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.
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.
