Below you find Jason Paul's responses to a research project on self-directed intra-stigmergy coordination through digital documentation and online sharing

Context:

Zoologist Paul Grassé (1959) defined self-directed stigmergy as 'the stimulation of termite workers by the very performances they have achieved induces accurate and adaptable responses'. This research project assesses whether this concept also applies in human systems and it identified athlete Jason Paul as a suitable case study due to his extensive digital documentation skills and habits. The overarching question, asked of Jason by email and answered in August 2025 by audio via WhatsApp (transcribed below), was: How does your own documentation of your parkour journey relate to stimulation, accuracy and adaptability?

Note:

The idea for asking this question came after watching a clip uploaded by Jason Paul in which he explains what 'breaking the jump' means in the context of parkour. I was then curious to investigate whether, and if so how, the cognitive transfer evidenced in the clip between individual and collective levels, in real time and across time, through observation and shared digital documentation would play out in intra-individual stigmergic coordination, more specifically in autodidactic learning. I calll the five questions below the 5Rs (Revist, Remember, Reassess, Recalibrate & Reinforce).

Revisit: Does looking back at your videos change the way you understand what motivated your original movements? If so, how?

Okay. So, does looking back at my videos change what motivated my original movements? I don’t think it changes the way I understand what motivated my movement necessarily. I think it’s it’s interesting to um see other people move at the same spot. I think that’s really eye opening to how you can see the same location many different ways. And that’s what’s really fun because a lot of times there’s awesome ideas hidden in plain sight. And I think it’s really like one of the most fun things for someone who does parkour is uh to take someone to your home spot because obviously you grow up in a certain part of town and you go to the same spots over and over and over again and eventually you get bored of doing parkour at those spots because you feel like, well, I’ve done everything that can be done here. there’s nothing new to do. And then eventually maybe someone visits you and you get to take them to your home spot which is boring to you but new to them. And a lot of times they will find something completely new to do at that spot which then allows you to see that spot in new light. But I guess to be more specific to your question, I do look back at some of my clips sometimes, not too often, but maybe like if I’m if I filmed something that day and sometimes you do uh combo in a way where you’re just very happy with how it worked. Like a lot of times, most of the times, whatever you perform, there’s some sort of flaw, some sort of kink, some sort of misstep that just uh prevents you from fully being satisfied with your performance. And then other times it just like rarely comes together perfectly. And then it’s just very satisfying to look back and I feel quite uh self-centered and egotistical like I’m masturbating to a photo of myself while I do that. But I have to admit I do uh enjoy watching those ones back and just be very happy and satisfied when I do that. Um, and then there’s also times when I after doing parkour for a very very long time, what happens to me is that I might forget that I know certain tricks, which sounds weird, but you you go through phases where you do a certain move a lot and then you stop doing it and then you kind of forget that you were doing that and then sometimes you’re putting together a combination or a run and you’re like, “Ah, what trick would fit here? what could I do right now? And then it’s not really you might not have access to the whole library of tricks like your body can do them but your mind has forgotten about the trick. So, um I think that can be especially useful if say like I would watch maybe like a compilation that someone else made of me or some of my old stuff to to kind of remember like if I maybe go into a video shoot or let’s say I was now going into a competition, I might rewatch some stuff to be like, hey, what is actually some of the stuff that um I can do that I maybe forgot and that I might want to revisit and then use in this opportunity. And then there’s also the interesting side effect that might happen to me is where a lot of times you do something quite well, but it’s very normal to you. So, you’re not as emotionally attached to it or you’re not very excited about a certain trick because it’s came maybe easy to you cuz you always want to learn those tricks that come hard to you. Those are always the most impressive. You always look at other people and you’re like, you always notice the things that they can do which you cannot do. But there’s also of course for all of us things that come easy to us which don’t feel special to us but to other people they might be very impressive. And then let’s say somebody makes a compilation of my most impressive tricks or jumps. Then it’s quite interesting because I get to see their perspective on my move. What do they think is my coolest stuff? And a lot of times that is not necessarily what I expect. I’m like, “Oh, they thought this was worth putting in compilation. Okay, this is easy to me. Maybe it’s quite impressive to others.” So, uh that is um also maybe interesting. Okay, next one.

Remember: What happens when you recall specific moves you have seen in your videos of your own training and/or competitions?

Uh, what happens when I recall certain tricks or movements? I feel like I kind of went into that already. Give me a second to see if anything new comes to mind. I think it’s definitely like a sense of like feeling that move if you’re just looking at it cuz so much of what we do is visualizing it. So, I think uh you can definitely use like a video of a prompt to kind of put yourself in that same mindset or let’s say I haven’t done a trick in a long time and then that trick might feel scary again because it’s a it’s uh just like I I logically know I can do it but my body doesn’t have the ability to recall what the move feels like as well as I it used to. And then I could rewatch that clip to kind of help myself visualize it. It’s almost like almost like a steroid version of being able to visualize it because you can uh you actually it’s not just you imagining yourself doing it. You can actually watch yourself doing it because it does happen that you you kind of um become scared of a trick. And this can especially happen if you were able to do a trick and then you have an injury or you fall doing that trick and then you have to overcome that fear again. And it might be bigger than even the first time when you learned that trick.

Reassess: How do you judge whether techniques shown in your videos will work in new locations or situations?

How do you judge whether the moves I did before will work in future locations? I think it’s I think that’s very intuitive. I think that’s not really it’s not really a system to it. I think some tricks are just very location specific and you need a certain setup for it and then other tricks like it’s almost like a checklist like oh if I have this and this and this I can do it. And then there’s obviously always the mental component which will make something more difficult. I think that can be the hardest one to judge is how will I perform the same move with a different surrounding, right? Because I might be able to do a let’s say what is a good example? Let’s say I can do a backflip on a tatami mat. Now, if that tatami mat was now two stories high up, in theory, I should be able to perform exactly the same move. But how does that feeling change, right? Because now I might be more scared. So, I might under or over rotate that trick because I’m trying to do less or I’m trying to do more. So, that is uh the hardest to judge. And then again, what if that’s 30 stories high and now someone’s filming me or there’s a live audience, how does that affect me and how the move feels? Like for me, for example, I noticed uh usually if I’m in front of a live audience on a stage with a lot of people watching, that energy will it will give me a little bit more energy in my tricks. So, I might have to be more careful not to over rotate my tricks or I have to intentionally slow myself down because I know I’ll be caught up in the energy of the moment and I might be going too fast, faster than necessary to make my moves look good. And then I will get to the end of my run to the last trick and I won’t have enough energy left because I’ve just been going too fast. So I might have to intentionally try to go slower. But that is not really triggered by watching a video. Like I wouldn’t go back and do that. It’s just intuitive experience just how you would say deal with you. Say you’re trying to approach a girl in a bar. It’s like a classic example where the average dude might experience some fear and a heightened state, right? You do that often enough, you’ll get less scared. But I don’t think it’s or you you’ll know how you feel and you’ll be able to anticipate that and you’ll be able to kind of prepare your mind for that and know that oh whenever I talk to a girl I tend to talk way too fast and swallow my words. It’s like okay remind myself to like calm down and um but I don’t think watching a video might help you become more aware of those flaws. Because a lot of times the way you do a move and it the way it feels subconsciously is different from what you’re actually doing. So you might feel like I’m going so fast, but then you look at the video or you might feel like a classic one is going on very many tangents here, but bear with me. A classic one is when you’re doing a back flip, you tuck your knees in to rotate faster. And a lot of times it feels like you’re tucked really small because obviously you want to tuck small because the smaller you tuck your legs in, the faster you’re going to rotate, the less likely you’re going to land on your head, the more beautiful your trick is going to look. So you want to tuck into a tiny ball with your knees all the way up to your shoulders and your heels pressed against your butt. That’s the perfect shape. And you might think you’re doing that, but then you watch a video back and you’re like, “Oh my god, I am way off. I am not tucked at all.” So that is where video is very very useful and that is actually now that you say it um what we don’t do what is not useful is to watch back a very old video really what is sorry it’s very windy I’m just going for a walk is very useful is to watch back a video that is um that just happened so say I’m practicing this trick and I just did it and it felt a certain way. I’m still very much aware of how a move feels and then I can watch a video to kind of adjust my performance because what will happen, right, is you do a trick. Let’s say I’m trying to stick a jump. I’m running and I’m maybe not the best example, but we’ll go with it. Let’s say I say I’m trying to stick a jump across a gap and I I have to gauge how much power I put into my takeoff. So maybe I give it like uh it’s a it’s kind of a shitty example. Let’s say doesn’t really make sense. Let’s say I’m trying to do a double back flip. So, in a double back flip, I have a certain takeoff angle, and I feel like I’m taking off straight up into the air. And that’s what I want to do because that’s going to get me enough height for my double back flip. And I have a subconscious feeling for how much I’m leaning forwards or backwards as I take off. And I might try to go at a 45° degree angle, and that I feel like I’m hitting that angle. and I’m not making the rotation as nice as I would like to. So then I have a subconscious feeling of what 45° feels like to me. But then I watch back the video and I realize, oh, actually I’m at 60°. So a subconscious 45° feels is actually a 60°. So what I have to do is I have to aim for 30° subconsciously which will translate to 45° takeoff angle in real life. So that’s kind of how you you would adjust your felt experience of reality to what’s actually happening. And that only really works if you have an immediate feedback. So ideally you just have someone rolling as you do it and you can watch it back right away and you can adjust it. And uh that subconscious feeling it’s somewhat consistent over a long time but the more recent you can adjust that it the more powerful becomes. And one of the best examples for that uh where they implemented it really well was at the Woodward which is a gymnastics and cheerleading camp in the US. what they had uh at different points in the gym, they would have a camera rolling 24/7 and that camera would then project the video onto a TV. So, it was a live feed, but it wasn’t quite live. It had, I think, a 20 second delay. So whenever you would do a trick into the foam pit, you would have enough time to do the trick, climb out of the foam pit, look at the screen, and then be able to watch the replay of you doing the trick. And that was really nice because it has this automatic setup for a feedback loop. And it was really, really useful. And um one last thing I want to say, what was it? Damn it, there was one more thing. feedback loop right away. You can see it. Yeah. It’s also the reason if say I’m doing a production, that’s kind of a problem from real life training versus production. If I’m doing a video shoot and there’s a camera crew rolling, then I might fail a trick and I want to do another attempt as soon as possible. I’m like, I have all this subconscious data I just collected from my failed attempt. And if I go right away, then I can actually adjust my action based on that data. But if I wait for even like 2, three minutes for the camera crew to reset, cuz they’re like, “Oh, we want to change the lens.” No, no. Then all that data is much weaker and the adjustments I make won’t be as accurate. That was a lot, actually. Damn it, that prompt worked. Okay.

Recalibrate: Does watching your own videos make you change your approach (technique and/or mindset)? If so, how? If not, why? Does this relationship have anything to do with ‘exponential learning’, like you becoming a world champ from complete beginner in just five years?

Hum expert. Okay, I just totally you I did not realize your next question was recalibrate. I just read that and I was like oh [ __ ] that’s totally what I just described. Um now you had one more point in that is which was does that recalibration help you with exponential learning? Good question. I mean in a way yes because I mean the sooner you realize a mistake and the sooner you can recalibrate the sooner you can start reinforcing good habits and that is why I recommend to anybody who’s learning parkour that they film themselves from day one which is counterintuitive because a lot of people starting out parkour they it feels uh awkward and clumsy and not impressive like You’re doing these awkward jumps and tricks, none of them which feel noteworthy. And uh it might feel a little bit preposterous to put down a camera to capture this clumsy jump or vault for history to preserve, but it is very useful for all the reasons I described before where um watching a move back will really help you recalibrate your move. And that is what I did from a very early from my very early beginnings at parkour. And I plan to make a video on this or a little bit of a podcast episode for my newsletter, which is what I call adopting a parkour parent or role model, which is basically what I did when I was around 16. There was this uh little bit younger little bit older than me parkour athlete from the UK who was the most famous most uh yeah sought after parkour athlete at the time. His name was Daniel Ilabaka and he was kind of the first guy who had like the biggest jumps, the hardest tricks and really beautiful effortless style. And he was not just my role model. He was a many people’s role model. And what I would do is I would re-watch his videos frame by frame. And then I would go out and I would do the same tricks as him, which I was just wondering like I’m I’m doing the same front flip as Daniel Ilabaka. It’s the same trick, but his just looks so badass when he does it. Well, mine doesn’t look as cool. What’s the difference? And that’s when I would record my trick from the same angle. And then I would do a frame by frame comparison like what is he doing differently? Oh, he’s kicking out his legs in a certain shape. Oh, he’s tucking his legs in tighter than me, which results in like more of a contrast in his moves. And then what happens is that you automatically understand the principles that make his moves look more beautiful. And then you’re able to apply those principles to all your other tricks, right? Because you’re able to get not just that specific like you yeah you learn the principles behind what makes it look good that way. At least it worked for me. Um and the sooner you do that the better I believe. And there was something else I wanted to say about that. Oh yeah. And then of course you will your taste will determine who you pick as your role models. And then that will result ideally in your own little cocktail of the moves you you love and the moves you admire will then inform your own style through that sort of copy pasting of other people’s moves you admire. And yeah, you learn every time you copy. Like I’m just realizing that today where my daughter like in a way copying something I think is a great way to actually properly look at it. My daughter yesterday she was like, “Hey, can you draw this? Can you cover this drawing on this page in my witches book for me?” And I’m like, “Oh, come on. Just sit down and draw something. Don’t make me copy something for you.” But I’m like, “All right, whatever. You’re my girl. I’ll copy this page for you if that’s what will make you happy. So, I sit down and I redraw this title page that had like some different flowers on it and stuff like that. And just by copying it, I’m like, damn, I’m actually realizing all the little branches and how how this was done just by copying it. I’m like, oh, cool. So, it it applies across disciplines for sure. It totally reminded me of that.

Reinforce: What parts of your videos more often hint to you what you have been doing right in your journey, and so it is worth being reinforced?

um reinforce what part of part parts of my videos hint at what I’ve been doing, right? I feel like I kind of touched on that with the video compilation where you can you can recognize what parts of your actions resonate with other people. I think that has been interesting for me to to build on especially in a career sense, right, where I’m like, oh, this is actually a trick that is easy for me but impressive to others. So, if I’m going to do a competition, what trick am I going to put in my run? Am I going to put a trick that is difficult for me and is not impressive to others? No. I’m going to pick the lowest hanging fruit. So, a trick that is impressive to other people but easy to me as much as I can. So, um that is definitely where kind of it it helped me as an athlete to see what do other people react to and how can that um help me find the my space and my role in this community and what aspect of the sport am I uniquely designed to progress and therefore move the whole enterprise forward, right? Because maybe there is already somebody who’s doing the like most difficult tricks and that wasn’t me. I’m like, “Oh, everybody else is doing more difficult tricks than me, so maybe I’ll pick something else to make my thing.” So that I guess it does reinforce certain behaviors.

Yeah. And then actually recently I’ve been I’ve been trying to improve how I capture information in a way that’s sharable. For example, I I’ve been collecting parkour spots in Japan on my Google Maps. And then people would hit me up and be like, I’m coming to Japan. What are there any parkour spots? I’m like, oh [ __ ] I should probably organize this information in a way that is a usable asset to other people. And so I’ve been I’ve been working on that. And then I also was trying to kind of note down all the Japanese parkour athletes and where they live because that’s confusing to me and I would love to be able to have kind of a rolodex of Japanese parkour athletes for upcoming projects. And I was like, “Oh, I should organize that.” And I’m like, “Why don’t I just organize all the parkour people I know?” like and I was like I have a list of uh 3,000 people I follow on Instagram which are probably 30% of that are parkour people who I’ve met over the years during my travels and it’s just like the rolodex is already there in my Instagram followers list. I just have to go through that and I have to organize them by country and then that’s a list of people I can share to anybody who’s starting parkour because if you start parkour one of the hardest things is to find other people who do parkour. It’s not like there’s a parkour phone book or even an online search where you can look up parkour athletes in Tokyo. You can’t do that. The only way for you to find someone is either you’re lucky enough that there is a gym who cares about search engine optimization or you happen to know someone or you happen to run into a parkour spot or you know a guy who knows a guy who then can add you into a Facebook or WhatsApp group but it’s just difficult. So I’m like, well, I have it takes me what like if I really would sit down a day of work to organize my rolodex and then I probably have a list of like not a parkour athlete in every city, but I would have probably someone in almost every country. So if you wanted to really find somebody, you could go, “Oh, here’s someone in North Carolina. let me send them a message and see if they know anybody close to me or yeah so I think that’s become kind of an interesting topic he’s like oh it’s it’s really hard like it’s really hard to organize information in a way that’s useful and sharable with other people. I I’ll send you the website that I’ve started building which is just using the notion app which is more of a productivity app people use but you can use it to build basic websites.