I’ve been injured a couple times from sports, but only once doing parkour (and that technically wasn’t parkour seeing as I was just trying to learn how to do corks), but it could have been prevented if I didn’t just have the “screw it, whatever happens, happens” mindset. Chance is best left to the casino games, not in Parkour.

Here are three good ways to prevent injury:

1) Don’t be stupid. If you can’t do a backflip, you sure as hell can’t pull off a double – even off the three meter springboard. Progress at a proper, more manageable pace and you will be thanking yourself down the road.

2) Roll. Please. Rolling saves your future. If what you are jumping off is higher than like four feet, roll. Get yourself into a habit of rolling after everything, and you will never forget. I roll after every jump and flip, regardless. I want good knees in the future. Knee surgery just doesn’t have a nice appeal to it.

3) Have proper technique. Technique is everything. Learn it, and use it. Have someone who has proper technique teach it to you, not a guy who taught himself in his spare time and just hucks the tricks.

That’s all that there really is to it. Give those three things a shot, and in 10 years you will no question be thanking yourself – or your money back .

You can do, if you put your mind to it. Work in small increments, and learn how to break down your mental barriers.

A good quote to live by, and to train with is: “Do one thing a day that scares you”. Each time you do something that scares you, you are tearing down a mental barrier, and replacing it with confidence and trust in yourself. There is no need to be afraid of doing a backflip. You just need to work up to it, and slowly break down the barrier in your head that is preventing you from succeeding. With determination and commitment you will succeed.

We have mental barriers for a reason though. They prevent us from doing something utterly stupid. That is why you need to work in small increments and work towards the final goal. Learn how to break down your own mental barriers, and you will find success.

Sometimes we fall behind, and think that no matter how much effort we put in, no progress is being made. Parkour isn’t all about the progress that you can see on the outside, but it also revolves around the progress on the inside. Finding your true self, and connecting with your environment is something that we often times fail to realize.

When we start to believe that we aren’t making progress it could be because of the lack of inspiration. To solve this one of the things I often do is watch a showreel or video by the best of the best – Ryan Doyle, Storm Freerun, 3Run, Urban Freeflow, to name a few.

Another fantastic way to document your growth is to create a showreel of yourself. Once you have a lot of footage, you will realize that what you once did, and thought was good when you began filming is no much worse that what you film at the current time. Documenting your process is a great way to evaluate your technique as well.

ParkourX is now back up and running! I know this post is short, but expect more to come in the near future! The membership feature has been removed, and will not be re-instated as of now. This may change in the future, but for now, don’t expect it to come back.

1) Unprepared

I’d watched one tutorial, and thought I could do it. I quickly found out that I couldn’t, and later learned that the tutorial was wrong.

2) Not Stretching

I wasn’t warmed up. Hell, I was still in my jeans. I was completely cold so to say, and the B-Twist requires you to be somewhat warmed up. Not going from couch potato to a full fledged B-Twist.

If I had been more prepared and warmed up, I wouldn’t have got hurt at all. I didn’t warm up though, so I ended up with a pulled groin that lasted months. Not fun at all.

Basically, you need to be warmed up and prepared or you could getting hurt. As long as you’ve done these, you should be good.

And the third, most important reason

3) Being an Idiot

Don’t try to do something that is so obvious you can’t do it. Don’t try to Kong Gainer Up a staircase. It simply wont work. Keep it smart, and you’ll be fine.

Well, now that winter is fast approaching in this part of the world, I think we could actually take this event, and use it to learn something all Free Runners want to learn. Flips.

Snow is soft, and what’s better then something like that for learning flips? I know that I for a fact will be using this snow for practicing my front and back flips. Maybe even get that Gainer down.

Sure it will be cold, but I think I’ve devised a good way yo use the snow for training.

I’ve outlined the frontflip below:

1. Clear a little strip that you can run on. Take all of the snow from there, and pile it at the end of the strip to land it.

2. Make sure your wearing shoes with good enough grip to not slip on the space you’ve cleared off. I guess you could expect these shoes to get somewhat destroyed.

3. Go for it. Take the steps, and frontflip into the snow pile!

And now the backflip:

1. Pack a little strip of snow down hard, and make a nice pile of snow right behind it.

2. Go through the motions, but instead of jumping directly up, you will need to jump slightly backwards.

As you get more comfortable with the flips, you could slowly start to shrink your snow pile, and get closer to flipping on flat ground.

Just doing this will be much, much worth the effort when summer comes around again. You may be able to flip if you put the effort in, have a new flip, or just have improved your old flip. Whatever it is you work at, it will be much worth it.

Free Running is not about showing others what you can do. It’s not about doing that flip just because someone asks you to. We need to take another look at Parkour and start doing what we do for ourselves. Not for other people. When we run it’s about us. About being free and doing what we truly love as a person. It’s not about impressing others, or showing off. People get the same feeling out of you doing that backflip even if you land on your head.

Sure, we feel good when we show-off our new moves to random people, but it’s not a true good feeling. It’s a self-centered, I’m the best feeling. The true feeling of success is the one made when we do the move for ourselves, and accomplish something new for ourselves. That is the feeling that really makes you feel good as a person.

Sometimes, practicing with others who are trying to learn the same thing can help us stop doing the move for others. It then becomes a competition to see who can complete the move first, and after that who an do it best, and cleanest.

As long as the focus isn’t on others, and you are running for yourself, you’ve truly figured out what Parkour and Free Running are about, and know why you are doing it.

In Other News:
- ParkourX won the “Blog Spotlight #1″ at Forum Spotlight. Check out the award Here.
- You can now advertise on ParkourX. Check out advertising options and prices Here.
- I’ve written a guest post for Hive Health Media. Check out the post here. (Link will be added tomorrow when post goes up).

Parkour is classified as an extreme sport. This implies that you need a lot of physical and mental strength to cope with the requirements of this interesting activity. Parkour is not like any other sport you know, you need to be fit and with normal body weight if you want to participate effectively. If you have a desire to parkour but you are overweight then the following tips can help you lose those extra pounds and get ready for the park.

Careful Diet

Your diet is the primary source of energy for the body and you need a lot of energy for parkour. On the other hand what you eat has a positive or negative effect on your weight. This makes the situation a bit tricky because you need to provide your body with energy but at the same time you need to save calories in order to lose weight. A balanced diet is therefore necessary to satisfy both conditions. You have to make sure that:

You avoid exaggerations when eating
You eat healthy monounsaturated fat foods instead of full-fat
You eat foods that give you energy with the minimum amount of calories (perfect examples are fruits and vegetables)
You eat carbs (moderate quantities) after exercise
You give more priority to protein food
You drink a lot of water daily (6-8 glasses) especially when you are training
You eat every 2-3 hours
You eat whole foods whenever possible

Regular Exercise

Practicing parkour is one of the best exercises to lose weight but when you are overweight you may need to perform some cardio exercises as well to accelerate the weight loss process. Cardio will also improve your fitness levels and increase your strength. Start with light exercises like walking for 20-30 minutes per day and then gradually engage into a more intense cardio workout that includes running, jumping, push-ups, squats and pull-ups. It is very important that you perform your workout on a regular basis and also that you add 1-2 reps to each exercise every couple of weeks. Keeping your heart beat high during training is the key for a faster weight loss. You can also combine your cardio training with weight lifting for even better results. Weight lifting will help you build more muscles and burn more fat.

Start Slow – Aim High

Losing weight is not the easiest thing to do (neither is parkour). It is better to start slow with short term goals that are easier to achieve; this will give you more courage and willpower to reach your ultimate goal. There is no room for disappointment or for giving up easily. When you stick to your weight loss and training plan sooner or later you will get rid of the extra weight and become better at parkour. Do not expect to master all the techniques from the beginning. It takes time and effort to get hold of what it takes to become a parkour master but there is absolutely no excuse why you cannot make it. There are a lot of stories of overweight people (of all ages) who managed to change their life and weight by giving up lazy activities and engaging with parkour. Use those stories for your inspiration and get ready to live a new life!

This will also allow us to grow in the move, and progress in an order something like this – water, mats, grass, cement. That way, we become fully used to the move, and it feels like instinct.

Every traceur especially needs to do this with the basic moves such as roll, and some basic vaults.We do that so that if you end up in a bad situation, you instinctively resort to rolling to protect yourself from injury, or limiting the damage that your body will receive due to the error or mistake made.

Repetition also make the move safer when we decide to bring it out to the cement, or outside even. We will know the basic form, and have the ability to use the move how it should be used without nearly as much worry as if we just figured out the technique, and used it on cement with minimal practice.

You need to be dedicated to doing the move over and over again. If you have that dedicated, then the times you fall wont be a big deal. You will just get up, and try the move again. You need dedication and determination because those two traits are what can show real progress in the sport, and will help you develop the technique and skill required to master a move.

Is it possible though? Yes. Are the odds against you in succeeding, and with you for failure, and injury? Yes.

Living your whole life thinking everything is crazy will get you nowhere. You do need to do the extreme at times, just not always. And there is a difference between stupidity and the extreme.

Stupidity is doing something were the odds are you will get severly injured. An extreme example of this is jumping out of an airplane without a parachute mid-flight. Chances are you’re going to die.

Being extreme is different. It can be going against the norm of modern culture, and doing what most people think is impossible.

When done safely, Parkour and Free Running are not stupid in any way. They can be extreme in ways, but they are also pushing you as a person, and your physical body.

Three tips to keeping the stupidity down:

1. Trust yourself in everything you do. You need to have this faith in yourself before anything else.
2. Commit. You need to commit to the new moves when you attempt them. If you don’t commit you end up getting hurt.
3. Know what you’re planning on doing, and have an idea on how to do it. If you’ve even seen it done a few times, you can most likely figure out the technique.

Keeping those tips in mind, go out and have fun. Push your limits, and don’t be afraid to expand your horizons and try new things both in real life, and in the art of Parkour and Free Running.

In the winter, I am a freestyle skier, so that is how I cross train. In freestyle skiing we practice many of the spins and flips that are used in Free Running, and even the mental aspect of this sport can be brought over to Parkour. That is because freestyle skiing is a quick moving sport, and the quick thinking involved is also used in Parkour.

Doing flips into the snow, and vaults over stuff into the snow is also a good way to practice new parkour moves while not facing the risk of injury because of the snow.

I asked some people what they did to cross train, and these were some of the answers:

- Freestyle Skiing
- Martial Arts
- Surfing
- Soccer

Each one of these sports has a different way of helping you in cross training. The martial arts can help with the quick movements, the surfing with the endurance and fear aspect, and the soccer with endurance as well.

Cross training is important because it can keep you fit in the off season – if you live in a place that has tons of snow, or no indoor facilities it allows you to keep fit, and continue improving your parkour for the next season, even if in different ways.

Comment, and tell me how you cross train.