"Coaching & the B.P.C.A"

[banj]

Incase you don't know about the B.P.C.A - British Parkour Coaching Association is a qualification you get displaying your ability in Parkour and basic level of teaching it.

Thoes of you who teach here - do you have this qualification? Also, do you consider it neccesary?

Just wodnerd on thoughts and opinons.

[ANTISFIT]

i despise the idea of the BPCA

[banj]

May i enquire as to why?

I am not saying i think you're wrong in your opinon, nor right, i'm just enquiring and not trying to cause argument by the by

[Lukman]

I like the idea of the BPCA. I am confused by the idea of despising the BPCA. They're good folks. I've trained with a few of them.

Time for a rant that nobody will read, I think...

After months of discussions with local councils and the police, and talking with residents, and officers on patrol, my friends and I made an awful lot of headway in terms of being accepted when training. I can't be bothered to elaborate, I have told people enough.

Unfortunately, as hard as we try, our work is rapidly undone by hordes of little kids who copy, and hurt themselves, and damage their surroundings as much as our reputation. We now have the police called when we turn up in certain areas where we have been training for years.

I have tried to deal with this in the unofficial way, by taking these youths under my wing, and training them to respect their bodies, their surroundings, and the people around them. My main reason for meeting people at the weekends is to teach, and it works, but it's not enough.

The media these kids, and the people they upset, are used to is saturated by an image of parkour being something it shouldn't be. All they see are the high flying, death defying flips and stunts of action films or youtube clips of idiots proud of being able to hurt themselves from a greater height than their mates after a couple of weeks of copying other idiots. There are too many kids for me to teach, and too many stubborn pedestrians to explain the art to...

Commercial parkour websites and sponsored athletes are doing little or nothing to help this. Paul Corkery especially, has a lot to answer for.

I think that educating people is the way forward. Part of that is in training people in the art of parkour, part of that is in showing the population the social benefits of the art, and part of that is in teaching the parkour / freerunning / streetstunts / jumping for fun community exactly how responsible we are.

BPCA is not the answer. It is an answer, and a good answer at that. Having a parkour governing body, having a clear qualification that shows your standing and allows you to teach without being doubted, is a good thing. Similarly, PkGen is another answer. Neither of these, however, is enough to solve all of our problems. If commercialist parkour was to disappear altogether, and all thoughts of competition in parkour vanished, we would still have setbacks.

The way I see it, kids need to be shown the way, and no matter how many of us think we are doing a good job, very few are. We need to do a better job of it, and BPCA can help with that...

I could go on for hours, but I need time to plan quasi - legal activities before I go to bed. Good night, people.

[banj]

I can completley understand what you mean about stubborn public - especially when you try to explain.

The other day i was eyeing a monkey/cat pass to precision - there was some glass inbetween the take off and landing point, so i put a TINY bit of pressure on this glass to see how strong it was and immidiatley removed it after i felt what it was like.

A guy scoots round the corner "Stop being a F**king vandal" so i had to try and explain to him, all he was doing was "fing this etc", i cannot stand public who immidiatley think you're TRYING to destroy things, when, really, if they listend to you, they'd realise how hypocritcal it would be to destroy the objects we're trying to train on.

And i liked he point you made about BPCA.

It was sa good read. Thanks

[ANTISFIT]

the reason i disagree is because parkour is entirely your own way of moving, and, like you lukman, i know most of the members, i regularly train with brad, but i find this quite hypocritical that it was brad who told me what parkour is, and how it is your own movement, and now he is in an association for people to teach it.
how can you teach your own movement? they always moan about how people put a name on movements, where you should move how you like, and now they teach how to do it :-|
seems so hypocritical to me.
and, i really don't mind speaking to the public about it
i act polite and calm with them to explain it, and they're generally fine
the ones that shout at me, i just laugh at

but i can see that as soon as we get a governing body, parkour will be a sport
totally against what it is.
UF aren't helping yeah, but i can't really see how BPCA can stop them.

and yeah,
i'd like to see kids getting educated properly, but can't see BPCA doing it properly,
they'd have to be able to find the sites first and get help there,
which people already do, and i think it works fine as it is

sorry if this makes n sense, i've spent like, 8 hours doing a huge essay

[doom]

I think it's a great idea.

Parkour might be about finding your own movement but there are general training principles we all share in common. Also first aid training seems very sensible as well as learning how to structure a coaching session AND techniques for teaching.

I'll be signing up for it.

[ddddyyyy]

*edit - spam removed and user banned*

[ANTISFIT]

dodgy spammer you are :\

Edit: Thanks Ant. She's now gone!