Fight or Flight

You may have heard of the sympathetic nervous system's acute stress reaction, more commonly known as the fight-or-flight response. Animals exhibit a psychological reaction to stressful situations, which prime them for either tackling the situation head-on (fighting it); or to ignore and turn away from the situation (flee it). You might say that the physical manifestation of the fight-or-flight response is imbibed by training in two types of disciplines—martial arts (the study of unarmed human combat) trains the fight response in humans; whereas parkour (the study of tool-less human locomotion) trains the flight response. Much has already been written about the various martial arts, especially since the time of Bruce Lee.
For a change, let's have a look at parkour and the utility of learning locomotion capabilities.

If you stop any traceur (practitioner of parkour) on the street and ask him the definition of parkour, this is what he will parrot without thinking—"Parkour is the art of getting from Point A to Point B in the fastest and most efficient manner possible, overcoming any obstacle in your path." Fair enough, but it's far from correct, and is a common misconception within the parkour world.

The actual definition of parkour is—"The art of human locomotion, which involves getting from one point to another, overcoming any obstacle in one's path, using only one's own body as a tool." This still seems the same as the previous definition, doesn't it? But no, it isn't. Look closely at the two again.

The World's a Playground

We've removed the temporal element from the second definition, not limiting the scope of parkour to only when you have a time-bound urgency to get somewhere. In a recent outdoor trip, Parkour Mumbai members conducted some extensive testing, and found that actually 'overcoming obstacles' turns out to be a lot slower than simply running around them if the number of obstacles to be surmounted are more than two or three. So if you really want to get somewhere fast, running around the obstacles instead of jumping over them will get you there much faster. But herein lies the catch. You would say that what you always thought to be useful about parkour as a practical tool has just been thrown out of the water, and I have just demonstrated that parkour as a practical discipline is a completely useless thing. I have just gone and proved that my own discipline is redundant. Here's the thing—I know that parkour is useless in a real time-bound scenario. But that's the whole catch—the words "time-bound". There's nothing to say that you can't use parkour skills in any other situation where you may need to get across difficult terrain where time is not of the essence. I frequently use the example of the Mantralaya (Mumbai) blaze from 2012. Think of the guys stuck up on floor number 4. If they knew how to clamber out of a window and then shimmy across ledges and safely climb their way down, they wouldn't have needed huge cranes hoisted on fire-brigades and a bevy of firefighters to coax them onto the rescue platform. They could just have rescued themselves, and probably others as well.

There is some sort of time-bound urgency to escape the flames, you would argue, but at the same time, it's not a hit-or-miss urgency of a fixed number of seconds within which you need to clear the room. You can still do so at your own pace. This is not a video game where you have a time limit to complete the level. So even though the temporal element of 'fastest and most efficient manner' is not present, knowing parkour skills is not redundant in any manner, because it helps you get around your surroundings in ways most people cannot (but should). It helps you learn unconventional ways of moving. And it makes sure you never feel physically stuck in any environment. Where ordinary people will look up and see walls and railings and other 'obstructions' to their 'freedom to move around' (albeit using conventional methods of locomotion only such as walking, or sometimes, running), a traceur will see a playground waiting to be explored. The traceur is the one really free to move about as he wishes, because he is not bound by objects often considered hindrances. This brings us to our next utilitarian aspect of parkour, that of unstructured, enjoyable play.

Learning Through Play

In a world where even children are being discouraged from physical play, it does get difficult for adults to explore their itch to revisit their childhoods. Most humans develop social and other inhibitions as they grow up. Play is looked down upon as juvenile antics and is best left to children, especially in a world where adults are expected to behave a certain way, which more often than not destroys all avenues adults have for any manner of physical activity.

Not just adults, but most children too shy away from physical play during their formative years, and adopt more sedentary, indoors-based lifestyles. Physical play in childhood is very important for proper development, so that children learn important lessons for adulthood. But this does not happen in modern society. Public playgrounds the world over are also evolving, and are a far cry from what today's adults used to play on when they were kids. There is an increasing emphasis on changing the nature of playground structures to something more simplistic, and padding every available surface in an effort to improve the 'safety' of such equipment, which tends to take away the process of natural exploration that kids engage in and learn valuable lessons from for their later life. The increased emphasis on safety is not only ironically making playgrounds less safe by instilling a false sense of security, but is encouraging kids to take unnatural risks because of an assumption of a safe environment, messing up their cognitive and learning process with regards to risk-taking, evaluation and decision making.

Parkour helps alleviate some of these problems by encouraging the value of play to both kids and adults. It provides the same manner of play that younger kids usually engage in if left to their own devices in the absence of artificially 'safe' play environments and heavy parental supervision, and helps people rediscover the joy of physical movement and exercise. Much of parkour training is simply playing around with physical movement, locomotion and exercises in environments dense with objects and structures of various kinds.

So get out, get moving. Jump or vault over some stuff. Duck and crawl under other stuff. Climb some stuff. Have fun.

Take the Leap

A box printed alongside the article.

Parkour Mumbai conducts classes which cater to both aspects of parkour training: structured and unstructured.

They have a structured progressively-levelled class to learn the practical aspects of human locomotion in a step-by-step manner.

Unstructured classes are available where people are encouraged to explore play through physical movement over and around objects.

Visit www.parkourmumbai.com/classes.php for more information.