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HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
Sociology - Anthropology - Philosophy - History - Law - etc.
Socially-Driven or Performance-Driven Parkour Practice: A Comparative Analysis in Habits, Motivation and Perceived Performance Factors
Autor
Elizondo-Donado et al.
2025
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Leisure Sciences
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Art du deplacement; recreation and leisure sports; sportization
Resumen
This study analyzed and compared the training habits, motivations, goals, and perceived performance factors of leisure-driven (SOC) and performance-driven (NOSOC) parkour practitioners. A total of 141 experienced participants (8.5 ± 5.0 years of practice, 26.2 ± 5.0 years old) from 15 countries completed the PARK-Q questionnaire. While both groups shared some practice habits, they differed significantly in competition participation and motivations (p = 0.001). SOC practitioners were more intrinsically motivated, valuing “Movement technique,” “Collaboration,” “Environmental Adaptability,” “Flow,” and “Decision making” (p = <0.01–0.211). In contrast, NOSOC practitioners prioritized “Bilateralism,” “Parkour movement repertoire,” “Absolute strength,” “Vertical jump height,” and “Flip repertoire” (p = 0.012–0.293). Despite some commonalities, these differences suggest that intrinsic motivation and the desire for broader skill mastery drive the socially-oriented group’s distinct performance factors.
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The No Limits project: a pilot experience for promoting sports activities among gifted youth
Autor
Marcen et al.
2025
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Journal of Sport and Health Research
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Resumen
The ‘No Limits Sport for Gifted Children’ project (Erasmus+ Sport) was designed to investigate and promote sports participation among gifted and talented (GT) youth, addressing their specific barriers and needs. Through a strategic collaboration between institutions from Spain and Latvia, the project was structured into four phases: preparation, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination, including activities such as training workshops for coaches, needs analysis, and a pilot experience with GT children. The results showed that 84% of GT youth participated in sports over the past year, with basketball, athletics, and football being the most popular sports. Their main motivations were fun (34,6%) and enjoyment of sports (19,6%). However, GT youth exhibited lower general interest in sports (48% reported little or no interest) and higher inactivity rates (16%) compared to the general population. Furthermore, coaches demonstrated limited knowledge of this group's needs, with 51,5% reporting familiarity but lacking specific training. The pilot experience involved 70 young participants in activities such as orienteering and parkour, achieving high levels of satisfaction. Additionally, workshops trained 142 coaches and educators, who positively assessed the usefulness and applicability of the training. The project highlights the importance of inclusive strategies combining awareness, specialized training, and adapted sports environments to maximize the physical, cognitive, and emotional benefits of sports for GT youth. This underscores the role of sports as a cornerstone for their holistic development.
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Understanding parkour as a donor sport for athlete learning and development
Autor
Strafford et al.
2025
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Teaching and Coaching Lifestyle Sports
Tipo de publicación
Capítulo de libro
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Resumen
This chapter considers how participation in lifestyle sports, like parkour, can enrich the functionality of athlete interactions with the environment to negate some of the detrimental effects reported in studies of early sport specialisation. We elaborate on how parkour experience and participation could improve the lifestyle of specialist athletes to enrich practice in sports-specific programmes to cultivate athletic skill development through exploratory practice and guided discovery. Previous research in ecological dynamics has proposed the value of parkour as a donor sport which shares an overlap of athletic-enhancing affordances available in team sports by challenging performers to learn how to negotiate different properties of a performance environment, such as obstacles (e.g., a net, playing area markings, positioning of defenders or attackers), as well as relevant information including angles of approach, interpersonal distances, surface texture, inclinations, and sizes, effectively and efficiently. In this chapter, we explore and reflect on how advancements in knowledge of parkour as a donor sport have developed a contextualised understanding of its role in facilitating athlete learning and development in team sports. We also acknowledge that as a donor sport, parkour may help athletes focus on a specific lifestyle in elite team sports.
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Designing for playful mobilities
Autor
Smitheram
2024
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Applied mobilities
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Playplayful mobilitiesmobility designautoethnographyarchitectural interventions
Resumen
In this paper we consider how playful mobilities mediate and augment the power to transform the everyday and support a playful engagement with the city through design. Like other forms of mobility, playful mobilities is embodied; it involves multiple interactions with bodies, and different forms of movement within and through space. Drawing from playful mobilities, this paper explores how play can inform design decisions to compel action and affect, and offers insight into the nexus between playful mobilities and speculative design interventions. It draws on mobile autoethnography diaries focusing on e-scootering, cycling, and playing Pokemon Go to highlight how play orientates our bodies with our environment and others. Along with the site and precedent analysis, the autoethnography diary entries become the base for a series of speculative designs situated in Wellington, New Zealand. The design speculations couple playful mobilities and the materialities of designed interventions, making tangible the intersection between designing for mobile situations and potential atmosphere to enrich space and experience that take place along journeys.
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Communities of Risk, Identity, Youth and and Civil Disobedience: Parkour, Skateboarding, Skywalking as Rebellious Play
Autor
Grace
2024
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57th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Tipo de publicación
Publicación en congreso
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
civil disobedience, play, digital games,parkour, skateboarding, skywalking
Resumen
While contemporary literature champions the biological, psychological, and sociological benefits of play, the ability of play to represent civil disobedience is rarely examined. In short, there is limited literature on investigating the question-what does it mean to play as rebellion? This paper outlines the shared characteristics of three forms of play, parkour, skateboarding, and skywalking as rebellious activities. It is suggested that their shared characteristics and relationship to risk, authority, authenticity, and documented civil disobedience are core to the identity of disobedience. Using commercial video games based on real-world risky-play, the research illustrates how this play embraces civil disobedience. Each is about playing against authority. The paper offers an analysis of parkour-focused digital play, skateboarding video games, climbing games and a case study in the Storror parkour team and its streams, highlighting the intersection of literature from sports studies, game studies, social science and architecture within this domain.
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Action Sports and the Olympic Games: From Tokyo to Paris, Los Angeles, and Beyond
Autor
Thrope et al.
2024
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Journal of Olympic Studies
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Resumen
The article "Action Sports and the Olympic Games: From Tokyo to Paris, Los Angeles, and Beyond" published in the Journal of Olympic Studies discusses the inclusion of action sports like surfing, skateboarding, and kitesurfing in the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) incorporated these sports to attract younger audiences and implemented strategies outlined in Agenda 2020. The article highlights the complexities of power dynamics involved in the inclusion process, with some action sports communities viewing Olympic inclusion as a loss of autonomy and authenticity. Scholars have examined the politics of Olympic inclusion for specific action sports and countries, emphasizing the need for a deeper understanding of cultural configurations and histories. The article also discusses the challenges and opportunities presented by action sports' inclusion in the Olympics, with differing perspectives on the benefits and drawbacks for athletes, organizations, and communities. The authors reflect on the role of critical scholarship in shaping future developments in action sports, emphasizing the importance of analyzing power dynamics, political struggles, and the impact of Olympic inclusion on various stakeholders.
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Informal sport migration as a process of becoming: a digital ethnography of young Gazan parkour athletes
Autor
Thrope
2024
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Handbook on Sport and Migration
Tipo de publicación
Capítulo de libro
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Informal sport migration; Parkour; Gaza; Mobilities; Digital methods
Resumen
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Parkour’s interactional organization. The paradoxes of media representations and how traceurs cope through non-representational strategies
Autor
Toscano
2023
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Culture and Organization
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
media practices; non-representational organization; non-representational theory; paradox; Parkour
Resumen
Parkour is a recent type of sport where the body appears to produce moving sequences along urban spaces. Now, however smooth these sequences might seem, our perception of them entails media representations of the sport already. These actually generate certain uneasiness in practitioners themselves, who see them more like stagings than accurate depictions. Still, media representations are paramount to understand the social organization of parkour. What ensues is thus a paradox on parkour’s media uses, which on a closer examination uncovers the role of non-representational strategies that contribute to organize the activity. Some non-representational forms may be read or discerned through media traces, while other non-representational strategies may function as contextual common ground. Developing emergent categories out of a grounded theory approach,this article examines how both representational and non-representational elements interact together, underlining the unique capacity of a urban experience to set an distinctive organization.
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Analysis of Standing Up in Free Running Parkour between Straight Back Flip 360? and 720?
Autor
Qawaqzeh & Sayyah
2023
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Revista Iberoamericana de Psicologia del Ejercicio y el Deporte
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Kinematic. Parkour. Body weight center. Kinova
Resumen
Backward standing is considered as one of the most important and commonly-used movements in free running parkour, where it may take place at any point while performing the skills. The study sample consisted of (1) player from the academy of Parkour and free running in Basra, where the participant trains in the hall of gymnastics training center of Basra directorate of education. Data were taken by 240 photo/second by using iPad 2020 camera, and this allowed the calculation of kinematic data. The results revealed that as the numbers of rotation increase, the communication angle at which the athlete lands on the mat while standing up decreases. In the back flip with one rotation (360°), the angle average was (51.9°), while in the back flip with two rotations (720°), the angle average was (49.3°). These results contribute to improving the technical training among parkour athletes.
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Parkour Fails and Hébertisme: Laughing at the New Man
Autor
Smith
2023
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Contemporary French and Francophone Studies
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Masculinity; MTV’s Jackass; slapstick; The Office (NBC); Vichy; YouTube
Resumen
“Parkour Fails” represent a genre of comedic YouTube videos consisting primarily of compilations of failed stunts by practitioners of the extreme sport of parkour. Parkour originated in the suburbs of Paris and involves creative reappropriation of urban furniture. In mass media, it is usually coded as a defiant challenge to urban norms and a symbol of multicultural France’s growing social mobility. However, it was inspired by Hébertisme, a training system embraced by eugenicists and the Vichy government as a way to cultivate the New Man, an idealized figure incarnating fascist values. While parkour athletes do not endorse fascism, many promote their practice with a rhetoric of decadence and decline, return to nature, and masculine power that echoes Vichy’s New Man ideology. This article explores the extent to which parkour fail videos humorously problematize that rhetoric.
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‘They Take the Fear out of Failing’: Children's and Parents’ Experiences of the Risky Kids Program in Australia
Autor
Bennetts et al.
2025
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Journal of Community Psychology
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
children | mental health | parents | qualitative | resilience | risky play
Resumen
Risky Kids is an Australian community-based program that seeks to build resilience in children and adolescents by teaching ‘risk intelligence’ through parkour, ninja, and free-running skills, underpinned by psychological approaches. The aim of this study was to explore children's and parents’ experiences of the Risky Kids program. We interviewed 18 children aged 6–13 years and held three focus groups with 15 parents and caregivers across three sites (two metropolitan and one regional). Guided by phenomenological design, template analysis was used to generate codes, categories and themes. We identified four overarching themes: (1) Learning to Navigate Risk; (2) Risky Kids is Different; (3) Coaches Facilitating Growth and Change; and (4) Stronger Minds and Bodies. Findings suggest that a facilitated risky play program can offer a supportive, safe space for children to develop confidence and resilience, and may particularly benefit children who prefer non-competitive group activities that nurture individual strengths and accommodate all abilities. Families reported that the program offered valuable opportunities to enhance children's mental wellbeing, including social, emotional and behavioural regulation. Large-scale quantitative evidence is required to examine children's outcomes—both physical and psychological, with a focus on resilience—including investigation of mechanisms of change.
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Benefits and adverse experiences associated with child and adolescent participation in parkour: a scoping review
Autor
Muca et al.
2025
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Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Physical activity health lifestyle sports parkour scoping review
Resumen
Emerging research highlights the potential of non-traditional lifestyle sports, such as parkour, in promoting child and adolescent health, well-being and engagement in physical activity. This scoping review aimed to identify and summarise the current evidence-base relating to the benefits, adverse experiences and research gaps associated with child and adolescent participation in parkour. A literature search was conducted across multiple platforms/databases, including EBSCOhost, Ovid, ProQuest, SAGE Journals Online, ScienceDirect, Scopus and Taylor & Francis Online. Findings of included studies were extracted and synthesised via descriptive content analysis. 10152 studies were initially identified, with 11 included in the review. Included studies identified numerous physical, social, psychological, executive function and other benefits of parkour. Minimal evidence explored parkour-related adverse experiences. Future studies should employ more rigorous methodologies and investigate adverse experiences, including injury risk factors and preventative strategies, to allow the benefits of parkour to be realised in safe contexts for child populations.
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Using lifestyle sports to create a ‘meaningful’ physical education experience
Autor
Wintle et al.
2025
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Teaching and Coaching Lifestyle Sports
Tipo de publicación
Capítulo de libro
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Resumen
Physical education has often been justified as a subject which promotes ongoing involvement in physical activity for young people, both beyond the school gates and into adulthood. However, the subject faces challenges in promoting sustained physical activity among youth, prompting calls for reform in both content and teaching approaches. This chapter addresses this concern by reporting findings from an action research study implementing lifestyle sports interventions in two English secondary schools. Two lifestyle sports units (Parkour and a Kickboxing/Cross-Fit hybrid) were implemented with mixed-sex groups aged 11-13 years old, over a 6-8 lesson period. Units were delivered using a meaningful physical education approach and were taught by the lead researcher. Data collection encompasses teacher-researcher reflections, observations, and interviews with observing teachers. The data were analysed using thematic analysis and three major themes were drawn from the data Major themes include the purpose of physical education, the potential of lifestyle sports, and barriers to implementation. Insights highlight the innovative aspects of the approach and underscore the need for change in traditional methods. We discuss these findings in greater depth and make subsequent recommendations for both future research and practice in this area.
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Concrete experience: Parkour as a culture of agential learning
Autor
Edinborough
2024
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Theatre, Dance and Performance Training
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
agency; learning; Parkour; Storror; video-sharing
Resumen
The field of performer training remains closely entwined with the authorial vision of twentieth Century practitioners. Performers in the context of theatre and dance are still trained to embody specific ways of being and doing, defined in relation the aesthetic and philosophical concerns of artists making work in the last century. However, as industry practices and scholarship move further away from paradigms of single authorship, or ensembles tied to the vision of auteurs, conventional, studio-based training practices have come under scrutiny. This has led educators and institutions to explore alternative models of training, prioritising student agency and choice. This article analyses the decentralised training practices of Parkour. It examines how Parkour practitioners use video sharing to spread innovations in practice and technique, establishing a training culture that promotes agential learning and experimentation. By looking at online documentation of training and video sharing from the Parkour team Storror, the article argues that Parkour training establishes models of experimentation and innovation that are decentralised and rooted in the agency and curiosity of the practitioner. The article concludes by considering how culture and practices from Parkour might inform the broader field of performer training–articulating strategies for encouraging student agency in learning.
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Parkour. Prática corporal de aventura ou ginástica
Autor
Polac
2024
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Lecturas: Educación física y deportes
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Portugués
Palabras clave
Parkour, Gimnasia, Método Natural
Resumen
El propósito de este ensayo es cuestionar la comprensión del parkour como, actualmente, presentado como una práctica corporal de aventura o un deporte. Este esfuerzo se invirtió debido a la comprensión de esta clasificación no alineada con las especificidades de nuestro objeto de estudio. Para este viaje, la pregunta se presentó a partir del entendimiento de su fundador, David Belle, sobre esta práctica, así como de los ideales básicos de una de sus principales influencias, el Método Natural, por parte de su fundador Georges Hébert, lo que resultó en la alineación del parkour más como método de entrenamiento corporal o gimnasia, que de la clasificación antes mencionada.
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Embodying parkour’s visual subculture: ethos, style and the emergence of a visual habitus
Autor
Toscano
2024
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Visual Studies
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Resumen
This article describes parkour's visual subculture as a form of subcultural capital that has developed with the rise of this alternative sport. It examines the recent history of its visual media as well as a visual habitus to understand the ways in which a collective gaze is produced and performed. Furthermore, the text locates the parkour practitioner – the traceur – as a key actor of an aesthetic system, a relatively autonomous figure that embodies an underlying visual symbolic structure and mobilizes a scopic system through different interactions with social media. By analysing three key elements through which traceurs have developed a visual tradition and a corresponding ethos, this article seeks to explain how parkour has been adapting to changing technical and sociocultural conditions, showing thus the complexities and nuances of a sophisticated visual world.
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Parkour, the city, and mediated subjectivities
Autor
Lam
2024
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The Physical and the Digital City: Invisible Forces, Data, and Manifestations
Tipo de publicación
Capítulo de libro
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
parkour ; technologies of vision ; urban cinematics ; urban landscape ; visual culture ; visual production
Resumen
A provocation: move from point A to point B in as straight a line as possible, reconfiguring your body as necessary. Parkour is a movement practice and discipline that involves running, jumping, vaulting, swinging, and flipping around, across, and through obstacles as they are encountered in the urban landscape. Its practitioners navigate the city in unexpected and subversive ways, imagining new political possibilities of existence with their movement. While most parkour scholarship has discussed the practice in terms of its spatial, political, and philosophic dimensions as a self-contained metaphor and object, little scholarship has looked to the cultural productions of parkour itself. As a dynamic and relatively young movement practice, parkour has evolved alongside the development of digital camera technologies and online social media, and as such, has a rich media culture that reflects parkour's unique relationship to movement and urban space. As camera technologies have become smaller, lighter, mobile, and more affordable, parkour's practitioners and the community have leveraged these emerging technologies to create new assemblages of media, bodies, and urban architectures that are easily shared via online platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. How do these movements, visions, and technologies inform our perceptions of public life and public space? What implications do these apparatus hold for our understandings of these assemblages? Following Jacques Rancière's articulation of aesthetics as a “specific regime for identifying and reflecting on the arts: a mode of articulation between ways of doing and making, their corresponding forms of visibility, and possible ways of thinking about their relationships”, I examine the aesthetics of first person (FPV), 360 camera, and drone perspectives as well as the editing practices and narrative trends of parkour media productions to offer a parkour subjectivity of the city, one that understands the city as dynamic, relational, material, in-process, and embodied.
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Social inclusion and institutionalisation of urban lifestyle sports
Autor
Østergaard & Larsen
2023
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Social Issues in Sport, Leisure, and Health
Tipo de publicación
Capítulo de libro
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
Resumen
This chapter is about urban lifestyle sports and social inclusion in sports. Urban lifestyle sports, such as parkour, skateboarding, and streetball, are becoming more and more widespread even as we see a reduction in young people’s participation in traditional sports clubs. There seems to be something about the traditional, organised sport that doesn’t fit or attract a growing number of young people today. Urban lifestyle sports are interpreted as having an inclusive potential and providing an alternative to traditional clubs-based sports. Because such sports are self-organised, they can be practiced whenever, wherever, and with whomever. They are characterised by a lack of adult control, rules, and regulations and they are practiced in urban public environments with a focus on fun and play. However, urban lifestyle sport has been developed and transformed in close interaction with traditional and formal institutions and sports cultures. In this chapter, we use institutional theory to discuss how processes of institutionalization have impacted the inclusive potential of urban lifestyle sports. In order to do this, we also describe how traditional club-based sports can be both inclusive and exclusive and show how social inclusion in sports is not only a personal challenge but also a social issue.
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Participation in street sports - a national study of participation patterns among youth and adults
Autor
Engell et al.
2023
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European Journal for Sport and Society
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
informal sports; lifestyle sports; parkour; skateboarding; Sports participation; street basket; street dance; street soccer; street sports; streetball; urban
Resumen
During the last 10–20 years, attention towards street sports has been growing internationally and in Denmark. This includes increasing attention from the main bodies for organised sports in Denmark and the development of initiatives and organisations within the field. Parallel to this, it has become more apparent that there is a general lack of knowledge regarding the participation pattern in street sports and lifestyle sports. This study examines the participation patterns and predictors of participation within seven activities collectively characterised as street sports. The data are drawn from a 2020 cross-sectional survey conducted among people 15 years and older living in Denmark. Results show that street sports activities are popular among youth and young adults, with half of all people aged 15–24 years having practised one of the seven activities. Logistic regression analysis reveals that immigrants of Western and non-western origin show higher odds ratios of practising street sports than ethnic Danes. Another important finding is that a higher level of education shows lower odds ratios of participation opposite the trends found in general research on sports participation patterns. This article reveals how street sports might have the potential to activate people who have been found to be less physically active and thereby contribute to ‘sport for all’. It provides a knowledge base for initiatives regarding the use of street sports as a vehicle for social inclusion in sports.
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An organizational change perspective on the incorporation of parkour in a gymnastics federation
Autor
De Bock et al.
2023
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Sport in Society
Tipo de publicación
Artículo de revista
Idioma
Inglés
Palabras clave
flanders; lifestyle sports; organizational change; parkour; Sport federations
Resumen
Over the last decades, sport federations have been confronted with new variants of sports, such as parkour. Parkour is considered a lifestyle sports which embraces a specific culture that often conflicts with the culture of federation-organized sport (Sterchele and Ferrero Camoletto 2017). Participation in lifestyle sports is increasing rapidly, which may pose a threat to the market position of federations regarding leisure sports (Gilchrist and Wheaton 2011). Despite the studies emphasizing the dichotomous relation between sport federations and lifestyle sports, our study explores why and how both can reconcile. In particular, our study examined how and why readiness for change was achieved in the gymnastic federation as well as in the parkour community for integrating parkour into the federation. Applying a single-case study design, drawing on Oakland and Tanner (2007) change framework, our study revealed several key mechanisms to develop a lifestyle sport in a federation context. Organizational learning proved to be an essential determinant to overcome the cultural differences. Furthermore, our results emphasized the importance of leveraging behavioural and technical leadership in the change process. This study enhances sport managers’ knowledge on how they should approach lifestyle sport communities, while delivering insights to lifestyle sport communities on the intentions of federations regarding their sport.
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