Summary of survey results and future perspectives

First of all, I want to thank all of you who participated in my survey. In this post I’m going to analyse the answers and give you a short summary of the key results. Furthermore, I’m going to draw a conclusion and display some possible future perspectives of parkour and freerunning.

ANALYSIS OF THE SURVEY RESULTS

The results include twelve answers of experienced practitioners of the discipline. The first five questions provide detailed information about their background. 83% of the respondents are male while 50% are between 18 and 25 years old. It’s representative for parkour and freerunning that all of them are still between 13 and 34 years old. In addition to that, 83% of the respondents are students whether at high school or higher education and a great amount of them have been practicing for 1 to 2 years. Moreover 67% are already practicing in a sports club. It is not representative for the whole discipline because the majority of the respondents are fellow members of the Hellerhofer Sportverein. This fact caused experienced respondents to share answers and opinions about the topic.

The second part of the survey includes different questions about the preferences and opinions of traceurs and freerunners. The following bar chart shows that most of the respondents agree with the statements ‘Weekly and structured training units help me to stay motivated’ and ‘Practicing in a group is inspiring’. The other two statements don’t provide such a clear preference.

The question about what a sports club should provide was mostly answered with ‘Training halls’ and ‘Professional obstacles and gymnastic elements’ while ‘Outdoor parkour parks’ and ‘Regular competitions or tournaments’ don't seem that important.

Finally, the last section deals with some specific statements. The majority thinks that ‘Sports clubs restrict the freedom and independence of this discipline’ but some of them also agree that the membership fees (e.g. 12, 5€ per month) are worth it.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

To conclude I compared the different topics and information of my blog with the key results of the survey. The construction of parkour and freerunning in usual sports clubs has some advantages, for example a training hall and professional obstacles. On the other hand, many advantages of clubs are already covered by the discipline and its practitioners itself. The majority of communities are well organized and have their own structured and motivating training. Above all, the open minded and friendly mentality of practitioners cause a great solidarity.

In the future the parkour and freerunning communities and individual teams will continue to grow and get more structured. But also the number of clubs which offer the discipline will slowly increase. The clubs are especially for younger children interesting who are not that independent. I’m excited about the future and looking forward to the next developments of parkour and freerunning.