Abstract

Parkour is a discipline in which practitioners (traceurs) traverse their environment using a variety of movements. Parkour’s decentralised spread and community commitment to diverse practice does not provide easily identifiable definitions or outcome measures for a given movement. This can make it challenging to identify a dependent variable of a parkour movement for study or qualitative assessment. In the absence of objective parkour technique definitions, 15 parkour coaches were interviewed about the performance and goals of a common parkour technique, the kong vault. This sampling of expert knowledge provided a broad yet detailed overview of a movement that can be performed with a high degree of variability within a dynamic range of environments. Subsequent analysis led to the development of a deterministic model intended to assist in the understanding of the kong vault in application to highly individual or situational outcomes, rather than comprehensively prescribing objective performance. The model positions the kong vault as consisting of distinct take-off, obstacle contact, and flight phases, and allows connection to any subsequent landing or movement. Flight is determined by the actions taken during take-off and obstacle contact, with obstacle contact making only moderate changes to an existing projectile arc but expressing a greater change in the angular momentum of the body. The optimal outcome of the kong vault can therefore be considered as achieving a projectile arc and body position that effectively places the traceur in as advantageous position as possible to efficiently and consistently perform a given landing or movement.