Who gets to be awesome in parkour class?
DISCLAIMER: This article is an adaptation of the video, “Who gets to be awesome in games?” by the amazing Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit: https://youtu.be/XSvclSkmdyY
The original video is about video games, but I saw so many parallels to how I think about accessibility and inclusivity in parkour classes that it inspired me to adapt the concept into this article. However, it should be noted that not every tip will apply to every type of class, and perhaps not every class needs to be accessible to all (ex. intermediate/advanced classes).
Living the Fantasy
One aspect of parkour that sets it apart from conventional fitness (if parkour even falls into that category in the first place), or even other movement practices, is its “coolness.” By doing parkour you can look and, more importantly, feel awesome. Much like a video game, parkour offers what Mark Brown of Game Maker’s Toolkit calls an “awesome aspirational fantasy.” In a video game you can experience the fantasy of being a superhero, wielding a lightsaber, or driving a racecar. Similarly, with parkour you can experience the fantasy of climbing vertical walls, jumping great gaps, and vaulting obstacles like a real-life spiderman or a modern ninja. A parkour class then carries with it the implication that the students will learn to do these things, and live out their own awesome aspirational fantasy.
Brown talks about two different ways to deliver this fantasy. The first way is to give the fantasy immediately and easily. In a parkour class, this could entail group based activities, small obstacles, focusing on technique over strength training, and playing games. The goal in a class of this type is to make participants feel awesome by focusing on fun and interesting parkour skills as a group without delving into the sometimes grueling aspects of physical training. Catlin Pontrella, the former Executive Director at Parkour Visions would describe this approach as being “play-oriented.” A play-oriented class is about a social experience, community, and having fun, where the metric for success is laughter (Pontrella).
Brown says the second way to deliver the fantasy in a game is to make the player earn it through skill and mastery. A parkour class of this style would entail drilling skills, speed and strength training, and would introduce larger obstacles. It pushes students towards increasingly higher levels of skill, strength, agility, and control. However, students are likely to fail many of the challenges of such a class until they’ve developed all of these traits, and they will not experience feeling like a ninja a lot of the time. “The opportunity to live out the… fantasy is withheld until you’ve proven that you have real skill and mastery over a complex set of mechanics” (Brown). In a class of this type, the goal is for the participant to feel they have earned their fantasy, and in this way feel more satisfied. “By making the player actually overcome challenge, failure, and frustration, the end result will be way more rewarding” (Brown). Pontrella describes this type of class as “performance-oriented.” It is about skill acquisition and physical fitness, and focused on the growth of the individual (Pontrella).
Fantasy For Who?
A parkour class that requires the participants to earn the fantasy may be more satisfying (this is certainly subjective), but such a class raises an important question: who gets to live out the fantasy, and who gets left behind? Troy Skinner, a producer at WB Games puts it nicely when talking about difficulty in video games: “Because we are master gamers, we say that mastery should come from overcoming challenge, you earn it. But remember, everyone paid $60 and the majority aren’t going to push through those barriers to get to mastery. And mastery is tied to motivation so if they’re not masterful, they’re demotivated, they walk away” (Skinner). The same is true of parkour classes. Many people are not willing to suffer the failure and frustration of not being able to achieve the core fantasy. This is particularly true in the environment created by modern fitness industry advertising, which is designed to fuel people’s insecurities and feed on their desire for instant results. As such the barrier of entry to such a class is very high.
More importantly, many people are not able to reach a high level of mastery. Mastering the fundamentals and developing the necessary skills and techniques of parkour takes time and energy, much like the time and energy needed to learn the controls and mechanics of a video game. Scott Rigby refers to this as “control mastery.” Without control mastery, people can easily become discouraged. “When people are discouraged by a game’s controls, they don’t have the chance to feel competent at gameplay because they can’t even get to the real game.” (Rigby). So the time and energy needed to attain control mastery causes some people to turn away before experiencing the parkour fantasy. In addition, parkour is often depicted as dangerous and thrill-seeking, even if that isn’t necessarily the case. Just look at this title from The Telegraph: “Safety Concerns as Daredevil Pursuit of Parkour Set to Become Official Sport” (Turner). Some participants may be able to see beyond this image, but if the difficulty of the class is too high then they may not be willing to push through the initial frustrations. Not to mention those with disabilities who may not be physically capable of achieving such high levels of skill. Are they not allowed to experience the fantasy?
What to Do?
So what do we do? If a class is play-oriented and tries to give the fantasy to participants, it will be more accessible, but it may feel unsatisfying to those that want to earn the fantasy. On the other hand, if a class is performance-oriented and requires students to earn the fantasy, it may be more satisfying to some, but it locks out a lot of people. Brown suggests several design tips that video game designers can use to allow both types of players to feel awesome. These tips can achieve the same result in a parkour class.
Provide Options
The first tip is to provide options. In a parkour class this could mean focusing on tasks and objectives, as well as framing specific techniques as solutions to these tasks and objectives. Take vaults for example. Instead of teaching students a specific set of vaulting techniques (step vault, lazy vault, cat pass, etc.), a common activity is to give the students the task of overcoming a few obstacles in any way they can, but with some rules for safety and restrictions that require them to adapt and be creative. For example, restrict them to using two limbs on the first obstacle, one limb on the second, and on the last obstacle they need to throw in some kind of spin. All students can accomplish the required task, one way or another. Some will end up doing fairly complex movements without any prompting, but some will choose to keep it simple. If the explicit goal was for everyone to do the same challenging technique, then some would achieve the goal while others may feel discouraged and left behind.
2. Reward Mastery, Don’t Require It
The second tip is to design activities that reward mastery, but don’t require it. An example of this is to use a timer when doing obstacle courses. Design an obstacle course that every participant can complete repeatedly, and record their times. All the while encourage them to try and lower their time. Tell them that their time is kept private unless they choose to share it. This way every participant can find satisfaction in completing the same course together, without feeling singled out as “low skill”. They can compete with one another for the fastest time should they wish, but aren’t required to do so. This establishes what Brown refers to as a “skill floor” and a “skill ceiling.” In other words, the lowest necessary skill level to complete the course, and the highest level of skill you can potentially attain. In this activity, there is a good balance of a low skill floor in that everyone can participate and a high skill ceiling because their times can always be improved. In contrast, a game of classic tag has a low skill floor, but also a low skill ceiling. World Chase Tag has a high skill floor and a high skill ceiling.
3. Layer On Complexity Over Time
The next tip is to layer on complexity over time. In order to avoid students getting bored with “fundamentals” before mastering them, avoid referring to simpler techniques as “progressions.” Instead frame every movement they learn as an interesting and useful technique in its own right. Rather than saying that a step vault is a progression to more complex vaults, demonstrate the way in which it’s useful, versatile, and fun all on its own. The step vault can still be referenced when learning more advanced vaults, like a thief or lazy, but this way the step vault is not just a throw-away skill on the path to “better” moves, but rather a worthwhile technique to master.
4. Define Expectations
Next, make sure your marketing and imagery match the content of your class. There’s nothing wrong with a hard-as-nails, performance-oriented parkour class that pushes students to give their all, work drills, and train hard. The problem comes if the advertising for such a class shows images of flipping ninjas and smiling people enjoying doing neat tricks. As experienced practitioners and coaches, we know that putting in the work is how you get to be that cool flipping ninja. But prospective students that get their butts kicked by a rigorous training regimen on day one will be surprised and potentially put off. They came in expecting to have fun and feel like a ninja, but ended up doing a lot of conditioning and repetition. If students will need to earn the fantasy, that should be clear up front (Brown). Likewise, avoid using images of very fit instagram models in advertising for a play-oriented class. Fitness isn’t the goal of such a class, so avoid leading students to think they can lose weight and get a six pack.
5. Provide Multiple Pathways to Victory
The last piece of advice Brown gives is to provide multiple pathways to victory. In a parkour class, this might entail providing several literal pathways to get from point A to point B. Try making an obstacle course with checkpoints at which participants must choose their own path. At checkpoint one, they can go right where they need to jump precisely from beam to beam “floor is lava” style until the next checkpoint. This pathway requires skill and may result in repeated failure until the student develops the skill and aptitude necessary, possibly over the course of many classes. Alternatively they can take the left path where they need to crawl under a series of obstacles. This pathway can be completed by anyone so long as they are physically capable of crawling. This allows participants to make their own choice: take the technical path and potentially face repeated failure, or the path that can be completed with time and effort rather than skill.
It’s All About Choice
All of these solutions achieve the same goal: giving students the ability to choose their own way to feel powerful (Brown). Some may choose a less technical path from A to B and take their time in a time trial. Others may seek out the most technical path from A to B or speed through that time trial. Different people will benefit from each level of challenge in their own way. Something that can be incorporated into any of these solutions, is encouraging students to always push themselves to improve and try more challenging and complex movements over time. Students that complete a time trial with the fastest time could be rewarded by winning a small prize. Students may be praised for not using the same technique more than once in a series of vaults. Taking more challenging paths in a branching obstacle course could earn points that add up on a scoreboard. “The power fantasy is not one specific point on the learning curve. Rather, it can move and grow as you do” (Brown). The experience of the fantasy stays with you as you challenge yourself to do better, and to explore more parkour skills.
“So ultimately if the question is, who gets to be powerful? My answer would be everyone. Not just those who are skillful, and not just those who want to feel immediate empowerment” (Brown). The exact same is true for those who come to parkour classes. A parkour class should use games and activities that ensure that at every skill level, students feel skilled and capable but always with room to grow and improve.
Works Cited:
“The Applied Value of Player Psychology: Putting Motivational Principles to Work.” Performance by Troy Skinner, 2013, www.gdcvault.com/play/1017784/The-Applied-Value-of-Player. Accessed 2020.
Pontrella, Caitlin. “Creating Stronger Communities With Play and Parkour: EMP Podcast Ep 20 with Caitlin Pontrella”. Interview by Rafe Kelley. YouTube, 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAEIBIoKrFI&t=1103s.
O'Dwyer, Danny. Designing DOOM Eternal with Hugo Martin. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBHIalb01ew. Accessed 2020.
Rigby, Scott, and Richard M. Ryan. Glued to Games: How Video Games Draw Us in and Hold Us Spellbound. Praeger, 2011.
Turner, Camilla. “Safety Concerns as Daredevil Pursuit of Parkour Is Set to Become Official Sport.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 8 Jan. 2017, www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/01/08/safety-concerns-daredevil-pursuit-parkour-set-become-official/.
Brown, Mark, director. Who Gets to Be Awesome in Games? 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSvclSkmdyY&t=303s.