When you say “making full use of my body”, are you merely learning, as you say, “tricks”, or are you also developing your muscles and body-senses (proprioception, balance) so that you can move yourself and other things as efficiently as possible?
Both, definitely. I do parkour regularly; I can reliably run (or walk backwards) on a 7cm wide beam, and am practicing rolls. I lift weights once per week and will move to twice weekly if I want substantially more arm strength than I have now. I also hike often. I have made large gains in physical fitness; as a kid I was always near the slowest of my peers, now I am one of the fastest runners in my laser tag club.
If I could say just one thing about parkour, I would say that it’s not about taking thoughtless risks (linked for what he says after the jump), and not even necessarily about taking calculated ones. I personally (try to) operate under a strict maxim to never attempt any movement where I’m not trained to compensate for every possible way of messing up.
I never climb anything that I can’t fall off safely. Etc. This entails not just focusing on mastering the cool techniques, but also mastering all the different falling techniques to facilitate safe training. This is fine by me anyway; training the falling techniques is no worse exercise than the power moves in Ilabaca’s videos. I personally am in it for the exercise and athletic development, so injuring myself would be especially counter-productive.
Parkour is unlike somethingsuchastricking, in that for every technique there’s always a safe and reliable progression; it’s neither dangerous nor injurious unless you practice irresponsibly and make it so. I hope to at some point develop an organized system of pre-requisites for each movement such that anybody could move through the progressions safely and reliably. That’s one thing I’m working on, I suppose.
The main contribution would be that it would systematize the falling techniques and perhaps invent new ones. Good parkour practitioners are generally extremely good at falling, but only because they fall a lot. It’s perhaps mostly unconscious and instinctual, whereas I would make it systematic. Maybe this has been done (in which case I would appreciate a link), but I haven’t seen it, and anyway parkour is a very young discipline (with a lot of risk-takers), so it would by no means be surprising if such a systematic approach doesn’t exist.
Anyway, I’m writing this somewhat for myself, but also for spqr0a1 and a general audience. I needed to remind myself why I do parkour and how I should approach it. I’m actually typing with one hand right now. Very slowly. I have a 5-6 week injury to my wrist that happened in a parkour crash a couple weeks ago. My usual typing proficiency has been reduced to a paltry, inaccurate 20-30 WPM.
I tried a movement that I shouldn’t have. I hadn’t trained the pre-requisite falling techniques for that particular movement. It was irresponsible. It will never happen again. I need to remember why I do this (exercise, micro-skill development, etc), and not let myself get carried away in the moment. Injuries suck. They’re awful. I’m out of commission for almost everything, and only for a single wrist. Never again.
I’m just glad there won’t be any permanent damage, surgery won’t be necessary, it’s fairly short-term, etc. I mightn’t be so lucky if something like this were to happen again.
When you say “making full use of my body”, are you merely learning, as you say, “tricks”, or are you also developing your muscles and body-senses (proprioception, balance) so that you can move yourself and other things as efficiently as possible?
Both, definitely. I do parkour regularly; I can reliably run (or walk backwards) on a 7cm wide beam, and am practicing rolls. I lift weights once per week and will move to twice weekly if I want substantially more arm strength than I have now. I also hike often. I have made large gains in physical fitness; as a kid I was always near the slowest of my peers, now I am one of the fastest runners in my laser tag club.
Parkour! I do it too, and Daniel Ilabaca is definitely one of my heroes.
If I could say just one thing about parkour, I would say that it’s not about taking thoughtless risks (linked for what he says after the jump), and not even necessarily about taking calculated ones. I personally (try to) operate under a strict maxim to never attempt any movement where I’m not trained to compensate for every possible way of messing up.
I never climb anything that I can’t fall off safely. Etc. This entails not just focusing on mastering the cool techniques, but also mastering all the different falling techniques to facilitate safe training. This is fine by me anyway; training the falling techniques is no worse exercise than the power moves in Ilabaca’s videos. I personally am in it for the exercise and athletic development, so injuring myself would be especially counter-productive.
Parkour is unlike something such as tricking, in that for every technique there’s always a safe and reliable progression; it’s neither dangerous nor injurious unless you practice irresponsibly and make it so. I hope to at some point develop an organized system of pre-requisites for each movement such that anybody could move through the progressions safely and reliably. That’s one thing I’m working on, I suppose.
The main contribution would be that it would systematize the falling techniques and perhaps invent new ones. Good parkour practitioners are generally extremely good at falling, but only because they fall a lot. It’s perhaps mostly unconscious and instinctual, whereas I would make it systematic. Maybe this has been done (in which case I would appreciate a link), but I haven’t seen it, and anyway parkour is a very young discipline (with a lot of risk-takers), so it would by no means be surprising if such a systematic approach doesn’t exist.
Anyway, I’m writing this somewhat for myself, but also for spqr0a1 and a general audience. I needed to remind myself why I do parkour and how I should approach it. I’m actually typing with one hand right now. Very slowly. I have a 5-6 week injury to my wrist that happened in a parkour crash a couple weeks ago. My usual typing proficiency has been reduced to a paltry, inaccurate 20-30 WPM.
I tried a movement that I shouldn’t have. I hadn’t trained the pre-requisite falling techniques for that particular movement. It was irresponsible. It will never happen again. I need to remember why I do this (exercise, micro-skill development, etc), and not let myself get carried away in the moment. Injuries suck. They’re awful. I’m out of commission for almost everything, and only for a single wrist. Never again.
I’m just glad there won’t be any permanent damage, surgery won’t be necessary, it’s fairly short-term, etc. I mightn’t be so lucky if something like this were to happen again.
I also do parkour, and would be interested in seeing a systematic training regimen for the relevant skills.