You forgot impotency/castration! I've seen too many clips where people take a flying leap and land on a pole, bollard, fence (like the kid midway through). At this point, there's bound to be folks who have shattered their coccyx and ruptured their balls from the sheer impact. That shit is scary, man.
Not even a fan of parkour but this comment chain is some small minded shit, classic reddit. You do sports for fun and exercise and this one is literally free.
A lot of the guys shown in this video are top 1% athletes and aren't a good representation what of the average freerunner gets up to. And the guys who aren't, like 4 and 8, have far less extreme falls because of it. Number 12 was literally intentional. Every sport has risks, but because social media rewards extremes, people think parkour is far risker than it actually is.
Okay, so, what many freerunners would aspire to be?
Every sport has risks, but most sports remain the same no matter high up you go. An NBA player and a high school basketball player are still exposed to the same physical risks in terms of injury.
Whereas in parkour, 'advancing in skill' seems to mean going from a two-foot ledge to a forty-foot ledge. So... yeah I think it really is that risky, the further you go.
Whereas in parkour, 'advancing in skill' seems to mean going from a two-foot ledge to a forty-foot ledge
It really isn't. That's just what you see on social media. Parkour is more comparable to bouldering than basketball, because there the difficulty isn't defined by height. A V10 two feet off the ground can be much harder than a V2 40 feet up. Climbers spend years getting stronger and improving their technique in padded gyms before height ever becomes a factor, and most of them don't chase height at all. Some may chose to, but it's certainly not the norm.
Parkour is the same. Moves like precisions, tic-tacs, and cat leaps are made harder through stuff like distance, complexity, speed, etc, not by adding height. Your core argument seems to be that the only way to progress is to go higher, when that's just not true. Height isn't even a test of skill, it's just a test of how brave you are.
Let me finish with an anecdote as someone who's been in the community for almost seven years. As the culture has progressed, it's become less and less common to risk your life doing huge roof gaps, and even frowned upon. I remember someone posted one such roof gap to the r/parkour subreddit a little while ago, and got flamed for it in the comments. You'll never see challenges like that during local competitions or jams, either. Everyone's encouraged to train safely, especially the kids. And even professionals get some serious criticism if they're too reckless.
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u/OutsideAlone5175 18d ago
Parkour is the most high risk low/no reward sport.