Desarrollo de la hipótesis planteada

Well to me it started off, you’re literally training to get from A to B using every physical movement possible. You train for every situation, every motion and every obstacle. It slowly becomes more based around getting to know yourself and your environment. That’s all I can really think of. Well I started - one night there was a documentary on TV - Jump Britain. I think it was the night after it was on I went out with (name omitted) and we had a jump around and stuff like that. We started doing it in high school on a little wall we found round the back and we used to hop around on our lunch break, just playing, just messing about. I stopped and went onto aggressive in line skate. I did that for a while. At the time it was only playing around, it was nothing serious. I skated for a couple of years. I hurt my leg then I had to stop. As it recovered I found I’d lost interest in it.

Experience/Reflective/Evaluative (Lines 12 -23)

I got back in touch with (name omitted) and (name omitted) who were still doing it, so I got into it then. I was much more grown up and physically developed. There was more to do. I was more capable than I was and it just became less physical and more about the mental side of it. I’ve really found myself doing things that back when, I don’t know when, I would have called impossible and now here I am doing them and its fantastic and I love it. Truth be told, when I was little, I was a bit of a super hero buff. I used to absolutely love the stuff and doing the stuff we’re doing now, I feel a little bit like a super hero. It’s given me the means to help people, friends and family. If there in trouble - I have developed the mental capacity to deal with the situation and the physical everything. So that’s really what inspires me. Is that I can help people out. As with the risk side of it, I like there to be a bit risk involved. I don’t know about the other two? They are slightly more down to earth but I think with my background with my skating and stuff like that I prefer an adrenalin kick every so often.

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Experience/Evaluative/Clarifying/Observational (Lines 24-27)

Well I’ve noticed through my years of training parkour a lot of practitioners seem to have the same personality type. They all seem to be kind people. I’m not saying horrible people don’t but they seem to have a very similar personality. So I think it tends to be more those type of people attracted to parkour and free running due to something within in them.

Experience/Descriptive (Lines 28-30)

It’s hard to describe. Its often very creative people who tend to put others before themselves. People with a very deep outlook on life who are looking for something more, if you see where I’m coming from.

Experience/Evaluative/Clarifying/Reflective (Lines 31-47)

Well for me personally the most interesting thing about parkour is my body itself and just doing this sport or discipline as some people like to refer to it. I’ve learnt so much about my body, the way my muscles work. The way they develop and the way my tendons work. It’s made me more in touch with me physically and mentally. I’m still learning about my body and I’m still absolutely intrigued by it and the different things it is capable of. Well, the first time I tried parkour was with (name omitted). We just went round town, just bouncing about happily and at the time I fell in love with it because I felt like I was six again, it was fantastic, just running along walls, you know. I loved it to bits just climbing on everything we could see for no particular reason. It was great getting some fantastically weird looks off people but it was fantastic. Oh yeah, but the most noted thing about my first time is something we mention to everyone. The day after, when you wake up and muscles you never knew existed hurt - it was fantastic, it was progression, you were proud of the fact that your body hurt ready for the next time you go out to pretend that you’re six. Well, most importantly I learnt my own limits, physically and mentally. I’ve also learnt how to push them and give myself greater physical and mental strength. Which has really helped me through life in a lot of different aspects - yeah really did.

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Experience/Descriptive (Lines 48-49)

Well both, individual and social training play an important part in the traceur’s (parkour participant) progression, the individual side is very much about yourself.

Experience/Evaluative/Clarifying/Reflective (Lines 49-62)

Finding your own limits, barriers and finding your own personal way to get past that. But I feel when you’re with a group you have to be very careful. The positive pressure can be great, very appealing and very motivating but at the same time it can be quite dangerous. If people are cheering you on to do a jump or a gap you know you’re not ready for, but you do it just to kind of show off then the risk increases to a point where you’re not comfortable. You don’t feel in control with it, it can be very positive but in that respect it’s about your individual look at it. You have to know even when you’re with a group whether to say yes I’ll do this or no, I can’t. With the social side it reminds me of when we went to France, to Lisses, the birth place of parkour and we met traceurs from all over the world. There were people from Finland, people from America, people from France and the second you meet these people it’s like you’ve known them your entire life. Everyone is so happy to see you and wants to teach you things that they’ve learnt. You teach them things you’ve learnt and spread your knowledge around. It’s a fantastic feeling, it’s absolutely beautiful.

Experience/Descriptive (Lines 63-70)

Yes, ha-ha. I think it’s definitely influenced by the environment, because not the whole but most of the discipline is based on getting around it, navigating around it, through it and so on. Different landscapes call for different movements. You’ve got forests; you’ve got cityscapes and the more suburban areas that have fewer obstacles. Its more open ground, I think that all does really influence the way we train. Because you have to really learn how to adapt to environments and you train in many different environments.

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Ranging from running down the sand dunes, endurance running, to climbing trees in the forest, to just bolting a wall round the back of an outlet store. Experience/Reflective/Observational (Lines 71-74)

Socially, I’ve seen a lot of different social responses from different people on the street. I’ve had some fantastic people come up. There was an old elderly lady in the centre of Southport and she approached and said, “I love what you do. I love to sit down and watch you guys jumping around, it’s absolutely fantastic”.

Experience/Evaluative/Clarifying/Reflective (Lines 75-80)

We were training one day and someone walked past and said, “at your age you should know better”. It was kind of, I don’t know, there’s a lot of different looks on what we do. I think some people might associate jumping around on walls with hooligans and stuff like that. Yet it’s nice that there are people that really respect what we do. It’s nice that there are people like that still knocking around the community. It means we do have hope to build something positive, as opposed to getting an automatic look down on everything.

Experience/Evaluative/clarifying/reflective (Lines 81-86)

No not at all. I don’t even feel that’s an option anymore. There was a point in my training and I know when I hit it as, I said it to (name omitted), it’s no longer what I do it’s who I am. The way you move and the way you think. Even if I was physically incapable - mentally I’ve learnt so much on how to cope with situations, which is still to me part of my parkour. That said, I could lose an arm or a leg and I would just learn to adapt. I’d learn to train without, it’s just like I said, it’s who I am.

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4.1.3 Participant C: Familiarisation Process