How does parkour affect the body? You may have thought about this if you are a beginner or have an interest in Parkour. Then, let me cut short that it has NO negative effect on your body. On the contrary, there are many health benefits of parkour that are not limited to your body but also improve your brain; just like any other sport.
Top 14 Health Benefits of Parkour
Parkour is a type of exercise in which a person runs on a path, as fast as he could and using his full focus he passes over all the obstacles in his way. During this, he has to prevent himself from falling or slipping and he cannot even stop.
In short, it is an extreme sport that requires the constant attention of the mind and the complete physical movements of the body.
Have you ever thought why do people do Parkour?
Some people take Parkour as a sport, mostly youngsters. While others enjoy it as an exercise. Parkour keeps your healthy, happy and heartiest. These are the few reasons people do Parkour and fitness is most important of all.
Let us first start with the health benefits of Parkour on our body
1. It involves full-body workout
Full-body workouts build strength and muscles for your whole body. Parkour involves a full-body workout in a balanced manner.
For example, while running your leg muscles perform most of the task. Similarly, while climbing hand and chest muscles are in movement. Thus, in a simple Parkour exercise, a Traceur ends up using all of his muscles.
To develop a beautiful body, you need a full-body workout. Also, exercising each limb of your body is the key to maximum strength and parkour helps you achieve that in a fun way.
2. Improves Endurance
In the definition of Parkour, it is mentioned that a person has to perform all the activities as fast as he could without taking intervals for rest. This means that you will have to push to your limits to achieve your goals. It will help in improving your overall stamina. In short, it will have further benefits as
- You will also feel energetic when you get up in the morning.
- Your working speed will be improved
- You will make fewer mistakes
Also, you will have to do the same tasks of climbing again and again, which will improve your work speed per minute thus increasing your stamina.
3. Increases Bone Strength
There are many parkour moves that involve and improve your bone strength. For example, the Quadrupedal move in Parkour increases bone strength.
There are many other moves in Parkour which make your spine strong. Parkour is meant to be safe so avoid jumping from heights.
Just like weight-bearing exercises, Parkour Vaults help in mineral-bone density increasing bone strength and size.
4. Gives Quick Decision-Making Ability
As discussed earlier, parkour is not just for the body. It also affects your mind. In Parkour, a traceur needs to overcome obstacles in the safest and quickest way. He may find a sudden change or a new obstacle in his track and he will have to find the easiest way to get around the obstacle. This develops quick and correct decision-making ability.
This ability further helps in practical life. Not just decision making but sudden decision making helps in calculating risks and losses. A person gets to know which is the safest way with the least amount of trouble.
5. Increases Confidence and Self-Trust
Do you want to start believing in your self? Yes, you can do it! Start doing parkour and you will start trusting your abilities.
Parkour helps you understand the maximum limits of your body. After the parkour training, you will be able to understand how much more is maximum for you and you will not fear from small things.
6. Helps in Focus
Ever heard of a precision jumping move in Parkour? It is a simple move in which the traceur jumps and lands on an exact spot. It might seem easy but it is difficult.
It requires focusing on your landing spot and completely forgetting about your environment and surrounding. This sense of focus further helps in real life and you will be able to solve issues in your mind easily. It also improves your focus on studying and work.
7. Makes you Creative
Most of the time parkour training is not done in a gym or artificial environment. You can train in an open environment or even in the jungle. This means a Traceur has to be creative to understand or build the training ground for himself.
8. Reduces Fear of Heights and Jumps
Parkour is all about jumping and heights. You can train parkour at ground level but there would be no Parkour without jumping. You will have to walk on walls, jump from heights and climb on high walls as well. Often trying will help you overcome your fear of heights.
9. Just like a Military Training
Military training teaches a single man to man combat. They make the person stronger and sturdier. As parkour itself is originated from Military Training then a Traceur is destined to be strong and brave.
It leaves positive effects on the body and develops patience. There are chances that a person gets small scratches and wounds while training. These small wounds teach patience and resistance against feeling pain.
10. Helps in Reflexology
Parkour is mostly done on foot without wearing any equipment and without riding any machine. A traceur is wearing just three items, parkour pants, a T-Shirt and parkour shoes. As the shirt and pants don’t affect much of performance that means good parkour shoes play an important role in the whole sport.
If the shoes are in barefoot design, there are maximum chances that a Traceur will benefit from Reflexology. It is a simple process in which applying pressure on different parts of the underfoot reduces pain and anxiety. It is an old Chinese traditional massage technique and thus traceurs benefit from it by simplifying doing Parkour barefoot or with barefoot parkour shoes.
11. Reduces Anti-social behavior
These days there are many organizations of Parkour and it is always suggested to do such extreme sport with a group of friends. This gives you the chance to get outside and meet others. Thus, reducing anti-social behavior.
It is not safe to do Parkour alone because you may get injured and you may need help thus doing in groups can also help you learn new tricks. 😉
12. Builds Core Strength
As Parkour involves a full-body workout, it increases the overall strength of your body. Parkour affects your muscles, bones, blood circulation, metabolic rate, in short, it has positive effects on your whole body.
Improvement in core strength also improves posture and stamina to work without being tired.
13. Anyone can do Parkour
There is no specific age to start parkour. From a child to a 100 years old can do parkour. There are many parkour moves which everyone performs in their daily life without knowing.
This is one of the best benefits of Parkour which means that you can start parkour at any time you wish.
Recommended: We have also written a complete post on how to get started in parkour.
14. Blood Circulation
Parkour is done fast without any intervals for rest which increases muscle activity and quick breathing. When there is no rest given to muscles, the energy through oxygen is not enough and thus they produce Lactic Acid as well as increased oxygen consumption as much as possible. With the increased demand for oxygen, the heart performs faster and thus, it helps in blood circulation.
These are the major benefits of Parkour. There are also many minor benefits that cannot be discussed here.