Parkour Federation - A New Organization

[parkourfederation]

We here at Parkour Federation are getting the word out to as many communities as possible to tell everyone about our new organization. We’ve contacted you because we want to work with you to make Parkour more legitimate. Parkour Federation is dedicated to leading the way in legitimizing Parkour and helping promote safety through communities and individuals. We will be helping to certify communities, train coaches, open gyms, build parks all over the world, offering grants and scholarships, holding votes, making tutorials, publishing articles about trespassing and other legal issues, and much more. But we need your help to do it. This is a federation by the people and for the people of Parkour, which means your voice needs to be heard. If you have any questions feel free to respond below, we will check back as often as possible. Also check out all the things we can do for you and help you do for others at our website, parkourfederation.org.

(774)-257-5333

[Abstergo]

I want to know who you're run by, what parkour experience you have, and what gives you the right to cerftify coaches.

If you can't provide decent answers to those questions, you shouldn't be involved in parkour.

[Desmond]

is that an american number?

[Abstergo]

Yes.

[Do Me]

forum.3run.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=27314

[parkourfederation]

Howdy Guys!
There were a couple questions that I would love to answer for you guys. The rest of them can be answered just be visiting our website. Thank you.

Personally my name is Matthew Willis, I have been training over 6 years. I have trained with Parkour Generations and Yamakasi as well as communitites all over the US. I even helped bring Yamakasi to Texas to teach a workshop to our state and others. I have been coaching parkour for 5 years and have created parkour programs for private gyms as well as the State School district. I have taken several certification courses over the last 9 years of me coaching and finally, I love Parkour and what it has to offer to every age group. I love and want to see Parkour grow safely.

However, my experience does not matter as much as the group matters. We are a group of communities that have gotten together, even a member of the Yamakazi/Majestic Force Laruent Piemontesi to try and create a COMMUNAL Certification process. We have our basis as of right now, but every community that is able to work with Parkour Federation gets to Vote constantly on how creation of communities work and how certifications of academies and communities work.
We are not here to tell ANYONE there is only one way to train Parkour or teach Parkour. We are only here for those who are looking to be involved in our program. We will not push or pursue organization that have no real reason to be a part of what we do. We want to take groups and give them something that we can all agree on in Parkour. Create initiatives for building Parkour Parks, trespassing laws and training methods.

We love questions and invite as many as you have to be asked. We want to work with all communities one way or another so please understand this as us trying to reach out to you and your community together! Thank you!

[Joe Rogan]

Lol, 'owned'!!

Sounds good!

[Abstergo]

Lol I had to check!

The opening post was a bit vague, the last thing I wanted was for some businessman to be trying to make money out of parkour and other communities whilst having nothing to offer in return.

The point about Laurent intrigues me as the Yamakasi helped create ADAPT, why not use that as a certification?

Thanks for actually replying!

[parkourfederation]

It was even hard for us when we started thinking about our cetification. We realize, we are different then the ADAPT certification. We charge about 300X less and our level one is more physcially intensive, so we are just TWO different programs all together. We would never want to compete against such an amazing organzation. We have contacted them before in efforts to to talk about this and have recieved no responses

Yea, a lot of people ask. WHAT DO YOU DO! Its hard to ever say that in just one statement. We are glad you guys asked the questions and are interested. We would love to work with you guys and see how maybe we can even help you guys. Thank you so much.

[Joe Rogan]

Ha, I'd take your qualification over PKGen's already.

[Alex Coal]

Aug 18, 2011 16:29:15 GMT parkourfederation said:

Yea, a lot of people ask. WHAT DO YOU DO! Its hard to ever say that in just one statement.

Your answer to Dan's (Jack Hunt's) question was a much better introduction than your first post - you should really consider leading off with something much more like that or you're going to get a lot more questions regarding the legitimacy you clearly have. One statement is hard, but it can be simplified just by writing slightly more in a structured way (feel free to do with this as you please - I had to make up a few details as I'm not you):

Dear <insert organisation name>,

My name is Matthew Willis and I represent the Parkour Federation, a group founded with the aim of bringing local organisations together in one global community for the safe and legal practice of Parkour around the world. We want to establish Parkour as a legitimate sport in the eyes of media and governments, with all the mainstream acceptance of other sports, and the perks which come with that status. Working with local groups such as yourselves, and governments and other funding bodies, we hope to develop a range of facilities including: dedicated training parks and gyms, a globally recognised teaching qualification (with more of a focus on the physical side than ADAPT), freely available teaching resources, and much more to support all aspects of training.

The Parkour Federation itself is a collective of many Parkour groups around the world with similar aims, we facilitate the communication and guide decisions, but the input of everyone involved is of the utmost importance. Our personal experience includes (total of your group) years training and (total of your group) years teaching Parkour. Laruent Piemontesi is a former Yamakasi and Majestic Force member and I have worked closely with Parkour Generations in the past, (including training with them for N years if this is a significant time period). We also have notable achievements from other members including (list them here).

We are not here to tell ANYONE there is only one way to train Parkour or teach Parkour. We are only here for those who are looking to be involved in our program. We will not push or pursue any organization that has no real reason to be a part of what we do. We want to take groups and give them something that we can all agree on in Parkour. We love questions and invite as many as you have to be asked. We want to work with all communities one way or another so please understand this as us trying to reach out to you and your community together! Many questions have already been address on our website:

parkourfederation.org

Additionally you can telephone us (please note this is an American telephone number):

[phone]

Thank you

It might also help to get to know where the people you are posting to are - an American phone number with no context is not a whole load of use in England. If you can work on these few presentation issues you're likely to get much better initial responses to what could be a very promising endeavor.

Finally, it is my experience that founding groups based on communal decision making is a very good aim, but frequently fails due to lack of strong leadership. It may sound counter-intuative but often you need to make a stand and make decisions, obviously taking input from people and maybe even voting on things, but you need someone guiding it. In that regard your experience does matter a lot - a large enough community will mostly even out to contain good information and experience, but if the person who is at the front steering is clueless that's not good.

P.S. I, and many other people, have "trained with" PKGens or Yamak members but that can range from attended Rendezvous once to spent years studying directly under David Belle. Please don't see this as getting at you, they are just points to consider in the future, I honestly hope you can address them all.

[Abstergo]

Alex, I believe you just won the game of life.