HEALTHY PARKOUR COMMUNITY GUIDELINES

First published 14:26 April 4th, 2018

🚀 PARKOUR’S POPULARITY IS SKYROCKETING 🚀

The number of new practitioners is growing exponentially. I believe the time is now to create a healthy, sustainable, and equitable community. There are hundreds of educators, researchers, coaches, and leaders who are actively engaged in local parkour communities spread across the United States. Parkour Research, STURDYmade – The parkour construction laboratory, and the Parkour Coaching Exchange are a few examples of shared research. The Art of Retreat acts as a platform for voices, research, business, and education. Jump Fest has built a healthy parkour festival full of camaraderie, discussion, and good-cause fundraising. I’ve seen behaviors and patterns emerge that work consistently. These leaders, groups. and organizations work to support our athletes, sport, and businesses in strengthening our community.

Planning and implementing guidelines are effective ways for our parkour communities to grow, thrive, and promote the positive attributes of our environments. From the outdoor play to the gym, healthy communities are defined as places that give all individuals the opportunities to live their fullest potential regardless of their gender, ethnicity, race, gender, income, age, abilities, or other socially-defined circumstances. How can we continue to shape where we play and train? Leaders have a major role in shaping these spaces!

Over the past couple of months, I’ve had conversations asking, “how can I improve my community?” We model upon MIT’s BALLE framework, a project built to create local economies. Creating a community builds relationships, connects places, and organizes businesses that work for us. It requires us to see the bigger picture, to think deeper, and to understand that we’re all in this together. Building healthy communities isn’t the work of one leader! Healthy communities require collaborations and partnerships of individuals, groups, and businesses to come together. As Yamakasi upholds, “we start together, we finish together.”

1️⃣ Act Local First

2️⃣ Prioritize Equity

3️⃣ Train Safe and Smart

4️⃣ Accelerate Collaboration

5️⃣ Share Expertise

6️⃣ Invest in Parkour

7️⃣ Cultivate Connections

Act Local First

Local communities build strength by fostering local networks and contributing to local causes. We can serve diverse, vibrant parkour communities by hosting beginner-friendly gatherings, reaching out to our public schools, and supporting local parkour gyms or events. These decisions help to demonstrate the importance of community well-being and sustainability.

Prioritize Equity

Equity must be at the core of our values because parkour can provide a sense of wellbeing, play, and discovery to everyone. 🤸 Our language and communication can be just as precise as our practices. Let’s talk more about people of different backgrounds so that we can better hold each other accountable and work towards equitable solutions. The Women’s Parkour Movement is a great example of how we can advocate in the practices of female athletes.

Train Safe and Smart

With the development of sports science and research, our ability to perform at high levels are more accessible. One thing often lacking is consistency, practical training, and effort. We often see the same athletes cycling through the same injuries. It’s time to optimize our practices in training safe and smart. 💪 Pick up a copy of Ryan Fords “Parkour Strength Training” or exchange training practices through ParkourEDU Community group.

Accelerate Collaboration

Community is not a solo sport – it requires several hands on deck to build and sustain successful organizations. Collaborative efforts invites new ideas and crosses bridges to identify shared goals. Through the efforts of Colin MacDonald, there are public parkour parks now popping up in North America. His collaboration with municipals helped to weave parkour’s values of play into fun and interesting outdoor spaces. Working together can help us see the bigger picture while increasing the impact and exposure of our respective sport.

Share Expertise

Exercise helps people to alleviate stress, maintain healthy bodies, and boost our energy. There is no doubt that parkour is great! Sharing your voice provides guidance to others, shows the strength of our community leadership, and acts as a catalyst for real world change. Help to empower others by speaking up now. One great example is Maxwell Henry examination of our sport’s history through an interesting lens in “The Parkour Roadmap.” 🗺

Invest in Parkour

We are at the frontier of building the foundational structures key to parkour’s growth and sustainability. Educators, researchers, and entrepreneurs struggle to launch or expand their practices and businesses. We help our community thrive by spending our dollars on the parkour industry. Greater commerce will help widen the playing field and create new opportunities for the parkour industry.

Cultivate Connections

We start together, we finish together. Julie Angel’s “Breaking The Jump” reminds us how each of the Yamakasi added their own unique touch to their collective practice – strength, wisdom, discipline, and spirituality. We must realize that we are all connected to parkour: for self-discovery and play in our environment, finding strength in ourselves, or freedom of expression. If we understand how powerful parkour is to us, imagine how transformational parkour could be for others.

As our community continues to grow, the time is now for more athletes, coaches, and leaders to step up in building thriving communities.

Join me in building more alliances, exchanging more ideas, and being LOUDER with our voices.

❤️

Alan Tran