I recently received an interesting question from Zak Zabriskie. Zak is a student writing an essay for a school project and I thought I would share my answer here as well since it’s becoming more and more relevant as time goes on:
Would an increase in popularity of Parkour be beneficial or detrimental to the philosophy and fundamentals of Parkour?
I think the major question isn’t whether an increase in popularity will help or hurt but rather how that increase in popularity happens. If Parkour started to become very popular based on the classes we’re running and how amazing Parkour is for engaging today’s youth and getting people to go outside and play then I think that would be fantastic 
But if Parkour keeps getting more popular based on crazy stunts in movies and bad YouTube videos then yes it could very well be detrimental to the discipline.
It’s really something that Parkour has struggled with ever since it came out of France with David Belle’s videos and the Jump documentaries. High level Parkour looks absolutely amazing to most people mostly because of how dangerous it seems. An outsider to the sport rarely gets to see what the beginner level learning process is like, and if they do it’s usually a bail video from some kids trying to imitate and learn from the crazy high level YouTube videos!
It’s my opinion that in the long term Parkour is going to become very popular and will enter the mainstream in some major way. How it’s represented and understood is going to depend mainly how it’s being taught and how well those teachers work with the communities and government agencies around them. In the long run those two things are going to be what matters, not how many movies, video games, or commercials have someone jumping around in them.
The greatest example of this I’ve seen comes from the Jump Westminster program in the UK where the city government is funding parkour classes for kids through Parkour Generations in order to lower the crime rate and engage inner city youth. The program has been a great success and has driven the adoption of Parkour to become an officially recognized sport in the UK which is expected to happen early this year. Reverberations from Parkour Generations’ efforts have already hit France and helped Majestic Force get their government approved Art du Déplacement Academy in Evry. Reverberations here are part of why the Parkour Visions exists.
Exciting times.
Tags: beginner, Parkour Generations, Q&A, research, students
January 21st, 2009 at 9:35 am
Thank you for the insight and links, Tyson. I’m excited to see how this grows, and being a part of the community out here has given some real stability to my life.
April 8th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Well put Tyson. I agree with your prediction that PK will someday be mainstream, perhaps in the same way that formerly “extreme” sports like skateboarding and bmx are commonplace today.
I think the health of the spirit of PK will depend on the strength of the communities. Attracting and developing good people, leadership by example, and making the principles of PK an essential component of the community, will create a foundation which will be able to resist the inevitable misrepresentations.
December 11th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I’m a little nervous about how parkour develops. My main concerns are that people will start to corrupt the sport with money and that the youth will only try to out perform eachother. Unfortunately, this has happened to almost every other sport. What if parkour becomes only a means to impress and becomes purely physical and monetary? It would be a sad day indeed if this were to happen.