A Thought from Me,
I started here from sport fighting and competitive martial arts. I coached some Martial Arts Tricking, and was a regular at Club540. I got into this art because it was a less violent way to have goals that I could strive to defeat. I wanted to continue along the path that I had begun with tricking and simply have an outlet for physicality. I wanted to be a traceur.
Then I was drawn to the purist parkour styled thinking. Why do the flip if it wasn't efficient? Why aerial over a park bench when a simple vault would suffice? I began to question my movements and try to simplify to what was NEEDED to accomplish certain movements. I wanted to be stronger to be able to deal with more/different things, perhaps to be useful, but more just to be able in general. As I progress daily, my motivation is slowly becoming more spiritual than physical, because I am physically able to do more of what I imagine doing. It's the culmination in my body of my mind's expression.
Then I realized that if I wasn't doing it for efficiency, then I was simply doing it to expand. I am expanding possibilities, pushing envelopes for their sake alone. Why did I stop flipping? Why did I decide to cut down the possibilities to a rigid structure of what was "needed" when really nothing was "needed" at all? When was the last time that I "needed" to hold a front lever for 30 seconds? I was doing this all for me. I am doing this all for me.
I'm not trying to put down anyone's ideas about parkour. It's very much an individual experience, but for me, I'm not going to avoid the chance to do something inefficient just to fit someone else's idea of what my movement "should" entail. Does the ability to do a front flip help you save someone from a burning building? No, but it can't hurt.
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Credit goes to Joe Brock (who posted this on the American Parkour forum here: http://www.americanparkour.com/smf/index.php/topic,33323.0.html )
