the differences between us and why we do it the way we do. 

When we run a teaching session we keep relatively small groups, in a practical environment, where we can provide individual attention and help them with whatever they need.  All the while we’re talking to them about parkour.  Where it came from, how to train, and helping them to develop goals and a purpose for their progression.  If we don’t provide these things then we’re giving an incomplete message, and they’re only learning how to “jump on stuff” like idiots.  Of course, this approach only works because we do lots of sessions with multiple qualified teachers every week and thus don’t get too crowded on any one day, so if your teachers can’t reliably lead sessions all the time, it makes it hard to provide that kind of attention.  Trust me, I understand the difficulties of running such a big operation. (I remember, lol)

You're trying to keep up with lots of people all at once, and the only way to handle that is to boil down the movements into easily digestible chunks that can be taught in 10 seconds.  I mean, that was the whole idea behind the teaching standards we made up together back in the day, but my understanding of parkour has developed a lot since then.  While those things are good as a way of teaching the basic techniques to someone, they are not, in and of themselves, parkour.  As soon as you start teaching a list of tricks to someone as "parkour," you destroy parkour for that person, turning into something trite and useless.  This goes back to what I said before about misrepresentation.  Take your recent sampler video for example.  Lots of impressive tricks, flips, and bboying in there, with a few parkour movements thrown in.  That's not parkour, it's barely even freerunning.  The most accurate definition is Street Stunts.  (To be clear, this is becoming an increasingly common thing in the worldwide “parkour” community, so it’s not just you.)

Again, I’m not trying to bash you guys or come down on you or anything, after all you have some very talented athletes with you, and I wouldn‘t expect you or them to change their athletic endeavors because of anything I say.  I just want to make clear our position, what all this talk boils down to, is that Zoic is not (strictly speaking) Parkour, and when you promote it as such it sends an inaccurate message to the public.  I don’t know what to tell you other than that, except know where your priorities lie and what you want from your organization.  I’d be happy to meet up and train sometime when I’m in town, since I haven’t lived in Orlando for close to a year.  Just keep in touch through facebook and whathaveyou.

[Blue Andy]

I’m glad to hear that you have people who are committed to the community.  For us, however, we want a little bit more qualification in a teacher than "wants to help."  That's great, and necessary, but for something like parkour, people who are in a leadership position should have a baseline knowledge of body mechanics (not just how this works but why this works), physical training (how to maximize your potential), and a thorough understanding of and passion for the discipline (origins/purpose/philosophy), in addition to the basic skill requirements you mentioned.  I don't want to judge any of your guys when I haven't trained with them in a while, but when we see zoic people doing things that are clearly lacking in technique and/or purpose, it makes me think something is fundamentally missing in the zoic formula.  Like that thing with the "15ft precision," where we saw kids posting videos of this "huge precision we did" that was really depressing cause they thought they'd actually accomplished something.

I don’t want to try to tell you how to do your thing, but I want to make clear the differences between us and why we do it the way we do. 

When we run a teaching session we keep relatively small groups, in a practical environment, where we can provide individual attention and help them with whatever they need.  All the while we’re talking to them about parkour.  Where it came from, how to train, and helping them to develop goals and a purpose for their progression.  If we don’t provide these things then we’re giving an incomplete message, and they’re only learning how to “jump on stuff” like idiots.  Of course, this approach only works because we do lots of sessions with multiple qualified teachers every week and thus don’t get too crowded on any one day, so if your teachers can’t reliably lead sessions all the time, it makes it hard to provide that kind of attention.  Trust me, I understand the difficulties of running such a big operation. (I remember, lol)

You're trying to keep up with lots of people all at once, and the only way to handle that is to boil down the movements into easily digestible chunks that can be taught in 10 seconds.  I mean, that was the whole idea behind the teaching standards we made up together back in the day, but my understanding of parkour has developed a lot since then.  While those things are good as a way of teaching the basic techniques to someone, they are not, in and of themselves, parkour.  As soon as you start teaching a list of tricks to someone as "parkour," you destroy parkour for that person, turning into something trite and useless.  This goes back to what I said before about misrepresentation.  Take your recent sampler video for example.  Lots of impressive tricks, flips, and bboying in there, with a few parkour movements thrown in.  That's not parkour, it's barely even freerunning.  The most accurate definition is Street Stunts.  (To be clear, this is becoming an increasingly common thing in the worldwide “parkour” community, so it’s not just you.)

Again, I’m not trying to bash you guys or come down on you or anything, after all you have some very talented athletes with you, and I wouldn‘t expect you or them to change their athletic endeavors because of anything I say.  I just want to make clear our position, what all this talk boils down to, is that Zoic is not (strictly speaking) Parkour, and when you promote it as such it sends an inaccurate message to the public.  I don’t know what to tell you other than that, except know where your priorities lie and what you want from your organization.  I’d be happy to meet up and train sometime when I’m in town, since I haven’t lived in Orlando for close to a year.  Just keep in touch through facebook and whathaveyou.

nice graham. this is criticism i can use. still a bit harsh but awesome. boiling things down is super important for the way saturday night open gym is. and im glad you acknowledge the importance of doing it that way. but at the same time if we leave it at that and do nothing more then your right, we would be doing parkour a disservice. because parkour is not a list of moves. and parkour needs to be done outside.
you are not the only one that has learned about what parkour is over the years. And i believe i will keep learning in the years to come.
i believe in our teachers but i also think that we need to further their education. they are limited to teach a list of moves if they are kept in the gym like they are. but i'm fixing that. i would love to meet up with you and train and when we do we could go over a better more full teachers agenda and if there is places to train near you i can make a drive.

[Graham Hughes]

Mehh, there're a few things in Melbourne but it's pretty limited.  I'm usually in Otown about every other week though. 

And I'm not trying to be harsh, just as honest as possible.  This is my perception, based on what I've seen and heard from ZN people lately.

[Caleb M. Iuliano]

Yeh, id say that was a pretty accurate description of where we stand

[Blue Andy]

cool so then all of this seems workoutable (thats a word) well let me know when your in town graham -- in case you lost it. im going to try and go to the overflux gainsville thing on sunday so maybe i will see you there otherwise hit me up. and same to you cheerleader, but you and i talked it out already