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On kids and parkour

10/29/2017

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Picture
A young participant at the 2015 Wisconsin Parkour Jubilee

"People often ask me, 'When did you start parkour?" My favorite response is, 'When did you stop?'" 
-- Ryan Ford
​Apex Movement, Colorado

Today's post is about parkour and kids. Since our founding we have had a lot of communication with curious parents and youth leaders. There is something about parkour that gets people thinking that it fits, somehow, for kids; although in those early days (2007-2008 or thereabouts) people had a hard time putting their finger on it, especially since most of what was in the media back then was athletic 20-something guys throwing their bodies around in amazing stunts. So there was this tension between what looked like natural human play, and wanton recklessness, in peoples' minds.

A lot of our communication with parents took the form of, "My kid is already running, jumping, and climbing over everything, and it scares me; can you teach her how to do it safely?" We felt fortunate that there were parents willing to investigate this, rather than simply shutting down their children's natural  movement instinct. We struggled back then with whether or not to offer kids classes. On the one hand, there seemed to be a demand for it; but on the other hand, it didn't feel right to be applying a structure to what kids did naturally.

Our position back then was that structured classes in parkour were inappropriate for children younger than about 10-12, and that is our position today. This is not to say that parkour classes are necessarily bad or harmful for younger children -- there are plenty of high-quality kids' parkour programs out there -- but rather, we wanted to move away from the American tendency to try to shuttle kids into structured programs too early. There is a lot of research out there showing that early sports specialization prior to adolescence can lead to higher incidence of injury as well as a loss of interest in athletic pursuits altogether (more on this in a later post).

​Ryan Ford of Apex Movement in Colorado, and one of the most respected authorities on athletic training for parkour, opened his TED talk about parkour with, "People often ask me, 'When did you start parkour?" My favorite response is, 'When did you stop?'" This gets at the heart of the matter: kids do parkour on their own, naturally. Watch any child below the age of, say, 10 or so, out in the world. They are naturally curious, climbing on things, jumping off of things, hanging and swinging. If they are lucky, they have parents who encourage them in their endeavors. If they are very lucky, their parents continue to encourage these behaviors, and even model them themselves, in a lifelong way.


Culturally in the US, we have a fascination with achievement. There is certainly nothing wrong with this; however we must be mindful of the effects: more and more with each passing decade we are seeing a trend towards most structured activities, starting much younger, for children. Also we are seeing a greater emphasis on child safety: not necessarily a bad thing except to the extent that our safety measures actually take away from children’s necessary learning experiences. There seems to be a feeling among many adults, especially those with children or who care for children, that a structured class is the best way to allow children to engage in physical pursuits in the safest way possible. But this is rarely the case. 

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When does it get easier?

10/4/2017

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This was a question posed to me recently by one of the kids in the parkour club at the school where I teach. It got me thinking, because while I don't think I consider parkour to be "easy" (I never have), I am at a point where I am so inured to, and accepting of, its difficulty that I am no longer surprised by it. Hearing the question made me realize how much parkour had changed me, and how transformative it can be.

We tend to think of easy things as good things. If something is easy, there is no stress, no challenge, "simple comme Bonjour" as the French say. But we also know that it is through challenges that we grow. I'm not here to go on a rant about how humans have gotten "too soft," or that we no longer know how to address challenges. There is plenty of that out there already and frankly it's not up to me to tell you how easy or difficult elements of your life should be in order for you to be appropriately challenged. That is for you to decide. Rather, I'm working with this idea that what makes parkour so powerful and transformative for many is that it can reconnect us with how to identify and approach challenges. It gives us a medium through which to understand them and to no longer fear difficulty.

Hearing this young man's question immediately brought me back to a time when challenges would really stress me out. My whole life I have held myself to high (often unreasonable) expectations. I have also always been one to thrive on challenges and seek them out. But I did so with damaging consequences: if I was unable to meet a challenge, I would persist in achieving it, but all the while messages of inadequacy would run through my brain: Who do you think you are, trying this? It's too hard for you. What gives you the right to think this is something you can do? You should just give up now. Granted, often times proving that voice wrong was the fuel I needed to persist in rising to the challenge, but that doesn't mean it was constructive or healthy.

Through parkour, I discovered -- in a very raw, physical, experiential way -- that it never gets any easier. And while on the surface that sounds daunting and hopeless, it's actually not. Once I accepted that it wouldn't ever get easier, there no longer was a value judgment attached to it. For many of us growing up in a culture where achievement, gold stars, affirmation, acquisition, are highly valued, this idea is revolutionary. I'm not bad or a failure because this discipline is hard for me. I'm not a loser because this jump is challenging me. It just is. That's just the way it is. The only appropriate response is to just keep training and working at it. I know that once I break the jump, a new jump will arise in its place. The limits keep shifting, and that's OK. In fact it's something to celebrate! How wonderful that there are countless opportunities for me to get stronger, more engaged, more resilient and aware?

Parkour practice can shift our mindset from one of external achievement to internal strength. Learning to embrace challenges on the concrete translates easily to embracing challenges in all areas of life. When does it get easier? It doesn't. How joyful!
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    Alissa Bratz is the founder of Wisconsin Parkour and has been practicing parkour since 2007.

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