Coaching parkour: the instructed concerted actions of negotiating expectancies

ABSTRACT

This paper offers an ethnomethodological (EM) account of parkour coaching based on an eight-month participant observation conducted by the researcher in a parkour gym in Madrid (Spain). It addresses from a praxeological perspective the emotional dimension of parkour coaching: the tension balance between confidence and fear, expressed in the negotiation of expectancies upon athletes’ performances on each occasion. To do so, it provides a detailed EM analysis of the endogenous production of negotiating expectancies among members (coach and athletes) during parkour sessions. The coaching ethnomethods for negotiating expectancies constitute a social orderliness on each occasion. The negotiation of expectancies can lead to positive or negative breaching moments which demands the execution of some repair work to maintain the social orderliness of the parkour class. Such dynamic negotiation constitutes a key feature of the process along which parkour proficiency is achieved.

KEYWORDS:

• Parkour
• ethnomethods
• coaching
• expectancies
• instructed concerted actions

Introduction

This paper provides an ethnomethodological (EM) alternate to coaching skill acquisition in parkour. It addresses the emotional dimension of the coaching process by dealing with the topic of the tension balance between fear and confidence. Instead of considering these features as internal traits of the human psyche, it considers emotions as a matter of praxiological achievements, locally witnessable within the negotiation of expectancies among athletes and coach on each occasion. Thus, this paper explores the insitu social practices of negotiating expectancies: the interactional core of the shifting relationship between confidence and fear as proficiency develops.

Ethnomethodology’s programme is mainly concerned with the investigation of the endogenous production of social order (Garfinkel 2002). Social orderliness always implies normal patterns of activity, a concrete order generated insitu by members producing concerted actions in and as ethnomethods (Garfinkel, 1967). Ethnomethods are practical methods that members of a certain community (e.g. parkour) deploy to carry out their activity as usual business, as an ordered sequence of social interactions. In the case at hand, the negotiation of expectancies is part of the ethnomethods deployed by members (coach and athletes) through which a social orderliness known as a parkour class is achieved.

EM avoids a classical standpoint on skill acquisition from sports sciences, especially psychology (Hodges & Williams 2019); a philosophical approach of the acquisition of motor skills (Clegg & Butryn, 2012, Højbjerre Larsen, 2016, Aggerholm & Højbjerre Larsen, 2017); or a sociological analysis of a specific sport habitus (Wacquant 2022).¹ Instead, this paper offers an EM alternate of motor learning in and as the concerted work of members’ methods (ethnomethods) “during the actual practical business of coaching” (Miller and Cronin, 2012, p. 1113).

Definition and historical development of parkour

Parkour refers to a physical activity in which movement adapts to the urban or natural environment. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by a group of nine friends (David Belle and Sebastien Foucan being the most well-known) over several years in the region of Paris, in places such as Lisses and Évry. Even though the French term “Art du Deplacement” originally defined the activity, the cognate terms parkour and free-running also name the discipline (Gateau & Koebel 2022). Parkour is influenced by the adaptation of French military of George Hebert’s Methode Naturelle training system and guided by values of functionality and utility. Free-running emphasises creativity and expression, giving birth to more spectacular performances. Parkour is more commonly used as a generic term and includes free-running. In any case, the practitioners of the discipline are called traceurs and they aim to find a motor solution (Bernstein, 1996) to overcome different obstacles in their way.

Parkour has been labelled as an informal, non-competitive sporting activity known under different labels as extreme, alternative, whizz, action, or lifestyle sports (Wheaton 2004). According to Wheaton (2016), these activities provide an alternative to the mainstream sport values, decentring the focus from rules and competition towards creative, aesthetic, playful and performative expressions. In the specific case of parkour, the management of risk-taking (Gilchrist and Wheaton 2011) and the search for functionality and utility (O’Loughlin 2012), constitute core values. Also, in parkour, as in other lifestyle sports fun always relates to the serious matters of safety and risk taking (Corte, 2022).

As part of the greater exposure to the general public with the global expansion of the activity in the 90s, parkour underwent the same process as other lifestyle sports such as skateboarding (Sánchez-García 2017, O’Loughlin 2012). It became part of what Appadurai (1996) considered as global ethnoscapes: global communities with no fixed spatial location or boundaries, related to transnational cultural practices, strongly affected by new flows of information and digital technologies such as videos and social media. In these global ethnoscapes, the articulation between the global/local and the real/virtual (Kidder 2012) constitutes a very specific sense of space as a practiced space (Vertinsky 2004).

During the international expansion of parkour, the discipline underwent a process of professionalisation and institutionalisation, increasingly bringing the activity towards the mainstream sport model. The UK became in 2017 the first country in the world to officially recognise parkour as a sport (Sport England providing generous funding to help support and grow parkour participation). Also in 2017, parkour was included in the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG). This governing body organises World championships in the discipline (the 2022 edition was held in Birmingham) and bidding to include it in the Olympic programme. Current competitive parkour events include the Barclaycard Free-Running World Championship and Red Bull Art of Motions. In fact, Red Bull provides sponsorship of parkour professional athletes such as Dom Tomato that act as flagship for the brand not only in competitions but through social media.

Such drift towards the mainstream caused a lot of tension within the parkour community, as the original values could be compromised and sacrificed for the sake of competition and commercial interests. The global organisation, Parkour Earth is battling against what they consider an illegitimate appropriation of the discipline by FIG. They succeeded to avoid the inclusion of parkour as a sport at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Also, there are critical voices within parkour about the marketing of the activity as an spectacular extreme sport in movies and other public appearances (Chow, 2010), as it clashes with the values of functionality and utility of the original parkour (O’Loughlin 2012, p. 193).

Even though the practice of parkour is strongly bound to an urban landscape in the wild, more public and private initiatives have provided designed spaces with specific equipment such as parkour parks or parkour gyms. This fact has opened the opportunity for the creation of instructional programmes and coaching careers. It has also spread the age range of practitioners. Even though teen and young males are still the predominant demography, parkour academies have opened the floor to other ages for kids and adults programmes.

The emotional tension balance between fear and confidence in parkour

The practice of parkour induces not only new ways of moving and acquiring different techniques of the body (Mauss 1973[1973)] but also a different perception, and emotional engagement with the environment (Saville 2008, O’Grady 2012).

The novel relationship with the surrounding landscape, including new ways of perceiving the environment refers to the so-called “parkour vision” or “parkour eyes” (Angel, 2011, Angel, 2014, Bavinton, 2007, Ameel & Tani, 2012a). It denotes to the capacity to see ordinary elements (benches, rails, walls) in unordinary ways, linked to non-habitual playful actions for the urban dweller. For instance, instead of using stairs to go up or down different street levels, the traceur can climb up or let her fall off a wall to move through the space of those street levels. As Saville (2008) expresses: “the body in its excitement and playfulness finds new mobile relations with materialities” (p.900). Parkour practice helps to reinvent and re-enchant the urban surroundings in novel and creative modes.²

Parkour practice and training is tightly bound to emotions, especially fear. As Saville (2008) shows, fear has not necessarily a negative connotation. It implies a “highly complex engagement with place, which can in some circumstances be considered more a playmate than paralysing overlord”. (p.893) Fear induces an emotional tone to our moving relation with the surrounding space. It is not always experienced as unpleasant as it can add enjoyment to the activity. Elias and Dunning (2008) referred to this phenomenon when they expressed that sports and leisure activities provide a tension balance between emotional control/decontrol that generates excitement. In fact, it is the balance that counts: if the activity is perceived as too risky and dangerous (too much decontrol), it would be lived as dreadful and would not be enjoyed much. Nevertheless, the same goes if it is perceived as too easy (too much control); it becomes dull and uninteresting.

The tension balance and the expectancies surrounding it are not static but involve a dynamic process; it changes as proficiency advances. As we become better at something, the tasks that constitute a pleasing challenge can become too easy and boring, the horizon of excitement advancing forwards towards more risky challenges. Precisely, the way to advance in parkour is to try to solve new challenges, what is perceived not as impossible but “as not yet possible in the situation” (Aggerholm & Højbjerre Larsen, 2017, p. 8). It is just in this uncertain terrain in which parkour skills thrive; a terrain in which emotions (especially fear) play a key role: it can deter practitioners to perform what they want to do (generating frustration) but at the same time generates “a sense of deep attraction; indeed, a need and urge to make the trick possible” (Aggerholm & Højbjerre Larsen, 2017, p. 10). The confidence on one’s capacities battles against the looming fears of not making it and getting injured or/and discredited in front of peers.

The need for the more difficult each time must be explained not by the narrow narrative of the “adrenalin junky”. In fact, traceurs differentiate between confidence and plain unconsciousness: daredevils taking high risks without sufficient preparation are considered to be inauthentic, even “posers” (Clegg & Butryn, 2012, p. 335). The explanation needs a more nuanced theory of edgework (Lyng, 1990,) or fun (Corte, 2022). Thus, fear is not always unwanted as it is part of the tension balance (as long as it is bearable). As our skill level increases, our subjective perception of difficulty (and fear) for a given task of a certain complexity decreases (Famose, 1990). But also, the gain of confidence – as skill proficiency increases – changes fear from unpleasant and paralysing to exciting and playful attitude towards the environment.

A word of caution is pertinent here. Despite the relevance of concepts such as tension balance and emotions, this paper presents a different perspective on the phenomena expressed by such terms. Instead of considering emotions such as fear or confidence as internal states of individuals, they are re-specified as a matter of practical achievements. Thus, instead of a psychologised approach to emotions, this paper provides an EM praxiological account of them.

This EM praxeological view avoids conceiving fear or confidence as some emotional or psychological trait that can be avoided/gained by athletes and indirectly studied by researchers. Instead, it renders the locally witnessable features of the dynamic relationship between fear and confidence visible through the account of the negotiation of expectancies upon athlete’s performance on each occasion in and as coaching ethnomethods.

The structure of the paper is the following: the next section introduces the existing scientific literature on parkour and advocates for the need of an alternate analysis on parkour coaching provided by EM; then it briefly discusses methodological matters; it continues with the relationship between the social orderliness of parkour coaching and instructed concerted actions; then it presents different vignettes in which the coaching practice of negotiating expectancies can be analysed insitu; finally, it provides some concluding remarks.

On coaching parkour: the need for an EM alternate

The study of parkour in the academic literature unfolds in different directions. On the one hand, different studies consider parkour as a novel, active, and critical mode on the sedentary lifestyle of late modern cities (Lamb 2014, 2017, Ameel & Tani, 2012b, Kidder 2012). In fact, the public practice of parkour addresses urban pedestrians to take into account athleticism in connection with the surrounding environment (Atkinson, 2009, Ortuzar 2009, Mould 2009). On the other hand, some analyses connect parkour to the identity and meaning making of practitioners (Islas & Varela 2022); the intimate relationship between embodiment and spatiality (Aggerholm & Højbjerre Larsen, 2017); or to the exploration of self-limits, fear and risk (Saville 2008), conceiving parkour as edgework (Mango et al. 2021).

Parkour has been also studied from the perspective of skill acquisition. It has been considered as a “donor sport” for developing physical literacy and for the transference to other sports (Strafford et al. 2018, Strafford et al. 2021). Nonetheless, to what kind of skill are we referring when talking about parkour? Far from conceiving parkour as a mere physical, motor activity including running, jumping, vaulting, climbing, it always implies a mental and emotional aspect in what constitutes a truly embodied practice.

More specifically, the academic literature on the process of teaching/learning/coaching is still not very substantial in an unregulated sport such as parkour. O’grady (2012) conducted semi-structured interviews on learning parkour as a collaborative practice among members of practitioners constituting a community of practice. This mode of informal learning is common among adventure sport athletes, who tend to learn most from their peers and other informal forms of learning (Ellmer & Rynne, 2016) and had a higher value of peer support rather than athlete-coach relationships (Ojala & Thorpe 2015). Indeed, when training in group, coaching happens, even though as an indirect and not explicitly pursued. As Aggerholm & Aggerholm and Højbjerre Larsen (2017), in parkour “others incarnate masters and exemplars. Their tricks inspire and seduce the practitioners who observe them, and move them towards pursuing the not yet possible moves”. (p.9) Others can be bodily present or not, their exploits brought to the present situation, attached to specific features of the environment such as a far distant wall, a big drop,etc.

This process of coaching by example is not only, nor mainly, about technical aspects but about confidence and faith in that what it seems impossible can be done, that the challenge traceurs are facing can be broken.³ Moreover, as Corte (2022) indicates in the analysis of risk-sports such as big wave surfing, the presence of peers is key to producing emotional energy that can boost self-confidence during “fateful moments” such as those of breaking a parkour challenge. The presence of peers or people around to witness the performance provides at the same time support, pressure, and motivation (O’grady 2012, p. 159). This psychologisation of the emotional influence of peers is avoided by a praxeological EM analysis. As shown in some of the vignettes (see below 1.5), the emotional impact of peers upon expectancies must be rendered in the witnessable details of the concerted actions among participants negotiating expectancies.

On the formal practice of parkour coaching, Greenberg (2017) and Greenberg and Culver (2020) conducted semi-structured interviews with parkour coaches in North America to understand the way they learnt to became coaches. Nonetheless, they did not analyse any pedagogical strategy nor didactical interaction within parkour classes.

This paper specifically aims at the analysis of the formal coaching practice as it happens in real time and bound to a specific place: a parkour gym. More specifically, this paper explores the insitu social practices of negotiating expectancies.

This ethnomethodological account of the concerted work implied in coaching classes avoids the tamed version of coaching as it appears in coaching manuals. Such manuals present trimmed and pruned material ready to be applied in a structured fashion and fail to account for the “missing interactional what”, the “haeccities” of human concerted actions (Garfinkel 2002) as they happen in the wild (Hutchins, 1995) of concrete practices (Livingston 2008). We are interested in the insitu, indexical (context-bound), occasioned achievements of coaching practice as “‘ordinary organizational things’” (Garfinkel 2002). More precisely, we aim to show the circumstantial detail of the negotiation of expectancies as productions-in-their-course (Macbeth 2012, p. 199). The concerted actions of participants immersed in the negotiation of expectancies during parkour classes show a temporal in-courseness that renders its practical grammar visible. These detailed account of precisely what occurs in and as these occasioned coaching ethnomethods is what this paper is about.

A note on methodology

The research on this paper is based upon participant observation in a parkour gym located in Madrid (Spain) during eight months. The selection of such gym was not intended previous to the study. I had started taking parkour lessons at that place prior to the research and it became a natural candidate for my research purposes.

Parkour is still predominantly practiced within outdoor informal spaces in Madrid. Even though some advice an informal coaching occurs during the practice, no formal teaching is intended in those occasions. Therefore, this gym provided a unique opportunity to understand the parkour coaching process from a more formal perspective. Coaches at the gym were parkour athletes themselves who had been teaching at this facility since its opening three years previously.

Following Wacquant’s (2005) admonition about a carnal sociology (not of the body but from the body), my EM stance as a researcher takes full epistemic advantage of the visceral nature of social life to explore the emotional side of parkour coaching. I, as an embodied agent, constitute the very instrument of register and measurement. Nonetheless, I am not interested in my personal feelings and sensations as in auto-ethnographic accounts, nor I am detached from the social action with others. I am embedded within the concerted work of learning parkour among coach and athletes. I aim to render visible the social practices of negotiating expectancies that constitute the orderliness of parkour coaching.

To account for the concerted actions in and as ethnomethods during the coaching sessions, I use a registration method already employed in other previous research in fast-paced sports such as martial arts/combat sports (Sánchez-García 2013) and skateboarding (Sánchez-García 2022). It consists of brief mental jotting about very specific and relevant experiences and instances of concerted activity among members that I kept in my head to write them down as soon as possible after each training session.

The selection of the vignettes was purposefully oriented towards the aims of the paper, i.e. relevant cases in which the negotiation of expectancies was present and rendered the locally witnessable features of negotiating expectancies.

Negotiating expectancies as the social orderliness of parkour coaching

EM main concern is to render visible the endogenous production of social order (Garfinkel 2002). Social orderliness always implies normal patterns of activity, a concrete order generated insitu by members producing concerted actions in and as ethnomethods (Garfinkel, 1967). This phenomenon of order is always under construction and features a double dimension: (i) factual (order of events) and (ii) normative (order of values).⁴ Habitual patterns qualify as the normal activity. Any breaching of what is considered as the habitual ways of doing things can generate surprise, laughter but also frustration and anger.

Part of what constitutes the social orderliness of a parkour class is precisely what this paper is about: the negotiation of expectancies among participants (athletes and coach) in and as coaching ethnomethods. Such negotiation is part of the in vivo practices of instructed actions (Garfinkel 2002) during concerted practices among coach and athletes.

The embodied/embedded practices of instructed concerted actions highlight the fact that information, goals, and expectancies should not be considered as something stored inside the subjects’ heads and transmitted from mind to mind through the utterance of instructions. Information, goals, and expectancies should instead be conceived as orientations towards ordered sequences of events among members (Garfinkel 2008).

Seeing coaching as the concerted collaborative activity of instructed actions production, we avoid the view of the coach as a detached analyst of the situation, making diagnostics and prescribing instructions for athletes in isolation. Coaches’ decisions on how, when, where to act are always “embedded in action, where participation is seen as crucial in structuring thought” (Jones & Corsby 2015, p. 444). The key to didactic success lays in the joint effort of participants listening (not only with ears but with all the senses) to each other, staying together along the way. The negotiation of expectancies upon the athletes’ performance sometimes features positive or negative breaching moments which demands some repair work to maintain the social orderliness of the parkour class. The following vignettes provide exemplary cases of such concerted work of negotiating expectancies.

Negotiating expectancies

The following instances offer different occasions to witness the negotiation of expectancies as part of instructed concerted actions:

On this occasion, the coach is offering a baby-step approach to the challenge at hand. The offerings are always invitations with some expectancies on the coach’s side that must be negotiated with the expectancies of the athlete to set a working standard for the activity.

The exercise entails jumping from an elevated platform to a plinth, bounce from it to catch a vertical bar and do a turn around the bar while in the air to land on a plinth on the other side.

Juan⁵: Raúl, move up to the platform. How do you see it?

Raúl: [after carefully observing it] I do not see it.

Juan: and if you take a step back and start with a precision leap⁶?

Raúl: [I look at it again] No, I do not see it.

Juan: ok then, bring the plinth closer.

Raúl: [after moving the plinth] Ah … yes [I perform the movement] (Fieldnotes,14 December 2022)

On another occasion, the coach suggested a challenge (sets the expectancies) that the athlete considered too easy for his expectancies, so the latter decided to go directly for a more difficult move:

We must jump with a single leg into a ramp to fly over a fence. Juan suggests jumping onto the fence in the first try. Nonetheless, I see the exercise so easy that I jumped over the fence in the first try. Juan tells me: “Good, that’s fine also”, and I reply: “I saw it clear, so I jumped directly”.

(Fieldnotes, 14 February 2023)

As we see in the preceding excerpts, the expectancies of the coach are very open (not sure if you can or cannot do it, you see) and the initiative on the athlete side is heavier. Nonetheless, in other occasions, the expectancies of the coach are much more pressing (I know you can do this, or I know you cannot do this) and constraining towards the athletes’ actions.

On the following case, the expectancies of the coach constraint the athlete’s future actions, orienting him to perform in a more calm manner:

During a specific line in which we end up making an arm jump⁷ from a distance to catch the upper part of a wall, Carlos (a beginner) is kind of doing it right but without a lot of control and the coach Juan says: “Easier Carlos, I see you’re a bit out of control”. This being said at that precise moment involves a clear expectation on the next performances on Carlos side (you cannot do it like this;slow down a bit). In fact, Carlos complies and does it more calmly next time.

(Fieldnotes: 24 January 2023)

Nonetheless, the expectancies on the coach side can press the athlete towards more intensity, orient her action towards trying harder:

We are working in a line consisting of a small obstacle that we must jump over and immediately perform a kong vault⁸ over a plinth. Even though Miriam is able to perform kong vaults on a regular basis, she is having trouble with the coordination and distance on this occasion. The coach says “C’mon, you can do it” but Miriam answers: “No I can’t. I’m not familiar with doing kong from such distance” and she kept on stopping before the plinth, jumping into it and to the ground instead of performing the kong.

(Fieldnotes: 29 March 2023)

It is quite common when athletes of different skill level train together for the coach to group them and propose some variations on the actions for each group, even though the main course is maintained. Thus, you see different expectancies bound to different obstacles and/or movements along the same line:

We are almost at the end of the class, doing a compound obstacle course, bringing together different lines previously practiced. Román and Carlos are paired together on the high skill level movements and Miriam and me are paired on the lower skill level movements. Román and Carlos must perform a kong vault over a tall plinth to a precision landing on a pink plinth and continue with other movements. Miriam and me [Raúl] are supposed to jump up into the first plinth, then precision jump to pink plinth and continue. I feel I can kong vault to precision landing but the pink plinth is too far away. On the last round I decide to move the pink plinth a bit closer to the tall plinth. Coach Juan tells me: “That you have not moved it for nothing”. I perform the kong vault, land in the pink plinth and continue the route. After my round, it is Miriam’s turn and Juan tells her: “Now that Raúl has move it [the pink plinth] … ” and Miriam says: “yes, I don’t know” and I add “It is at the same distance as we were practicing before”. Miriam runs towards the tall plinth, kong vaults over it and lands in the pink plinth.

(Fieldnotes, 31 April 2023)

In this precise vignette, the coach had set some expectancies, Raúl changes the expectancies by moving an obstacle and setting a more difficult challenge and the coach accepts it but wants to reinforce and make sure the expectancies of the athlete (now you have to do it, go ahead). The negotiation of expectancies on Raúl’s side does not end there, but it affected the expectancies of Miriam’s performance too. The coach builds up upon the expectancies standard that Raúl had set to push Miriam’s expectancies higher. She doubts about it for a moment, but Raúl’s claim about their previous common training some minutes ago reinforces the new standard of expectancies again and Miriam complies, performing adequately.

During all the preceding cases of negotiation, the coach initiates and the athlete complies, denies, or changes the coach’s expectancies. Nonetheless, the initiation of the negotiation does not always start with the coach, nor the degree of expectancies are always the same.

For instance, on an occasion when we must perform an arm jump from a small plinth, the coach tells Andrés after a few tries:

“You move up to the yellow platform” [the platform is higher than the plinth, more distant and with a diagonal orientation, which makes the arm jump more difficult]. José asks if he can also move to the yellow platform and Juan’s answer is affirmative. After some tries from the plinth, I move up to the yellow platform to see the jump from this view, but I cannot see myself doing it so I descend and jump from the plinth again. Juan observes but do not say anything about it.

(Fieldnotes: 7 January 2023)

In this case, the expectancies of the coach on Andrés are much more pressing (you can and must perform from the yellow platform) and he (the coach) initiates the negotiation. Nonetheless, in the case of José, he initiates the negotiation and the coach lets it go, as if allowing the expectancies of the athlete to set the challenge. In my case, I tacitly (without saying a thing) initiate a negotiation and bring it to a close (I think I cannot do this), the silence of the watching coach providing me feedback without a word.

In fact, silent presence/non presence of the coach affects dearly the negotiation of expectancies:

We are doing arm jumps, the coach Juan tells Bruno: “Ready?”, positioning himself in a spotting location to help in case he falls back from the wall. Bruno performs several tries without any need from the coach/spotter. After that, he just goes away to supervise others.

(Fieldnotes 7 January 2023)

In this silent negotiation, the coach initially placed some expectancies upon Bruno’s performance (I know you can do it, but you may need some help), to which he complied and then set another kind of expectancies (you are ready to go without any help) by abandoning this place to help others.

The silent negotiation on expectancies is also pervasive in the way the pecking order of performance among athletes is structured during the session:

The session today is about cat jumps. As the other day I was performing really well, Juan tells me to go first in the proposed exercise. I do it but not so good and Laura, going second, performs much better than me. From then on, Laura will go first, Juan telling her: “Laura you go first”.

(Fieldnotes 12 January 2023)

In this case, the coach is setting and changing expectancies upon athletes’ performances just by adjusting the order of the sequence in which athletes perform. This strategy functions not just an accountable token of hierarchy among athletes but as the establishment of tacit expectancies about athletes’ performances during this session that can help their learning. Peers can be exemplary cases of right (or wrong) performances exhibited publicly and witnessably for the scrutiny of others. This offers the next performer a concrete example of incarnate execution of instructions so that the next new performance can be confronted and measured, the sequence order can be rearranged, and adjustments on expectancies applied if needed.⁹

The adjustment in this case implied that the coach placed some high expectancies on my performance that I could not live up to. As a result, I was sent to the back of the queue, shifting the level of expectancies on me from then on. However, in the negotiation of expectancies, other athletes play a role as well. Seeing someone like Laura achieving the required challenge helped me to develop more positive expectancies about the results of my own actions (this is feasible). Nonetheless, far from having a direct and positive effect on expectancies, it can have demoralising outcomes, especially if the change of the pecking order of performance sends a supposedly more advanced athlete to the back of the queue.

On many occasions, the expression of expectancies can be contradictory and/or unclear:

We are doing a kong vault over a tall plinth and Juan asked me: “Raúl, you are able to do the kong over the tall [plinth] one, right?”, to what I answered: “I think so” and he replied: “Well, I place this mat here just in case”.

(Fieldnotes: 31 January 2023)

In this case, the coach made a suggestion to check my own expectancies and when I replied: “I think so” (instead of “yes, of course” or “yes, sure”) he reacted as if I had expressed some doubts that required extra safety measures. His answer made me feel uncertain about my future performance, lowering my own expectancies.

Breaching expectancies

The negotiation of expectancies among members constitutes a key aspect of the social orderliness of parkour coaching. As the different vignettes of the previous section have shown, the negotiation of expectancies is always a contingent achievement. Such negotiation can lead to breaching moments in which surprise and elation can erupt, but also frustration and anger connected to underperformance or even accidents.

Breaching as surprise: breakthroughs in performance

As the following vignettes show, the breaching of expectancies can be surprising both for the athlete and coach:

We are cat jumping from a ramp into a column, but Juan [the coach] proposes a progression: first a splash¹⁰ into the wall, then low cat jump and then cat jump to the column. The progression feels easier to me than anticipated. The first time I try low cat jump I am able to use my free leg to drive the jump and got really far. I am really surprised! I look back towards Juan that gives me a startled gaze while exclaiming: “C’mon! That was smooth. Nice!”

(Fieldnotes 21 February 2023)

We are cat jumping through a line of three plinths. Carlos attempts to cat jump the first one to land and bounce in the second and cat jump the third. He succeeds in the first attempt so he stops at the end of the line, look back and Juan [the coach] who says: “you did not expect that!” In the following attempts Carlos repeats the sequence, each time better and smoother

(Fieldnotes: 22 December 2022)

Surprise in these cases indicates a positive breaching of the expectancies. It is as if a breakthrough in the skill proficiency has suddenly happened, and it is experienced as very rewarding both for the athlete and the coach. That is why those breakthrough moments are connected to positive feedback. They also help to set a new standard of expectancies on performances: the next turns of athletes exude more confidence as if the new normal has been upgraded.

Breaching as infraction: underperformances and accidents

Underperformances constitute a blatant infraction (negative breaching) of negotiated expectancies. They usually bring responses such as critiques, rejections or/and ironic reactions:

We are almost finishing, going through the compound route which involves a running jump to some pads. The coach has moved them a bit farther from where they were when we were practicing before. I think they are too far for me to reach them comfortably. When my turn comes, I go through the line of obstacles, jump but get short of the pad. Juan (the coach) claims in recriminatory voice: “C’mon Raúl … ” as indicating I should have reached the pad. I say: “It’s because this is the first [try]” as if asking for forgiveness.

(Fieldnotes: 24 January 2023)

In this case, the critical comment of the coach indicates that the negotiation of expectancies through which coach and athletes had already set a standard (a normal baseline) that should not be breached.

It is understandable why underperformances produce negative breachings of expectancies but, why accidents too? We must remember that one key aspect of parkour practice is the avoidance of unnecessary risks or reckless behaviour. When accidents happen or nearly happen, the coach always talks about these episodes commenting that “such and such a person has messed me up”, indicating that this person breached the expectancies placed upon his/her performance for the proposed challenge. Thus, accidents constitute negative breachings of expectancies on the performance level. Even though accidents differ from underperfomances in the degree of intention implied, they both let down the negotiated expectancies upon the athlete’s performance. That is why, on these occasions, the (near) accident can produce indignation from the coach and a plea for forgiveness on the athlete side as repair work to maintain the social orderliness of the class:

We are doing a line which includes an arm jump to a low wall. Advance athletes can jump directly to the wall but beginners such as me must use two consecutive jumps: the first to get closer to the wall and the second as the proper arm jump to the wall. I mess up and arm jump directly to the wall, hitting it with my tibias and knees. The ball joint of my left leg hurts a lot and starts to swell. The coach says to me: “What have you done? Are you nuts?” I mumble an apology and go back to the queue limping but trying to look as if I am ok

(Fieldnotes: 6 October 2022)

Nonetheless, on many occasions, the coach does not have the final comment: the negotiation of expectancies affects also to the consideration of the (near) accident as a breaching:

We are training rolls on the floor and on elevated surfaces. In this exercise we must jump to an elevated platform, perform a roll on it, fall and land on the other side with both feet. The width of the platform is not so big and there is also a wall on the right side of the platform that adds a difficulty to the task. On my first try, my left foot hits the wall. The impact makes me turn, losing control and falling to the ground head-first. Luckily, I place my hands on the floor and roll the fall without consequences. The coach says: “Good God! That was the only thing I was not expecting to happen”. Jorge says: “Really?! Because that was precisely the first thing that I have thought” and the coach tells me: “Well, you have rolled it fine. Are you ok?” I say yes and Carlos adds “The best thing is that he was saying ’Fuuuuuck’ as he was falling down”, making us laugh before resume the activity.

(Fieldnotes: 7 March 2023)

In this case, the negative attribution to the accident as a breaching is not so clear and it ends up with a (positive) laughing reaction as a consequence of the whole work of instructed concerted actions among members.

Conclusions

This paper offered an EM alternate analysis of coaching in parkour. It rejected the classical view on coaching as a one-way trade of information, instructions, and expectancies from the coach to the athletes during a training situation. Instead, it proposed a praxeological understanding of coaching as the instructed concerted actions in and as members’ (coach and athletes) ethnomethods to produce the local orderliness of a parkour class.

More precisely, the paper dealt with the emotional dimension of coaching parkour, involving a shifting balance between fear and confidence. The EM alternate addressed this topic through the insitu analysis of the negotiation of expectancies upon athletes’ performance on each occasion. The different exemplary cases expressed in the vignettes show the complexity of the negotiation.

Sometimes the coach proposed expectancies in an open and loose manner, whereas in other occasions, his expectancies were fuzzy or much more pressing. As part of the negotiation of expectancies, the coach used a variety of subtle ways to negotiate expectancies such as changes in the queue order, silent negotiations, presence, or absence of the coach, etc.

The athletes would comply, deny, or negotiate a change in the expectancies of the coach, but sometimes they would start the negotiation by changes in the surrounding equipment (e.g. the location of pads), or performing in a way that contravened what the coach had suggested because they deemed the exercise too easy. Moreover, the negotiation of expectancies was oftentimes not a dual matter (coach and an athlete) but a very collective affair: shifts in the expectancies upon the performance of one athlete affected also the expectancies upon others.

The negotiation of expectancies could lead to positive or negative breaching moments. Positive breachings included breakthroughs that were experienced as positive events, celebrated with intensity; whereas negative breachings included underperformances but also (nearly) accidents as they failed to live up to the negotiated expectancies that already set up a specific standard.

The take-home message for sports coaches is that they need to be aware of the fact that coaching is not a one-way transmission of knowledge from the one who knows (the coach) to the ones who do not (the athletes). Instead, coaching is praxeologically produced through a complex interactional system made of instructions, performances, expectancies, examples, copying, mimicking, and adjusting the personal execution of movements to the solutions found (or not) by the others and the concerted expectancies among participants (coach and athletes).

The negotiation of expectancies has been the main focus of this paper. The ethnomethods of coaching included the negotiation of expectancies among coach and athletes, constituting a local orderliness on each occasion.

Here, local implies different things at the same time: (i) habitual idiosyncratic methods for coaching in a specific setting (e.g. this specific gym), iteratively honed and concerted by those who have been coaching/being coached there since that setting existed; (ii) different conditions of class density within the specific setting (compare coaching on a one-to-one basis to a full packed class); and (iii) indexicality: contextual dependence on the circumstances of the just there-just then for negotiating expectancies during the instructed concerted actions of members.

As a limitation from an EM perspective, even though I had previous experiences in related disciplines (e.g. gymnastics) and was not new to coaching, I was new to parkour when I started the research. Following Garfinkel’s (1986, 2002) policy on “unique adequacy requirement”, I could have acquired a basic competence in parkour previously to the research in order to gain in-depth, insider knowledge and be able to provide descriptions of greater topical relevance for practitioners. Future research can address this limitation and provide further evidence to add to the corpus of parkour coaching studies from an EM perspective.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For an ethnomethodological reading of habitus in sport activities see Sánchez-García (2008).

2. The same occurs with other lifestyle sport practices such as skateboarding, generating news ways of moving and enjoying the city in unexpected ways (Borden, 2001, Borden, 2019).

3. “To break” in parkour refers to the moment when the solution of a challenge is achieved, at least in a basic, rudimentary way that can be further polished or cleaned.

4. Garfinkel’s early writings (Garfinkel and Harvey, 1963) already analysed this double dimension (factual/normative) on the issue of trust as a necessary background condition for social interaction to be produced in a mutually intelligible way. Trust implies that concerted actions are deemed to be oriented to a set of constitutive expectations regarding norms that all competent members of a specific community have at hand while interacting. This is part of acquiring competence in any activity, being a parkour class in this case.

5. All the names of participants except mine has been changed in order to keep their anonymity.

6. A precision leap is a technique in which the traceur jumps from one place to another, using a preceding running start to gain extra momentum behind the jump.

7. An arm jump (also known as cat leap) is a technique used to land in a vertical object, such as walls.

8. A kong vault (also known as monkey vault or cat pass) is a technique in which both hands are placed on an obstacle and are used to push over the obstacle while the legs are picked up close to the chest.

9. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this important insight.

10. Splash is a technique in which the traceur jumps towards a wall, hitting it with feet first to cushion the impact and get safely to the ground.