When someone asks me if he or she or if this or that person can do parkour I usually instantly reply “yes” – “of course”. Usually with no further explanation except that it´s all about the way you approach parkour and that you should not compare yourself to others. Stephane Vigroux´s post on Instagram is more on point though.
[blockquote align=center]
Anyone can do parkour but parkour is not for everyone
[/blockquote]
Suppose you hate challenging yourself, you are afraid of even looking out of your very narrow comfort zone. Suppose you really do not like to interact with your environment or face your weaknesses and/or are mainly motivated extrinsically. Well I guess there might be better practices to pick up than parkour. It is still my deepest believe, and of many others, that any person regardless sex, age, gender, heritage, ethnicity, religion or any other social demographic variable, can practice parkour. Practicing parkour and progressing in parkour are not bound by these variables. What the real problem is, is the persons attitude toward him/herself, their expectations on what they have to achieve or deliver and especially their own fear on how they score in relation to what they see on social media and/or from others. For me there is only ONE single constant that I aim on scoring myself on. Do I progress in my training and my parkour practice? Progress can mean physical progress, technical progress or maybe mental progress, maybe even all of the above at once or maybe rehabing out of an injury, slowly and steadily.
So when someone asks me in the future if he/she can do parkour my answer is still “yes” – “of course” but I might think to myself – “do you think you have what it takes?” and I might make them ask themselves what they expect from practicing parkour.
I am well aware though that the realisation that stands behind these thoughts is nothing we can just tell someone or something we can teach solely by talking about it. I guess people have to make their own experiences and somewhere along the way honestly review themselves.
Thanks to Stephane for being so on point.
Find Stephane on [icon icon=icon-instagram size=16px color=#000 ] here: https://www.instagram.com/stephane_vigroux