Posted by “About 25% of all play is what’s called locomotor play. So, if you leave kids alone, at least a quarter of their time will be spent in very physical, very active play. All kids want to do that because It’s what we evolved to do – to move over terrain.”
In April of 2025 I had the pleasure of speaking to Libby Norman of Absolutely Education about how and why parkour is so important in helping the next generation of kids to move more, with more freedom and more confidence. Spaces like the London Parkour School were devised for precisely this purpose.
With phone-based childhoods becoming the norm, followed by increasingly sedentary adulthoods, and a general trend towards safetyism and increased restrictions on what kids are allowed to do, the future isn’t looking great for the physical and psychological health of modern humans.
The only way to reverse this is to get this new generation of kids moving more, so that they fall in love with their own physicality.
I can’t overstate the importance of this. And there are solutions, with parkour and more free-play being a huge part of it.
Dan Edwardes 