Outdoor Beginners Session - Leicester Parkour Association

[Joe]

Newly released video of the first outdoor beginners session held and taught by LPA in October 2009. Check it out



http://leicesterparkour.com

[Joe]

Thought I'd throw this up, footage of 2 of the workshops from our recent monthly event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc4K-yb6mqY

[Teige]

The fellow narrating the second video sounds like he should be a local radio personality if he isn't already.

What/who/how/why is LPA? Do you informally set up these sessions for free, or are you getting some help from a local authority or something? Either way I hope it's going well, some of the beginners are really quite good, and might not get any joint problems if they hang around with sensible people like yourself Joe.

[Joe]

The LPA is basically made up by the most experienced practitioners in Leicester. With the 'expansion' of Parkour and so many new beginners, people interested in workshops, and a few -Censored-, we decided it was necessary for an organisation to be setup to provide a kind of official base for Parkour in Leicester.

Somewhere where people can come and learn Parkour in a safe and correct way.. whether it be individuals of schools/organisations interested in teaching setting up teaching projects. That's our first aim, to teach Parkour correctly. Our second aim is to represent Parkour in a correct manor - put the right information out on what Parkour entails, getting started, physical training, nutrition etc and the third aim is to provide a community base for practitioners in Leicester. Somewhere for people to learn and train in a 'proper' environment.

So we hold monthly sessions that are free for anybody to attend.. you can either go to beginner workshops or train freely - which is under LPA instructor supervision. We have our own website and forum and we'll be holding our own classes soon, in the mean time we're working with a couple of schools and organisations who have approached us.

We don't have any funding from the council. All the money in our bank is from our own input and money made from teaching.

[Teige]

In a correct manor, the toity residents' correct grammar, and knowledge of orthography, would chide you for mispelling manner.

sorry


It's interesting how groups of young people are maturing, and their involvement in Parkour maturing too. Some set up stuff like this: http://www.parkourfoundations.com/ They're very young, and rather inexperienced, but their mastery of media would fool anyone.
Others are doing as you do. I only worry that with the emergence of groups that are official in style, there is an even greater need for good evidence and clearly thought-out practise. There's an ethical obligation to justify the style with appropriate content.
I'd reccommend talking to Dave Sedgely; he's my best hope for good quality-control of Parkour coaching. (I'm not saying I doubt the quality of your work, but Dave is a good person to be in contact with if you're doing coaching and stuff in an organised way.)
All the best.

[poetry]

Looks good to me joe, Teige who is this DS guy thats the 2nd time I've read you write something positiveand to use in the context of someone ability too, I'm getting a bit suspicious. What this guys experience? academic (degree) or practical (athlete to a national standard) I'm interested to know more.

[Teige]

Lol, I explained who he was in the ADAPT discussion. He's no enigma, just a guy who does Parkour, coaches it, and whom I think is very sensible and likeable. Most traceurs from my generation will know of him at least. I believe he graduated with a physics degree, if you think that matters. That is presumably partly where his critical thinking was developed.

What's your suspicion? I mention him in both cases because I believe he has some valuable contributions to make in the developing regulation of Parkour coaches.

Like I said, visit http://www.britishparkour.org or http://www.northernparkour.com if you want to know who he is.

[poetry]

I was only joking teige just a little shocked you had something positive to say and it included a person and parkour in the same sentence.

[Teige]

How embarrassing that I didn't pick up on your joke.

Some other people I admire: http://www.dcscience.net
My biology tutor.

[Joe]

Two of our coaches were invited to the first ADAPT qualification course and are now both qualified. I plan to do so as soon as I have enough money.

I don't know much about Dave, his group or his qualification. We have a wealth of knowledge available to us - both in terms of our own knowledge and experience, but as well with our access to PKGENS. I personally spent a lot of time training and learning under Blane whilst he lived here along with a few of the other LPA members.

I remember when Dave was contacting Blane about BPCA - so if you want to talk about quality control, Blane is clearly at the level of quality for which Dave wants - and considering Blane would have advanced under Parkour Generations in terms of teaching ability and quality, I think we'll be ok.

It would seem you're quite 'anti-Parkour Generations'. I don't know why? Especially as I believe Dave has been working with BPCA for a long time now and I'm yet to see any substantial teaching advances.

[Joe]

[quote="]Teige"I believe he graduated with a physics degree, if you think that matters.[/quote]

Also, I remember you questioned Forrest's educational background at some point on this forum - one that I believe to be far more sport related than Dave's, yet you seem to 'side' with Dave more than Forrest?

[DaveS]

I heard this Dave guy is 12 feet tall and breathes fire, and the BPCA members can all precision the English Channel.

If you want to know something you can always ask.

It's a fair point you make, Joe, about not being able to see what the BPCA has done. We made a conscious choice not to go down the media route that other organisations have followed because we wanted to completely avoid the temptation to sell out, but the drawback is that people then don't know what we're doing. The other drawback is that doing things properly takes time when you don't have people throwing money at you and you're vulnerable to the demands of every day life.

When the BPCA began we invited everyone who had done some coaching to be involved in the association and help improve the standards of coaching in this country. Even those who weren't necessarily well known or popular, since as it turns out, being popular is no indicator of merit. There was no way to know who knew their stuff and who didn't, so we cast the net wide to try and include everyone who honestly wanted to help.
Some people refused to help, some people joined and did nothing, some people helped for a bit and left, and some people have stuck with it. That's the way life goes, some people are simply unable (or unwilling) to spare some time to help others, and some people like the idea of being connected to success more than they like the idea of actually doing any work.
The BPCA was created to improve the levels of coaching in this country. Since we created our coaching qualification other coaching groups have arrived (such as PKGen) with a higher standard than existed before, but since coaching was dire beforehand that's not saying much. Parkour coaching is still very new and there is still a lot of room for improvement, so we're continuing our work to put education first in the parkour community.
The fact that other groups are doing similar things is both a good thing because it shows that other people care about the same aims (even if we disagree on some issues) and at the same time a bad thing, because it would make much more sense for everyone to work together.
We continue to actively seek to work with anyone who wants to prioritise helping practitioners and coaches.

The whole idea of working as a group is to use the skills of the whole group not just one or two individuals. I think for group work it's more important that each person brings something unique to the group rather than to be an expert in everything (which isn't possible anyway), but having a broad background is definitely useful for making decisions that involve comparisons. Teige's right in that I do have a degree in physics, but compared to my rock climbing, mountain leader, football coaching, TKD instructor, secondary P.E. department, TEFL, teacher support and (let's not forget) parkour experience I agree it's not very relevant for parkour coaching. Given that parkour is a separate activity from any other, I am inclined to believe that it's time spent on learning about and practising parkour that is the most important thing. The fact that so many people make mistakes through trying to apply the rules of other sports to parkour further convinces me that experience with other sports is not always a plus in understanding and teaching parkour.

[Sam]

"I heard this Dave guy is 12 feet tall and breathes fire, and the BPCA members can all precision the English Channel."

Loool

[Teige]

Also, I remember you questioned Forrest's educational background at some point on this forum - one that I believe to be far more sport related than Dave's, yet you seem to 'side' with Dave more than Forrest?

This is because I'm impressed by tangible things and not authority on the gapevine. Although I think I still disagree with Dave about physical preparation for Parkour, from talking to him and from what I've seen of both him and Forrest, I feel one has better ideas than the other, or is at least more clear in communicating those ideas.
And we both love a bit of clarity, right?

There often seems to me to be a distinct lack of discussion and explanation from PkGen, they rely on their authority status and the "authenticity" (arbitrariness) of the Yamakasi guys, which is something I guess I can't help but take a disliking to.
Maybe it's the grassroots vs self-styled authority divide that I'm feeling. Or maybe it's a simple case of belonging/allegiance.

Also, I don't know exactly what Forrest's background is but I heard it involved sports science. I did a short bit of sports coaching qualification and it was full of crap to be frank, the whole field didn't impress me with it's attitude to evidence. They seemed to get their info from tradition, tabloids and press releases. Physics on the other hand may (or may not) provide someone with a better understanding of method and critical appraisal. Anyway what's important is evidence, when evaluating someone, and like I said from my entirely incomplete experience of both I know whose views I prefer.

[Joe]

Hahahaha.. we'd all love to jump that distance..!

I do feel as though Teg undermined Parkour Gens a bit in his replies, hence the content of my reply. Surely their experience in teaching and practising cannot be matched in the Parkour community? So, Dave, I wasn't attacking you or your organisation, I was just commenting on Teg's reply, nor was I undermining you or BPCA - in the same way, this isn't an attack on you either Teg, I appreciate your opinions and I've also found we share similar views particuarly in terms of strength training and such. If anybody has knowledge and experience with regards to teaching, Parkour etc etc, I'm more than willing to speak with them, learn and discuss - and it would seem you do have some fantastic experience Dave - which again in my reply I was not attacking.

Thanks for the information on BPCA, Dave. I share that pain of lacking money and having to deal with work, school, college etc - no LPA member has the time or money to completely commit. We have worked hard for the past year to setup our (not for profit) organisation and to build a strong base for ourselves to operate out of within the community. We now have a website (well, in a couple of days), we're on YouTube, Facebook, we have a blog to provide training articles etc, a forum for people to get involved, get to know each other and learn more. Practitioners in Leicester know who we are and beginners are coming to us all the time. We have monthly events, the first of which is the reason for this thread, and which was a fantastic success. We have taught for various organisations throughout the year and continue to do and we have also been approached by schools and are in the process of setting up teaching projects with them. So we have certainly worked hard - and in our own spare time whilst dealing with work, school, college etc and it is great the work paying off.

We are mainly concerned with teaching Parkour in a 'correct' and safe way. Secondly we are concerned with making sure Parkour is represented in a good. Thirdly we want to build a good, strong community of strong, skilled and well educated practitioners who are all of varying age, gender and experience.

It's also interesting that we have had no funding yet another group in Leicester who lack both knowledge and experience find themselves having money thrown at them by the council as well as working with the council to build a Parkour park!! These are people who have worked with Urban FreeFlow and people who just this last week vandalised property whilst training and then ran away from the police - making LPA's job harder.

As I said at the start, I was not attacking or undermining you or BPCA. We are interested in improving the way in which Parkour is received, taught and practised in Leicestershire - we welcome any help, advice etc so if you do wish to work with us then we are more than happy to. It is not a case of us thinking, oh, PKGEN's, all the French guys, success, let's go over there.. they were the in the 'public' eye in the Parkour world and are connections with them due to Blane made it an obvious choice for us to approach and associate ourselves with them.

[DaveS]

I think as Teige rightly points out, it is important to recognise and highlight the flaws of any group or organisation. The only way improvement happens is if problems are identified and solved, and no one can objectively criticise themselves. We all need outside observers to point out our mistakes. Pointing out mistakes with others is especially important with professional organisations, since they rely on positive advertising and therefore have a huge vested interest in covering up their own mistakes. You know as well as I do that we don't have to go far to see examples of this in the parkour community, and I think it would be dangerous to assume anyone is immune to this.

Even with a martial art that's been developing for 4000 years it makes no sense to stop trying to improve on the past, and when you're part of a discipline that has barely made it to double figures of birthdays the idea of accepting traditions is just ridiculous. We're talking about a life-long discipline that aims to provide lasting benefits, and there is nobody who has managed to get through even a quarter of a lifetime without giving it up at some point.

Nobody has much experience in coaching parkour, not PKGen nor the BPCA nor whoever, and clearly there are problems with even the ideas of experienced practitioners. Basic flaws in coaching methods are obvious everywhere, even, or perhaps especially, with the most experienced practitioners.

If we want to improve the standards of learning I think we should learn from everyone. I've been coaching for 11 years and I've attended more teacher training courses than I can remember, but the one that was the most useful to learning how to coach physical activity was a course on learning how to teach English as a foreign language. The most useless was the football coaching course run by the Football Association, who have been coaching physical activity for 147 years.
We know that when someone says they have been practising parkour since they were 5 that doesn't necessarily mean that they can vault, jump or even run. 'Time' does not always equate to 'useful experience', and you only find out with hindsight.