Freelance Journalist Parkour Interview

I just finished doing a written interview for a freelance journalist, who was interested in NatSoc. Below are the questions and my responses.


What is Parkour to you, and how and why did you get involved?

For me, parkour is a physical activity and a discipline. A physical activity in that you are train you body but a discipline in that you are training your mental capabilities, especially through the philosophy within parkour. Parkour is not a sport, as it does not involve any form of competition. You see, the philosophy of parkour comes from the practicality of physical movement. Being able to use your own physical capabilities to help yourself and others. Competition goes against this philosophy of helping others. Parkour is also about efficiency in movement. People get parkour and freerunning mixed up. Freerunning is about the aesthetics of movement, the "beauty" in the movement, where as parkour is about the efficiency of the movement. Through mastering the efficiency in the movement, the movement then becomes "beautiful."

I have been in the Canberra parkour scene for four years now. I first saw parkour on the TV series Cirque Du Soleil Solstrom, that featured the Yamakasi. The Yamakasi members were late for their plan, so they used parkour to get through the airport in time to catch their plane. Another friend had also seen this, and we both thought that it was awesome and that we should do it. A few days later, another friend was talking to us about an assignment that he was doing for english. Coincidentally, his topic happened to be parkour. This then helped us to realise that doing parkour could actually be a possibility for us. We now had a name for what we had seen the Yamakasi doing. So from there we started to research parkour on the internet, watching videos and chatting on forums. We started to imitate what we saw in the videos, such as jumps and vaults. We soon met a couple of guys at ANU on a parkour internet forum, who had also just started training parkour. It was that moment that gave birth to Canberra Parkour.

For the first few years of my training, I looked at parkour as an extremem sport, something that I did because it looked cool. This was bad, as I had the completelty wrong mindset. It wasn't until a year ago, after having a break from parkour for over half a year, that I realised how important parkour was to me. I came back into the scene stronger than ever, training with the correct mindset, more in tune with the philosophy of parkour. In the past year, I have progressed physically and mentally more than I did in my first three years of training parkour. I have travelled to Melbourne and Sydney to train with the traceurs (parkour practitioner) there. I now keep an internet blog of my parkour training, which you can find at http://cimpstyle.blogspot.com/ , that I update after every training session. I'm also most likely about to become the president for the Australian Parkour Association (APA) in Canberra, a role that will involve being in charge of the APA parkour classes in Canberra, as well as acting as a major point of contact for all parkour related matters in Canberra.
- What is it about Parkour that has created, from what I have see online, such a great community?

Different communities each have their own "culture" in parkour. As a traceur progresses, they start to get interested in how other traceurs train, as well as training in new spots. The best way to do this is to travel. It is through this travelling that traceurs develop excellent friendships with traceurs from other cities and countries.

In regards to communities though, it's jsut like any other sport of recreational activity. If people share the same interest, and regular meet to participate in that activity, they will unconsciously build a strong community.
- What is involved in NatSoc, and how many people plan to attend?

NatJam (National Jam) first began in 2006, with Sydney as the hosts. Then Melbourne was the host last year, with National Conserve. This year is NatSoc (National Social), with Canberra as the hosts. NatSoc is a national meetup for traceurs from around Australia. The goal is for traceurs arounds Australia to coem to one point and traing and socialise together. Get to know people from other communities. There are no competitions involved with NatSoc, just the love of parkour. NatSoc has also brought the attention from international traceurs, who may also be coming across for the event. The last two years have attracted 70-100 traceurs. This year plans to be bigger, with numbers hopefully breaking 100.
- What has the public response in Canberra been to Parkour?

Parkour in Canberra is still an "underground" type of activity. It is only just starting it build in notice. So far the response in Canberra has positive. This may be because of the traceurs in Canberra though. As we are all polite people, not going out to cause any trouble, just to train and do a bit of exercise. We don't trespass to train, but only make use of public accessible areas. If asked to move on by security, we politely oblige and move on with a smile. With have been involved in various forms of media in Canberra, such as TV and newspaper interviews. We're lucky that the media we have been involved with have put a positive spin on parkour, as that is what we all want for parkour in Australia. This is what the APA is striving to acheive, developing a positive image of parkour in Australia.
- Is there anything in Canberra that makes it stand out as a great place to practice Parkour?
Canberra is an excellent place to practice parkour because of how Canebrra was planned. We have four excellent major training areas, Belconnen, Civic, Woden and Tuggeranong. Canberra is good because the training spots within the training areas, are all closely located to each other, with only a couple of mintues walk between each. This is different to places such as sydney and Melbourne, that require a lengthy walk to get from training spot to training spot. We also have a pretty reasonable public transport system to move between the major training areas in Canberra.

- Are there any other local events that you and the community take part in, or are involved with?

For the last two years, we have been involved in the Youth Week performances, where we have provided parkour demonstrations in civic. We have also participated in fundraising events, such as the Mother's Day Fun Run that was raising money for breast cancer research. We also plan on going oiut to our various training areas to clean up the rubbish there. We want our training areas to look good, we don't want rubbish, especially glass, to be around, as it can make training dangerous.

- Has there been any one particular moment that made you really love Parkour?

Coming back from my extended break last year, after doing that first vault again, would have to be the one moment that I realised how much I loved parkour. it wasn't that hard a vault, just a simple one over a table in civic, but the feeling that it gave me made me realise. It's about having that ability to move differently than normal people, move more efficiently, that makes you love parkour.