You may have seen guys on social media doing thrilling Parkour acts, and you wish to be there instead of them. You want to get as healthy as daring and as skilled as them? It is possible.
This following guide will help you take baby steps about what it takes to become a traceur? How to start parkour and how you can start learning and practicing it from a park near your home.
10 Steps to Learn and Start Doing Parkour
Before you think that Parkour means jumping like a monkey or running like a Cheetah, it is not just Parkour. First, you have to understand what parkour is. It is more than this, and it is not only physical training, but It is the training of your mind as well. So, let us start by preparing your mind
Below are some tips combined with related videos but if you are not willing to check videos than there are some best parkour books as well which are also written by experts.
1. Prepare your Mind
You can be skilled and fit enough to walk on a rope, but what if you don’t have the confidence to walk on a wall just a few meters high?
So let us start by making your attitude right
- Have the desire to explore: Connect with your inner child, see where you stopped learning more. Observe how much high, and far you can already jump. Note your limits, and the next step would be to improve these.
- Be Confident but know your limits: If your weather is not supporting you to learn, overcome it, and go for training. However, know your limits. You should understand that it is daring to jump from a high building, but knowing how much minimum height is maximum for you is the real Parkour. Sports should never cross extreme limits. Although Parkour is a fully independent sport that requires no equipment yet needs to have control over your body through your mind. It means there are minimum chances of an accident as you are not using any machinery and you have full control.
- Practice with others: It is much safer to do such extreme sports with friends rather than doing alone. Also, you get a chance to learn from each other and work in coordination.
- Always be safe: It is not good that you are training and get injured and now you are not able to train for weeks or months. So, do not go for a high jump if you do not know what can happen if you do not land safely.
Now your mind is ready for Parkour, so let us get into the real work!
Make sure your body is ready: It is okay if your body is not athletic, but if you are over-weight then even beginner moves would be a hurdle. So, cut down your weight to normal. After that, try to flex your muscles every day and start doing some basic jumping before starting practice.
2. Improve your balance
Learning balance and then improving it is the first and foremost step in learning Parkour. You should be able to balance yourself on a rail or a thin wall. It requires the focus of your mind. Just be in the moment and put your steps carefully, start from walking on a single line on a road, and then ridges and finally on a wall.
3. Practice Safety Shoulder Roll
There are many ways and many names of this move. Some call it shoulder roll, and others call it safety roll. Whatever you saw, the move is the same. But there are also many ways to do it. The most important to know are the three ways that are also taught and demonstrated in the above video.
It is essential to learn this move because the next moves we are going to learn to involve jumping from a higher point. So, you need to now move to land safely on the ground without harming your body.
4. Learn to Land Properly
So, you have learned the above three tips. You were balancing on a wall, and suddenly, you slipped. Here, this move will save you, and combined with safety shoulder roll, and you are a half ready to call yourself a traceur.
It will teach you how to land properly after a jump. You should be able to stick to the ground after landing instead of falling with your weight.
5. Precision Jumping in Parkour
Once you have learned to balance, precision jumping will become a lot easier to do. To start learning precision jumping,
- Find any spot a bit higher from the ground. Even 1/2 feet would work.
- Now, slightly move your arms behind your waist and jump.
- Try to land on the spot and then try to stick on it, instead of your body weight taking you away.
6. Practice Parkour Quadrupedal Move
As visible by name, Quadrupedal means moving on your four feet (2 hands and 2 feet). It looks a bit weird, but you will have to mimic how a monkey moves and practice it going forward and backward as well.
You can practice it for a week, and then you would be able to move in all directions and even turn quicky.
7. Learn Parkour Turn Vault
If you are serious in learning parkour for whatever reason, turn vault will help you perform free-running safely. It is for beginners and is used to pass over rails.
It is a prerequisite to the palm spin move as well, which you will learn in Advance Parkour. So, if you want to progress as parkour, you need to master this Turn Vault.
8. Parkour Safety Vault
Safety is all about Safely Passing a simple blockade. Which can be a rail, a cement block, or something like this. It is not as easy as it seems. A bit of mistake, and you will end up with a fractured arm. So, watch the above video clearly and use two hands to get as much strength as you can.
Once you practiced the basic Safety Vault, it would be the time to increase the distance or add variations by adding spin Vault to it.
9. Wall Run/Tic Tac
This is one of the moves you might be waiting for. Of course, I wanted to learn it quickly, too, because you feel yourself like a superhero who is defying gravity. More than that, it is the famous Matrix wall run move.
Be careful and start this with just one step and then move on to three and four steps. While learning the first step, you need to learn and focus on the trajectory and remember. Also, you will need a good run up and excellent grip. You can get extra hold from parkour shoes with grip.
10. Combine All Above Moves
Yes, you have learned all it takes to start parkour. If you have read and watched all parkour gymnastics taught above with the related videos attached to them, congrats!, you are a Traceur.
Now, only one crucial thing is remaining, which is, combining all of the above moves and performing them at once. It is simple and easy. You have to gather all you have learned, create a track in your mind, and find the right place with appropriate obstacles to perform above moves. Then, you have to do them one by one on the track but as fast as you could.
Once you have repeated all the moves several times in a single take, you will have to work on your speed. Try to minimize delays to a certain point that you do not need to think, and your impulses start performing the right moves. All it takes is practice.
At the end: Avoid Following Mistakes
Avoid the following mistakes, and you will be able to learn parkour quickly. It is okay if you do them the first time, but only a fool repeats the same mistakes.
- Start small and then go for big. Do NOT aim for Big in parkour. Build your strength and then do big drops.
- Avoid landing on flat feet. Learn to land properly and use that move as much as possible. Landing on straight feet will affect your heels and joints in the long term.
- Do NOT try flips until you have completed your beginner training. Always start them in a safe environment.
- Learn to climb the wall, and while doing that, do NOT use your knees to get up on the wall.
- Avoid somersaults until you are at the Advance level.
So, let us end the beginner parkour training tips with our Triple T formula,
- Train Free: You have to “train without using any equipment.” Remove the fancy shoes you are wearing and go barefoot or at least get barefoot parkour shoes. You have to feel the ground and get maximum response from it. No need to wear any smartwatch or things like that. Empty your pockets, a shirt, a pant, and a thin sole shoe is enough to train for parkour.
- Train Regularly: You want to be right in parkour then get zero days off. Train daily, so every move makes a memory in your muscles.
- Train again and again: You are going to fall, but you should be able to get up and start running back.
Before ending, here are answers to your frequently asked questions