by Dr. Kenneth Kao, D.C.
Doctor of Vital Balance Chiropractic
Instructor at APEX Movement Boulder
The point of this article is not to say if parkour should or should not have competition. Enough has been said on this topic that anything more would be redundant and, well, boring. However, I feel as if I could offer a different perspective that few of us have considered.
First, defining competition.
I believe we all can agree that competition is a choice. It is a mindset. If I watch my fellow traceur step off a curb, and I am jealous that he stepped off a curb better than I, and I in turn step off a curb trying to do it better than him, and I do it better. Or worse.
I’ve competed, yah?
Competition, however, usually refers to the organized communal activity in which a bunch of us get together not to “jam”, but to purposefully compare and pit one guy against the next. This has been painted in a negative light. In many ways, yes, competitions are negative, agreed. But let’s try thinking about things a little differently.
*Side Note*
As we’ve said, competition is a choice. You can choose not to compete. The common issue is more centered to if parkour organizations: Primal/APK, COPK/APEX, PKV, should promote competition with their power of influence. I understand this is the primary issue. Not the point of the article, but here’s my personal answer, anyway.
Not my business.
Technically, this is the individual organization’s choice, and debating one way or the next will not change it. It may lead parkour into the terrible hell of a “sport”, but what’s going to happen is going to happen regardless of my feelings. Or yours.
*Side Note End*
As a doctor, I treat many patients who are traceurs. I’ve come to appreciate how natural, healthy and beneficial parkour can be neurologically and physiologically when done correctly. Many traceurs will argue that parkour is so natural that everyone should move this way anyway. We value movement, returning to the way our bodies were designed, exploring our environment by touch, smell, taste, sight. We appreciate what so few people can appreciate because we are exploring what we were MEANT to explore.
I agree.
In many ways parkour is not only about efficient movement, but returning to nature. It is not only about speed and strength, but training our bodies and rediscovering fitness–our ability to adapt to our environment.
So, in that mode of thought, what were we humans meant to do in regards to competition?
Humans have a primal nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system. You’ve probably heard of it described as “Fight or Flight.” This system is devoted to survival. Adrenaline, reaction time, freak out I-gotta-get-outa-here mode are all SNS related. Much of parkour, facing your fears, is a SNS response.
Competition is a sympathetic response.
Uh oh, you’re thinking, here he goes trying to say that anything sympathetic is good. But wait! I’m not saying that because it’s sympathetic we should compete. Otherwise, I’d be advocating axe murderers chasing traceurs down. I’m just saying that competition is so extremely fight or flight that it is seconded only by actual injury, risk of death, and dying.
Huh?
Yeah. Competition is the safest way to push our sympathetic nervous systems into over-gear. Competition is a capsule that adds rules to “warfare” in order to preserve longevity of performance. What I am saying, dear reader, is that competition is as close to natural sympathetic survival instincts as we can make it. Without death games, that is.
If you want to argue this, consider why sports have arisen at all. Sports are a loose term for organized competitions–disciplines that have become so solely focused on the actual competition that their entire purpose is only to compete. This is NOT where I want parkour to go, but this is an example of how in every culture, race, class, gender in the entire world, competition has emerged under the umbrella of “sports.” There is no exception.
Now comes the big debatable comment: my opinion is that competition is natural, and as traceurs, we strive towards what is natural.
As traceurs who are always trying to be in tune with our environments, we can test ourselves and move closer to how we were designed by competing. Besides the anthropological origins, competition puts us in a state of controlled stress in which we can perform at higher peaks than we ever realized. This could be in the form of your friend stepping off a curb when you couldn’t, OR, in the form of a Red Bull competition.
But, I absolutely absolutely I-cannot-emphasize-this-enough agree that too much of anything is unhealthy and bad and horrible for you. Too much competition is bad for anyone. Too much stress can break a person down. This is obvious, just like too much good food ends up in bloating, or too much water ends up in drowning.
Conversely, too little food ends up in starvation and too little water ends up in dehydration and death.
Metaphorically, too much competition ends up in injury-death-damnation by your peers. Too little competition results in starvation of your potential to progress.
Thus, from a medical point of view of human developmental physiology, everyone should compete. Whatever this means for you. Remember, competition is a choice and too much or too little is also based on you. So if this means trying to step off a curb better, just cause your buddy did it with more grace and flow, then go for it. Compete. It’s natural. If it means striding 8′ bars 8′ up, it’s also natural–for you. They are both competition and they are both exactly as our human bodies were meant to respond within the limits of safety.
As for the question of if competition was meant to be part of parkour at all because David Belle said this or that–that’s a whole other argument.
I’m not here to answer THAT question.
by Dr. Kenneth Kao, D.C.
Doctor of Vital Balance Chiropractic
Instructor at APEX Movement Boulder
