Topic: Texas News Story

[Deft]

I understand  there is a difference in parkour and in freestyle parkour. I also understand that the majority of people here and (people of parkour interest) train and perform the moves we do.  I understand tha the people pointing fingers at me does the same moves I do. They also post it on the same parkour websites, as do we but they feel they are exempt from "freestyle status" becasue they dismiss it as "training" even when it isn't clearly stated at training.  Isn't the word "training" just another term and it's getting caught up in "terms" that's causing this divide.

There was also a indy documentary filmed on the same day as the news stuff and we DEFINANTLY say the word "freestyle" in it. In the news story cut it does not have that magic word or "term."

I did not mean to mispell anyone's name on purpose.

[klaymen]

personally, i don't like the term "freestyle parkour", as it causes a lot of confusion. there were things before frpk that have the exact same rules. joe eigo does "multi level moves" cyrill rafaeilli does "street acro". yes, it is true, I do not do parkour every time i go out to train my body. but i also don't call it such. i say training because that's what it is. training my body. or just jumping around. sorry for the name calling, but i was getting very frustrated. so you mean to tell me, that if someone was chasing you down trying to kill you, you would front flip down a flight of stairs rather than jump down them? (no matter how much you practice, jumping will use less energy, and take less time)

[Brian Belida]

I know you didn't do it on purpose, just pointing it out :]

The big difference is that it's in the publics eye. It's like saying "cat" and pointing to a picture of a dog. If you did that on public television, don't you think people would have something to say about it? I do understand the parallel you are drawing, but again, but there is a difference between a public news piece that doesn't specify that flips can be used to train confidence and they are fun, and a video on a parkour website right next to the information that states what parkour is and isn't.

And I'd like to see this indy documentary, any idea when it will come out?

[Deft]

"It's like pointing at a cat and saying dog."  I think that is a poor example. I think it would be slightly more correct to look at a Persian cat and call it a Tabby cat.

Klaymen- the senario you created was dogs chasing me. If I am in a element to do my freestyle parkour, I will not fear dogs chasing me. To change that to "someone chasing me down to kill me" is a drastically different senario and my answer to that would be drastically different.

[klaymen]

"It's like pointing at a cat and saying dog."  I think that is a poor example. I think it would be slightly more correct to look at a Persian cat and call it a Tabby cat.

Klaymen- the senario you created was dogs chasing me. If I am in a element to do my freestyle parkour, I will not fear dogs chasing me. To change that to "someone chasing me down to kill me" is a drastically different senario and my answer to that would be drastically different.

what the hell are you talking about? why does it matter if it is a person or dogs chasing after you? you are just trying to get away.

[Deft]

Why do you keep quoting me in the purple box things? Was it necessary to quote my entire last post? Well, whatever floats your boat.

You are jumping around all these hypothetical senarios.
If 1 person was chasing me (and he did not have a knife, or gun, and is not on PCP) I will more than likely stop and fight back.
If I had to run away I would love to make my "attacker" feel even more foolish by me running and flipping away from his ass!
If a dog or even 2 or 3 are chasing me. I don't think it would be very hard to outsmart them let alone to out manuver them, especially in a hotspot I practise my freestyle parkour at.

Wat does any of your "attacker" senario have to do with my practise of freestyle parkour?


Akh Horus- I have the doc. on DVD but am unable to get it posted on line at this time. When I can, I will make sure you get to see it.
(on a side note I have a couple complaints about how the doc. turned out.  i.e. the way scenes and comments were cut along with the poor selection of music.)

[Matthew Lee Willis]

*sigh*
I appreciate what DEFT is trying to say here and he is totally correct.  Let me give some information to you guys that you might understand.  Also I talked to Andi from PAWA last night for about 6 hours.  He explained to me the problem.

Here is what these people are trying to state.  David Belle says that Parkour has to be the absolutely most efficient movement possible.  If we are going by David Belle.  So PAWA says there is no A and no B.  There is only a direction of movement.  They love this lion quote, they say if you being chased by a lion and you run and then run up a tree...you will never know when point B was...because you were waiting for the lion to either find you or not.  Is the lion gone or is still there.  When a car is speeding toward you and you jump over it to get out of the way.  Where was no point A and B...if it was a standing jump.  I know everyone can probably try and find a point A and B in these sayings but this is they way Andi explained it to me.

He says by adding the word FreeStyle to the mix PAWA feels disrespected as Parkour enthusiast.  So I think that a lot of this is a disrespect issue.  I know a lot of it was the news interview and how the media conveyed it.

So here is the problem.  There is still an issue of the flips in parkour.  So if you throw a flip into park...(by David Belles interpretation) it is not 100% efficient.  So in PARKOUR most moves will be running gaps, simple vaults and traveling vaults, there would be no such thing as a cat balance or wall spin.  I truly understand it.  Now I dont know what to do.  See the problem is that I dont want to turn my back on parkour by saying training video...that is about the stupidest thing that I have ever heard.  You are doing parkour, its just FreeStyle Parkour which of course is different then parkour.  Now by stating that it is FreeStyle you offend David Belle and his philosophy.  This is a reason why this will never be resolved.  People want to call it parkour...no one wants to call it free running or 3run crap.

So for now I am at a stand still.  I will call myself a practitioner of Parkour.  Although, when I post a video with anything less the 100% efficiency of movement, I will be gay like everyone else and just not give an explanation of what it is.  That way I can practice parkour and do the things that I want.  You should not be able to argue with my this last paragraph because this is exactly what pawa and seb and the rest of the people here on the boards do, and this is what I was directed to do by Andi of PAWA.

[klaymen]

thank you

[Ryan Ford]

Although, when I post a video with anything less the 100% efficiency of movement, I will be gay like everyone else and just not give an explanation of what it is.

...and for a brief while there I actually thought you were trying to make amends.

[Deft]

*sigh*

  I will call myself a practitioner of Parkour.  Although, when I post a video with anything less the 100% efficiency of movement, I will be gay like everyone else and just not give an explanation of what it is.  That way I can practice parkour and do the things that I want. 

I will do the same. But, I will not be gay though
Glad the war is over.... now let's go out and have some fun!!!!!!!!!!!

[Rafe]

Mathew I don't think you understand it yet, I think you know what parkour means now but you have to go out and practice the art as belle describes it to understand it. Let me give you a little background I have practiced gymnastics for five years, the first exposure I had to parkour was the video on avance toujours(lots of flips), I read the english version of David's le-parkour.com site which called parkour the art of movement.

So when I came on the online community and had people telling me that flips weren't part of parkour I was like WTF! Since I am loud mouth with a need to talk things out to understand them I quickly made my thoughts known and got flamed pretty hard. When davids defination came out I accepted out of respect for him but I didn't understand it. I didn't understand untill I went out and trained with the mindset he describes. It took me a little while for the mindset to actuall set it but when it did I realized that was parkour, when I have that mindset I don't flip, I don't wallspin, I don't do flair elements, the simply don't occur to me.

Which is not to say I don't train flair elements, I love to flip and do wall spins mostly I do them in the gym but at jams I will break them out or when I am just playing around outside with freinds.

Parkour is defined by the mindset of efficiency and speed of an emergency situtation. It doesn't matter if you never do anything but cat vaults, speed vaults and running gap jumps, if you don't have that mindset what your doing isn't really parkour. Its just the movements. When you have that mindset flair elements just don't happen. Which is not to say that people who train with that mindset never do flips while their out training. Ever get distracted while reading a book, get up stretch your limbs etc. Thats what it feels like if stop a parkour run and do a flip, my mindset has changed, I was doing parkour untill I was distracted by the desire to flip of that something. For the most part though that doesn't happen anymore, I only flip in the gym at jams or when I am outside specifical to practice tricking.

I would also disagree with you about free running I think free running is great, I don't like FRPK because it pretends to be something its not, free running, Yamakasi stree acro, street stunts their all great, they don't have to pretend to be something their not.

[Deft]

I personally don't like the term free running. I think it puts emphasis on running. (it makes me picture a jogging club)
Yes, we do run but that is only one piece of the many facets that compose our art, the biggest facet being parkour.
The term Freestyle Parkour best defines us becasue we are a parkour group with a touch of freestyle, so there is no pretending there. We ARE PARKOUR in Frestyle form.

I don't know if we will ever have any other news opportunities but in the future we will make sure to use the word "freestyle" and will mention that there is a difference between parkour and freestyle parkour and that we practise freestyle parkour and that what is shown is freestyle.

So PLEASE consider this issue to be resolved.

[klaymen]

thank you

[Skipper]

So..... this whole thread is over the NAME!?!?! You guys really just want to hold on to the name and continue to adapt it to your likings??
The way I see it is, This is the MEDIA. I ran into this problem the very first day I started training, a training video is easily forgotten and deleted, but when media is present you are representing the way you do parkour to the entire world (possibly). If you throw a whole bunch of incorrect and unneccessary ingredients into the mix (like flips and wallspins) then you give the media THAT MUCH MORE material to use against you. You dont have to portray parkour perfectly in training vids, just what you train that might improve your parkour skills (i.e. klaymen's flag builds strength in his arms, that might make cat grap topouts faster)... But when the media asks you to give them footage of PARKOUR, you cant revert back to what a training video looks like, you have to actually show them the true meaning of parkour, you know, what youve been training for all this time....

Not many people make parkour videos, that would only consist of quick runs, simple movements, everything whittled down to efficiency. Instead, people make "parkour training videos" that show steps they take to give them the array of abilities to actually "do" parkour when it is needed. Unfortunately, When the media is involved asking for what parkour is.... this is not your chance to show off your array of different skills, this is your chance to turn the tides and represent parkour in a positive way. and even though you think that these huge drops and whatnot are positive to the "extreme" audience, thats not really the audience that we want. Respect the art. I see that you now realize what you should do from now on, but if you just HATE the name FRPK..... why not just do parkour?... you know, if the name itself is that important to you.

All i can say is that on the homepage there is a little box up in the corner. that will tell you what parkour is. Id like to leave it to all of you to decide if doing a flip down 7 stairs is more (physically AND mentally) efficient than a simple jump...... but im not sure if we can cut the umbilical cord just yet. 

[Deft]

we resolved the issue 2 days ago and I thought it was done.
I have agreed that if I ever talk to the media I will make sure to state that I practise Freestyle parkour.

You have all said your points and I see where you are coming from. The debate is over!
On my side of seeing it- on our news day we only did the moves that are posted here everyday BUT we called it parkour.
I do realize that is technically a error, (which has been corrected) but I feel that everyone who posts a pic/vid on a PARKOUR site without putting a disclaimer stating that they are posting a non parkour vid/pic on a parkour site is just as bad as what I did.

I didn't realize that everything slides here when it's under the ruse of being considered "training", even whe not clearly stated as such.  I guess that it's better not to clearly state what your doing, (so people can just assume it's traing and that it's "not serious pk".)
Like I said a couple days ago and am stating again for the record: "We are freestye parkour and we will CLEARLY state that to new viewers."

Can anyone see my point that everyone's vids look like ours and that people do not clearly state that their vids/pics are not of true parkour. I feel most people train Freesyle Parkour (proof is in 85% of the pics/vids posted) but most people do not want to claim Freestyle Parkour as their art.

I am not trying to dig up this topic and beat a dead dog but since it was brought up about "this whole thread being about a name" and "us wanting to hold on to a name and continue to adapt it to our likings." That is not true.  But that is what I think when I see Freestyle Parkour posted on a parkour website without it being stated. If I was a outsider checking out the site I will naturally watch the vids to see this wonderful art. What will I find here? FREESTYLE PARKOUR VIDS/PICS.

[Skipper]

It is easy to make distinctions between parkour videos and parkour training videos. I dont think i have ever stated in any of my videos that i am actually doing parkour in the videos. people will see it for what it is, but if you make it very clear that what you are trying to portray is parkour, then people will get on your case if it is not parkour.

Please dont try to lay a guilt trip on everyone, I can hear it in your posts. its the whole "FINE, ill do it your way *pouty face*" deal.... its a sign of us winning an argument AGAINST you, instead of everyone winning an agreement WITH you. All i can say is from now on, have  faith that the pooled inputs of an entire community will hold more weight than that of two individuals... because the community as a whole is generally right.

Im sorry, I really am. This is unfortunate that people are actually getting mad (its the internet people, calm down). but its also unfortunate that people are very stubborn to accept certain aspects that they for some reason feel so strongly against.... the people working on APK are really enthusiastic about working WITH people to teach them about what we know.. NOT working against them to pound information into their heads while they refuse refuse refuse to sit still and listen.

I feel bad about doing this, but im locking this thread. Yes, it is a vid/pic thread, but there is vital information in here to learn from, and I hope you HAVE learned from some of it already. By locking this, hopefully we can forget about this and move on... just be careful from here on out with the media, ok?
thanks guys