Anyways, even as long as I've practiced I wouldn't make a tutorial, and I'll tell you why. I LOVE to help others, I do not like feeling responsible for other's stupidity. If somebody has to mimic my hand-spring/cork-screw vault to learn it, then they're not learning anything, they're doing what parrots do... mimic. Which is why when I type something, you can't see how I did the reverse vault, only take the vivid description, and apply it, which is exactly what learning is.
I learned the good old-fashioned way, word-of-mouth. I was so desperate to learn new techniques and movements I got online, hit up chatrooms, and networked with other entusiasts. I listened to what they had to say, I visualised the stuff they said, I imagined doing it, I memorised it even. Seven years later I'm doing all of these movements, and the ones I don't even know the names of I give names to so I have a method to referrence them. If all people care about is making/taking short-cuts they're not skilled, they're cheaters. You make a short-cut you cheat somebody out of experiences, if you take a short-cut you cheat yourself out of experience. Rant much? f#ck yes, I'll rant the shit out of you for cheating, you don't have to be smart to cheat, just a complete loser.
Let's put it this way, you're not learning things when you mimic, you learn things when you figure them out yourself, that's why senior board members say, "go out and figure it yourself," "go train," "shut-up," "stop asking so many damn questions and try it."
I completely disagree.
If you prefer auditory learning, great for you (and I'm including written descriptions as well when I say that). But visual learning --imitating what we see-- is not cheating. Mimicry is one of the few instincts humans are born with; the
real "good old fashion way" of learning. Babies/kids learn so much so fast because they mimic what they see, not because we vividly describe everything to them. I mean, go ahead and try to teach a kid how to tie their shoes by just describing it... It's just not how most of us are programmed to learn. By your definition, a world-record holding runner (or I guess everyone, really) isn't skilled, he's a cheater because he learned how to walk and run by imitating his parents, and his parents cheated him by showing him instead of just describing it. You have to agree that's ludicrous... He's not a cheater, he mimicked to learn and then made running his own by working at it.
I agree with Nick. Tutorials aren't meant to be the beginning and end. It's not a cheat sheet for a test so we can avoid learning (It's actually kind of impossible for Parkour to work like that. Seeing a move broken down into parts doesn't magically imbue us with ability to do it. We still have to figure out how to use our bodies). Tutorials are another opportunity and tool to learn from, and we're SUPPOSED to then internalize and make the movements our own. There is little to no difference between taking a vivid description and applying and taking a vivid image and applying it. Except that the majority of people learn best through example.
And incidentally, some of the senior board members that tell people to go train have made tutorials themselves. Adam McC of Urban Current, for example. And again, like Nick said, the ones being told to "Stop asking so many damn questions and try it" are not the ones who watch the tutorial a couple times then go apply it themselves as the tutorials were intending for them to do. They're the ones who keep asking question after question and never trying anything. In fact, they're the ones who are trying to get more and more vivid and detailed descriptions. Their unwillingness to just go try it is completely unrelated to the fact that they watched a tutorial.
