Week 2 of my Nov 30 day Pk Challenge. This week I concentrated on Basics and Safety in Parkour. Here are just some of the things I thought about last week:
-Landings and the Roll
-Safety
-Conditioning and Endurance
-Exploration
-Repetition
-Control
-Friends and Fun Jamming
Landings and the Roll
Its important to protect yourself as you do parkour. The activity of parkour can be dangerous but if practiced smart it doesn't have to be a concern. This is why so many people start of teaching landing and the roll as one of the first things in parkour. having an understanding of how to land and roll is important for emergency situations and in general allow you to do parkour for longer periods.
Rilla Hops put out a great video recently about falling safety. http://youtu.be/MC86OHsv-EI
They cover everything from: precisions, cats, undershooting, overshooting, and falling back, forward, and sideways.
Here is an entertaining roll tutorial from Apex movement http://youtu.be/EemFtE9V0R4
Last week I made an effort to go out and train these basics. I took a lot from Rilla hops into my training. I landed a lot of precisions short on purpose forcing me to fall back utilizing safety falls as well as lot of cat leap prevention stuff.
Safety
Safety is probably one of the most important things when training. This usually involves checking surfaces for loose materials, and also to see what kinds of grip you get with shoes and hands. This also includes the idea of finding your escape route, or knowing what kind of safety measures you will have to take if you're to fall in a jump or movement.
Conditioning and Endurance
This is probably one of the least developed part of most athletes basics. I know it is for me. Next week I will be diving more specifically into conditioning. Conditioning is the best way to get more power and strength for your movements. Plus it builds more endurance so you can train longer. Conditioning can be fun and rewarding. it all depends on how you go about it.
Exploration
It is good to explore what you are capable of doing with movement and to explore new places. Exploration is how you grow and lean about many things pertaining to parkour and life. Plus it is one of the more exciting and rewarding aspects of parkour.
Repetition
This another important basic thing in parkour. It is usually through the repetition of movent that you get better. As you repeat movement you are slowly tweaking little things which in the long run will make you more efficient and build up muscle memory. As you struggle to achieve something new, repeat it again, your confidence will increase as you complete the action. You know you have fulfilled the idea of repetition on a specific movement when you preform it and the movement feels good. Its hard to explain, you just know that the motion was performed well.
Control
Control comes from a lot of aspects of parkour but also encompass' many of them including: technique, power, flow, and many other basic concepts all in one package. Besides control in the movement there is also control over the mental sides of parkour. these would be your ability to concentrate, imagine, and overcome different kinds of movements.
Friends and Fun Jamming
Parkour Should always be fun, even if you are doing a difficult workout or a long training session. It should be a fun and rewarding activity you can do alone and with friends. On Saturday Last week, Vinnie Coryell and some of the guys from Move to Inspire came up from Grand junction CO. We had a fun jam with them up at the University of Utah talking and training together. (Here is their edit of the Jam. http://youtu.be/GHyL00UzzBs?list=UUMb82rZ1DlvkG8iDdh2WVAA) It was great doing Parkour with some new friends. I have always stated that one of my favorite part of parkour was the social aspect of it. Many of my good friends are ones I have met through parkour. I think that the social side of parkour is one of the things that gets and keeps guys in the sport. With friends there is support and encouragement.
Injury Prevention and Longevity
This Sums up the basic topics of landings, safety, and conditioning. All of these lead to the idea of "parkour 4 Life" its not just a saying, parkour 4 Life encompasses the longevity of staying in parkour and injury prevention. There is a reason why for my 30 day challenge one of the requirements is to do parkour only 6 days a week and not every day. Sometimes your body needs a little rest. You can listen to what your body is saying to you as you train or throughout a week to know what to do next. Listening to your body is important to help prevent more injury and just to be aware of how you feel so you can condition, stretch, or restrain from certain activities.
The basics of parkour. Hope you learned a little something. I could probably go more in depth with each of these and probably will in the future. If you think there are any basic things i may have forgotten let me know your thoughts.
