Thread: Tell me about parkour.

I have a bit of experience with parkour, and it's a ton of fun. The most important thing you have to remember, is that parkour is about getting from point A to point B, as quickly as you can. It's not about getting from point A to point B looking as cool as you can.

With that out of the way, I feel that the core thing you have to practice is your arms. Often you'll be hanging by your arms, and you need that muscle power in order to pull your self up and move forward. Some of it is also technique of course, and sometimes with the right amount of momentum and correct technique, your arms won't need to do that much work.
So basically:

1) Do pushups
2) Do pullups
3) Do situps

Being able to lift your own weight with your arms, will make vaulting and climb-ups easier. A climb-up is where you are hanging by your arms and then pulling yourself up and onto whatever you were hanging by.

About injuries and safety, the most important thing in my opinion, is to not underestimate distances and drops. Remember your momentum, how far can you jump from a stand still, how far can you jump when you're running? This is all stuff that you should naturally and seamlessly consider everytime you jump. If you are thinking of doing something that might be risky, like balancing on a thin rail, make sure you scout out the material. Some stuff your shoes will stick to, some stuff you'll slip and fall on no matter what.

Surprisingly, wall running is actually very easy and will probably be something you learn pretty quickly. It's an amazing tool when it comes to scaling a wall, and when you get better at it, you'll be amazed at how easily you can climb very tall walls.

And kudos to you for going into this as a woman. It is perfectly possible in my opinion and if you find people to practice with, I'm sure they'll treat you very nicely and with respect.


Here's a very good film for parkour. Chances are you've already watched it, but here it is for everybody to watch:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...06041431700202

Thanks Marvo; I've definitely heard of the "getting from A to B as quickly as you can". It looks easy but I'm sure it's quite a challenge at first, although fun!

My arms are probably the weakest part of my body, so that'll definitely be a focus for me. As for wall running, that's one of the things I'm most excited about; being able to get over taller walls without being blocked by them. I did start watching that video before, but somehow (being a klutz) I lost the link! I'm going to watch it right now, all the way through this time.

When I started doing this stuff, I sort of followed in my older brother's footsteps. He was also doing parkour, so he could show me some of the tricks and introduce me to the whole thing.

For me, some of the biggest roadblocks were my environments. I don't live in an urban environment, so I had to travel a bit of a distance, in order to find suitable locations.
Another major problem was, like you, my arms. I didn't and still don't have particularly strong arms. I wasn't in very good shape either, so I would run out of energy fairly quickly. All this stuff is easy to fix though, it really just requires that you spend a bit of time each day training. Lately I've been running a lot, and my hope is that I can take up parkour again at some point, since I probably will be living in the city soon.

One thing I noticed about parkour, that I didn't mind, though you might, is that I very quickly got some thick skin on my palms, and even 4 years later, I still have some of these thick layers of skin from practicing parkour. It doesn't look weird or anything, but it kind of feels weird. It helps a lot when doing parkour though, as you don't need gloves, and it hurts less with some extra skin, when you're hanging somewhere.


About actually practicing parkour, I think you should really just get into it. Don't do crazy stuff, just do vaults, practice running and jumping, get control of your body. You can practice wall running pretty early in my opinion, just start small. Make sure that the ground you land on after a wall run is level. If it is sloped, you are very likely to fall over and hurt your self. A friend of mine hurt him self pretty badly, although he was careless and very bad at recovering from falls, which is also something you need to practice. Sometimes you will innevitably fall over, slip, or otherwise lose control, and you will need to regain footing and control, quickly.
Excercise falling, learn how absorb a fall with your arms without breaking them. It's simple stuff in practice, though in real situations, this stuff needs to be trained, or you might not be able to avoid a bad injury, in a situation where you otherwise could easily have avoided it with some training.

Sorry about all this editting by the way, I just keep thinking of new stuff I can add to my posts


Here's a pretty cool video done by some of the guys I trained with some years ago. They were and are much better than me, but very helpful. A lot of these people I don't really know either though, but a good video over all. There's a lot of trickjumping in there too, and most of all it just shows different moves, rather than actually moving about. Keep an eye out for the asian looking twin guys. They practice barefoot and are overall just fantastic traceurs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS8im9AmCxM

God, I wish I could do this kind of stuff. It's just so freaking cool.

Good luck, Puffin! You can do it Tell us about your experiences so I can live through you hahaha.

After practicing for a while, you'll probably start realising that you can do a lot of stuff already, it's just a matter of doing it. A lot of things we won't do because we are afraid. Just work with your whole body and feel in control.

Oh man I gotta get back into parkour. It's just such a brilliant sport.

One problem. What if there's no parkour training sessions/groups in my city? ;C

Originally Posted by Puffin

One problem. What if there's no parkour training sessions/groups in my city? ;C

Make one. If you already know a few people, it's really easy, just make a little website, make a facebook group, spread the word and start practicing.

I'm actually doing parkour for about 2 years now. Starting parkour is pretty easy. When I began with parkour I was a computer nerd with no muscles at all. My friend showed me a video and I was like "Omg I need to learn this". So we went to the nearest playground and just did some things like for example learning to roll. We tried it in the sand at first then went over to grass and at last we tried it on the street. Believe me: The first thing you should try practicing the roll as often as you can. It hurts at first but without it your knees are pretty screwed up if something goes wrong. Of course we didn't practice only the roll. To get some strength (I was really really weak) we tried pulling us up some small walls and such stuff. Unfortunately in our village we only got one real spot. It is the schoolyard of our elementary school. So we went there about every day for many hours and just started with parkour. We watched a few tutorials on youtube, tried to learn some tricks (Frontflip and Backflip) even if it's not part of parkour just to train our body and most of all: We had fun like hell watching us fail
Then after about a month we made much progress. We could run up walls in no time, do some tricks and almost every vault. Really, if you take some time and practice hard, you get fast results.

My advice I got from this is:
-Get some basic strength (do some Body Weight Exercises Bodyweight Exercises for Home Fitness )
-Search for a partner (It's a lot more fun if you practice with someone and you can motivate each other)
-At first finding a spot might be hard unless you live in a big city. But with time and progress you get the so called "Parkour Vision" and see spots where you didn't see them before
-HAVE FUN and don't be discouraged by failing at first!

Originally Posted by Marvo

Oh man I gotta get back into parkour. It's just such a brilliant sport.

i grew up playing basketball, football, baseball but recently got into parkour and it really is brilliant. i didn't see it before.

its cool because there's no rules or nothing (except rules for maintaining good posture and such). but you just start running and have to be creative to spot the runs. there's always a new playing 'field', a new jump to make.

my parkour buddy said its important to develop ambidexterity to help with balance. and when you run up to an obstacle you dont want to try and change positioning to work with a dominant side, you need to be able to run and flow naturally, using your whole body as a unit.

and i want to watch those videos but can't get my sound to work

edit: oh and puffin, make sure you wear a helmet.

Originally Posted by Requiem

i grew up playing basketball, football, baseball but recently got into parkour and it really is brilliant. i didn't see it before.

its cool because there's no rules or nothing (except rules for maintaining good posture and such). but you just start running and have to be creative to spot the runs. there's always a new playing 'field', a new jump to make.

my parkour buddy said its important to develop ambidexterity to help with balance. and when you run up to an obstacle you dont want to try and change positioning to work with a dominant side, you need to be able to run and flow naturally, using your whole body as a unit.

Your friend is basically saying that you should learn to use your whole body evenly. It's not necessarily ambidexterity though.

This is how it all started:


And then there is this:

Those are two of my absolute favorite Parkour videos IAmCoder!!!

You should have posted them in the opposite order though - because they're both David Belle - in the second video he's about 15, in the top one he's more like 25. That 2nd one you posted is one of the most amazing videos I've ever seen. I'll never forget seeing it one day out of the blue. It was on some TV show that just shows random clips from the web - I don't normally even watch shows like that but I guess I exhausted everything else on TV that night, and suddenly there it was! When it was over I ran down to the computer and started searching, and eventually found it and learned who David Belle was and how he created parkour. And shortly after that it became a huge phenomenon.

Puffin...

I say you shouldn't be allowed to learn Parkour!!

Why? Because - you're already too much of a badass!! Your ability to lucid dream as much as you do, plus in your dreams you're already like a superhero!!! I read about the things you can do and I'm just like "Whaaaat??!! Serious!!! Damn!!"

... It's just not fair!!!

Treat pain with indifference.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

You should have posted them in the opposite order though - because they're both David Belle - in the second video he's about 15, in the top one he's more like 25.

I thought he was a frog?

Well he does jump like one.

Are you referring to the whole "Russian" thing? Yeah, I don't know what's up with that - but if you notice the music seems to be some kind of French rap music. Maybe he was living in Russia when that was shot?

I need to see if I can dig up the info again - it's been a long time and I don't remember where I found it now. But I did run across some info that it's him.

Apparently at first they called Parkour "Russian Climbing". When I first saw that video clip that was the name of it, and I used to think it was shot in Russia and the guys were Russian. Here's a page that mentions it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_parkour - "December 2005 - "Russian climbing" is used to describe the activity."

Ok, I'm starting to doubt it's really him now. It does look like him, but I cn't find anything stating it is. I've seen several people saying the video was shot in Latvia, and I just found this posted about it: "That's the main guy from the Dvisnk parkour clan in Latvia and that is one of the best parkour clips around." On this page: http://sosuave.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-93606.html

Yeah, still can't believe it is him in the second video. It used to be posted under a different account with 8 million hits, but that is gone now.

Hey, we have a lot of Canadians around here... can anybody say what language they're speaking at the end? If it's not French then I'll give up the crazy notion that that's David Belle.

Ok, just listened to it - sounds Slavic to me.

Damn you IAmCoder!! I hate when somebody makes an offhand statement that forces me to completely revise history as I know it!!

Parkour makes me jealously happy!! So does watching airbender and naruto! I'll be happy when I can just ride my bike up a hill without passing out.

This is how I get to school in the morning. Piece-a-cake.


Seriously though, parkour looks really cool, if I didn't live in front of the computer - making me as athletic as mr Burns - I would probably practice it.
Oh well, that's what lucid dreaming is for.

Expect a degree of pain in just about everything you do.

Also, be careful and progress at a comfortable pace. You can get hurt pretty easily. That said, injuries are rare because people are careful and don't care so much about one-upping each other.

This dude is serious!

I forget how exactly I found out about parkour, but a while ago I was pretty interested in it for a while.

Now you guys are making me want to start learning it . Aside from being cool as shit, it looks like a great way to get in shape, which...I mean, I'm no slob, but I'd like to be more in shape (read: stronger) than I am now, which is something else I've been thinking about lately.

Just found a cool video - it's great to see someone do the training who isn't already a total pro.