From the APA forums:
The HJM: Funnily enough Sam has actually stated something that is/was at the heart of the punk movement. I think Pava may have missed the point regarding punk. To say it is destructive is to buy into the straight media version the same as saying Parkour is about jumping buildings. As a former punk (and still a punk at heart really) I have to take issue with the comparison there.
Skater punk is a different animal and evolved into a more anti-social, loutish sub genre as a result of the party hard behaviour of some professional skaters with scant regard for themselves and others.
Check out a some of the following bands and their lyrics if you want to see a different side of things: Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Sperm Birds, Fugazi, Poison Idea, Husker Du, Suicidal Tendancies etc etc

SGeek: Well articulated, Pava (Axel?) - that all makes perfect sense. Now, about those psychological and physical changes...

The physical changes for training in any endurance activity are fairly straightforward, I think. Physical fitness (aka S&C) improves radically, aging (according to various scientific measures that I won't detail right now) slows, stops or even reverses, new activities (eg. higher wall-runs) become possible and all actions become easier.

The psychological changes are also fairly straightforward, though obviously there's more to them than what I'm about to say here. These changes, which I know mostly from my interest in distance running, can be summarised as follows: reduced tendency toward stress, improved concentration, greater capacity to endure pain, and a general increase in willpower. Hope I haven't left too much out of that list - I'm just too eager to get onto the sociology. As a bonus, I think my thoughts on the sociology might even be original (in the weak sense).

Modern humans, (almost?) without exception, maintain emotional barriers against other humans. In order to form a close relationship (eg. a genuine friendship), these barriers somehow have to be overcome - not a trivial thing, given that most of us don't have conscious awareness or control of all of our own defences. This is an area in which I think there is a notable difference between sexes, so I'll note at this point that I'm talking specifically about men - any relevance to women is merely fortunate.

There are quite a few traditional ways that men bond with each other, but the examples I can think of offhand use only three basic methods of disinhibition. Shared drug use is the most direct method, and especially in the case of alcohol it is highly significant. Shared emotional exertion is another, for instance the communal watching of a sporting event about which the watchers care very much. The third general class of disinhibition, sadly a lot less common than the other two, is shared physical exertion. Parkour training (at least in its Melbourne form) achieves this in spades - anyone who takes it at all seriously ends each session exhausted, at which point the usual barriers are mostly down. This makes group parkour an excellent bonding activity (among other things), and at least partly explains its ability to ignore traditional social distinctions. It's also a very powerful shared experience, especially when repeated - this is a major part of forming a community with its own culture, constituting a 'common basis of experience' as mentioned by Pava.

Me:The HJM: Sorry. Right you are. Skaters also picked up a territorial aggression from surfers who pushed the boundaries of the activity and competed with each other for space on the waves. That's my theory anyway. Punk philosophy and music has many more messages that "fuck you", and general anger... I guess its never any one thing, instead, there's many bits and pieces put together.


***Wank warning!***

Bonding is tricky. Your ideas are very interesting, Sgeek. Mine would have started off in a completely different place. I’d be drawn to the psychological changes from the perspectives of the people who participate in the culture of parkour. What they can talk about and share, in terms of common understanding gained through experience (I think they call this the phenomenological approach). From this perspective, it would be stuff like: parkour vision (looking at the physical layout of your environment in a way that meshes with your new abilities: i.e., “I see so many more things that I can climb/get-around than before.”), increased physical self-awareness and the flow phenomenon (good article on that in parkourpedia). These are just a few ideas, I’m sure that people can name many others.

You picked my sociology background here. Is yours a psychological perspective? Good stuff. I’ve never heard of this disinhibition stuff before. Still, largely, it makes sense to me. At the same time… I’m hesitant to be so quick to divide such things into categories. For me, there’s no such thing as pure forms of interaction. Bonding always happens on multiple levels at the same time. For example, part of bonding over a sporting event is physical (you feel more comfortable with the bloke that gets up and screams – like you do – than the bloke who just loves your team) and physiochemical (simultaneous release of endorphins and adrenaline) as well as emotional.

All the ideas on this thread just demonstrate that we’re getting multiple perspectives that illuminate the various aspects of parkour on various levels levels. Trying to understand from as many perspectives as possible is always a good way to look at things. Yours, Sgeek, is in everyway as good as mine, and everyone else’s… but OURS is always better. More ideas would be great! I’m still trying to work out my own…