Dirk M. > His messages

It is a question of run up. A "monkey vault" (I hate those kinda names, because these kinda questions have to be asked ) is mostly jumped from two feet, hands placed on obstacle, and you gain just enough distance to pass the obstacle. In the "(king-)kong vault" it's more of a running move, and you have bigger distance before and after the vault. A "king-kong" is basically a very large monkey, so that's probably how the name came to existence.

I'm sceptical.

First of all there's a design problem: These obstacles will be designed by practicioners to be "adapted" to certain movement. This limits the creativity, because most people who start out will be pushed towards the pre-thought movement, as in "This wall is made for catpasses, so please do catpasses over it.". That can obviously be overcome by even more creativity, though.

Another problem and yet still good point, is that it shelters from environmental issues. You probably won't discover wet surfaces, you won't stumble over icy patches on the floor, you won't struggle to climb slippery walls. BUT if you have a good designer, he'll try to implement unpredictability... then yet again, why don't you just go outside?

The third problem is a social one. As soon as there's a socially approved institution/facility to practice what we're doing, people will be even less tolerant about us using the city's environment for our exercises and movement. I envision police-men telling us to "Go to the Parkour gym, where you belong".

So these problems are all about adaption:
1. The adaptation towards obstacles.
2. The adaptation towards circumstances.
3. The adaptation towards society.

In all these situations, normally the Traceur has to adjust, however a training-facility does that for the training Traceurs. I find it hard to solve all these three problems at once...

Good to be welcome

Hope to have a good time with you guys!