Parkour/Free Running Training

Question

My friends and I need help on learning Parkor/Free Running. We don't know how to learn these techniques without killing ourselves. Are all the pros self- taught or have then been taught by someone with experience. We all live in the Menlo Park/ Atherton area if anyone wants to jam with us hopefully without dying.

Answer 1

The many pros have worked for years to get where they are, and they all at some point started where you are now. While some trained in groups, all had to work on their own as well to build their confidence and self knowledge. We can't really generalize as everyone is different, so it would be best to look up and ask one of the professionals yourself.

As for your question about starting off, here is an excerpt from an article I wrote a couple days ago. The site it's from is still being populated but has some information you may find valuable.

"Physical.

Get in shape. Some people may say that this is a harsh remark considering I don’t know the person, but that fact is true for everyone and it is not an attack on a single entity. The point is that you are not going to improve in parkour if you don’t work on building your strength and endurance. If you can wall pass a twelve foot wall once, you can do it again and again and again; and practicing it over and over ensures nothing more that you can pass that specific wall. Your perfect technique on that twelve foot wall will do you no good in a real life situation where you have to pass a fourteen foot wall; while this requires the improvisational skills of a traceur, it also requires more strength that the twelve foot wall. Even if you are outside six or more hours daily practicing and making a lot of "progress" on the technical side, you aren’t pushing yourself or your body. So after all the training technically to move the way you wish you may still be out of shape without any power behind your movements and have terrible endurance skills; which is why you won’t progress. Of course you still need to work on the technical side of things to avoid being sloppy, but you have to realize that technical training isn’t going to make you stronger, faster, or have increased vaulting climbing or jumping abilities. You will never advance significantly if you don’t start exercising and working out.

Technical.

Unfortunately many new traceurs decide to rush right into training with no second thought. They look around on YouTube and other media hotspots in order to find footage of parkour attempts to learn about different moves. The first fault with this is the videos; parkour videos rarely depict falls and crashes unless they are spectacular, and a new traceur looking a videos is going to see all the more difficult, dangerous and flashier stuff and consider that to be parkour and try to emulate that in their training. Another thing that I find wrong with trying to learn from videos is that you aren’t learning yourself.

If you are trying a new move you saw or were taught and you say “I don’t like this” “I can’t do this” or “this doesn’t feel right” then chances are you are not going to use that technique in a real life situation. Many people don’t understand that the named vaults and maneuvers are like the blank canvases to the painters, you have to try variations until you find something that you find comfortable; that variance of the original technique that you find more comfortable may be what saves your ever loving self when faced with a real life scenario. Don’t try and drill a move into your head simply because everyone else is doing it and it can be recognized by a name or title; don’t try and fill your head with techniques you will never use, parkour is about efficiency, work with what is best for you.

That being said, there are some techniques that are essential to learn for the benefit of your well being and safety: these are landings. Jumping from any height can put a lot of pressure on your joints; a simple three foot fall has the potential to exert a force double your body weight when you land and you don’t want to place all that stress on your joints. While this force may not affect you immediately, the accumulation of these forces can cause great injury in your future. There are two main types of landings that are used to better disperse the force and help you continue on in a run: these are ground slaps and shoulder (or improperly “parkour”) rolls. A ground slap is simply that: from a fall you wish to relax your legs, and upon hitting the ground allow your legs to collapse into a squat, during this you want to swing your arms in front of you to slap the ground with your hands to disperse the shock and force. From this position you can push with your legs to continue a forward momentum. This technique is good for a more vertical drop, for more drops with a forward momentum you will likely wish to use a shoulder roll.

http://www.youtube.com/v/aIGlv49Y9Ac

A shoulder roll is a variant of a somersault. The problem with somersaults is the potential to hit your head or injure your spine on a bad roll as those are points along the line of contact. In a shoulder roll, the line of contact is a diagonal from one of your shoulders to the opposing hip. To attempt a basic shoulder roll: get in a squatting position with a wider stance, and place both your hands on the ground in front of you so that you are leaning forward slightly, then choose which side you will roll to and take that arm and bring it across your chest behind the other arm, while doing this you should begin to turn your head in the direction opposite where you intent to roll and look towards the armpit of that opposite side, doing this will cause you to naturally begin to fall at an angle forward toward the side you chose, provide a slight kick up with your feet to help initiate the roll and just roll through it. I understand that trying to interpret a definition of a shoulder roll is difficult without a visual, so here is a quick clip that I found that well defines, explains and shows a shoulder roll.

Mental.

You have to be willing to participate and work on your technique and fitness. Without a positive outlook, self-confidence and motivation you will find it difficult to get to where you want. You have to be able to push yourself to train and practice, and you have to search yourself to learn your limits (both physical and mental). You need to be willing to push those limits in order to progress well, and it can take a lot of work to push yourself up and out of your comfort zone.

These are three things that I believe are essential to know and practice in order to be able to get into parkour and progress steadily. While other people may stress things like learning a basic monkey vault and the likes, I believe that you need to start with a positive mindset, knowing that you are going to face things that will take determination. It isn’t all easy, it isn’t all the fun and games that you see in YouTube videos, it can be really gritty at some times; but if you have what it takes, the willingness to continue and push forward, then you will surely succeed.

While this post has emphasized on the importance of various aspects pertaining to your individual training, it essential to the preliminary growth of new traceurs that they attempt to locate and participate in a parkour group as explained here: http://parkourhelper.blogspot.com/2008/0...

Hopefully that helped you out. Good luck with your training, and stay safe.

Answer 2

lol. I'm pretty sure all the pros are self taught. But they learn from others at the same level and just improve. Anyway.

Have you tried Youtube?? that's the best place to learn. This is where a majority of the parkour world takes place. That and forums.

Start out by doing vaults. here's a great video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXnCtAP-a...

note: speed vault is just you sprinting and doing a lazy vault.

       and i don't think there is such thing as the Thief Vault, anyway it  doesn't look hard

So as you can see those guy are just newbies. They started out doing vaults on low things, then you can start on higher obstacles.

Next you want to practice rolls which are a critical part of Parkour!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tJAyNxig...

theres a tutorial.

Once you master those, try these. Under bars, precision walking, precision jumps,  cat leaps, and some other i can't remember. maybe idk.

ANYWAY, remember that a part of parkour is getting over the fear or getting hurt. But don't be stupid and try something you can't do. Trust your gut if it's really telling you not to.

Also, you should know that any sort of flips, spins or anything like that is not parkour. That's freerunning. Everything listed above is parkour. Freerunning is that plus flips and stuff.

Happy parkouring!!