Parkour as acrobatics: an existential phenomenological study of movement in parkour

Abstract

Dette er siste tekst-versjon av artikkelen, og den kan inneholde små forskjeller fra forlagets pdf-versjon. Forlagets pdf-versjon finner du på tandfonline.com: http://dx.doi.org/10. 1080/2159676X.2016.1196387 This is the final text version of the article, and it may contain minor differences from the journal's pdf version. The original publication is available at tandfonline. AbstractThe aim of this paper is to pursue a novel understanding of parkour. Through an existential phenomenological analysis based on the phenomenology of embodiment and spatiality found in Merleau-Ponty and drawing on Sloterdijk's philosophical account of acrobatics, we will examine the bodily experience of practitioners in parkour and analyse their process of practising and performing tricks as an acrobatic movement phenomenon. The practitioners use three central terms to describe this process: challenge, break and clean. We use these terms to frame the analysis of how the practitioners are bodily related to what is not yet possible (challenge), how they repeat towards making new tricks possible (break) and how they perfect their bodily experience of moving (clean). Parkour as acrobatics describes the circular and vertical process of revising and refining one's bodily relation to the world, through which practitioners are continuously attracted to new challenging moves and carve out new possible movements for themselves and others.

Parkour as a Donor Sport for Athletic Development in Youth Team Sports: Insights Through an Ecological Dynamics Lens

“…Parkour is an acrobatic sport where practitioners explore their action capabilities (typically running, climbing, jumping, bi-pedal or uni-pedal landing, hanging, vaulting, balancing, stepping, hurdling, quadrupedal movement and rolling) relative to their perceptual and motor abilities (coordination, timing, balance, agility, spatial awareness an muscular strength) to negotiate environmental features and properties (e.g. gaps, obstacles, surfaces and inclines) in the most innovative and efficient manner [ 11 ]. Performing these activities requires athletes to judge distances, gap sizes and surface properties and use cognitive skills such as perception, attention, problem-solving and creativity in negotiating environmental features.…”

“…According to the ASM, to avoid the pitfalls of early specialisation, practice in specific youth sport programmes should be (re) designed to include experience of various physical activities, termed donor sports, which cultivate athletic skill development through exploratory practice and guided discovery. Here, we propose that parkour is an excellent candidate donor sport for developing talent in team games because athletes are challenged to negotiate obstacles of various textures, surfaces, inclination, area, sizes and angles to scale movement behaviours during interactions with their environment [ 10 , 11 ]. These interactions are predicated on cognition, perception and action as athletes learn how to perform the same and different movements with respect to obstacle and surface properties.…”

Participation in Organized Sports and Self-Organized Physical Activity: Associations with Developmental Factors

“…The positive outcomes that are associated with self-organized activity are thus not available to only a few privilege ones but can be experienced by those who do not feel at home in organized and competitive settings, such as organized youth sports. Earlier studies also suggest that the spontaneous free play that characterises self-organized PA, in particular lifestyle sports, may provide young people with opportunities to learn social skills, such as independence, self-regulation skills, cooperation and problem-solving skills [34,45,46]. According to Säfvenbom and colleagues [34], such “contexts may produce thriving young people, not in spite of, but because of involvement in contexts with no strict rules, no formal leaders and no a priori competence or performance goals” (p. 16).…”

On practising in physical education: outline for a pedagogical model

“…Rather, the efforts of overcoming challenges and striving for refinements comprise an intrinsic good of practising. This can describe cases where the intense process of practising new tricks in parkour, for instance, become the take-off for practising new and more challenging tricks (see Aggerholm and Larsen 2017). Such efforts are, like agency, far from always observable from a third person perspective; they describe the attitude a person engages in an activity with, as he or she, for example, spends time on practising a skateboard trick or pays special attention to difficult aspects of a swimming stroke.…”