Parkour, an action-packed sport where balance and power are used together to challenge gravity, is one of the most popular urban games in the world. Also known as free running, this sport involves traversing obstacles by running, vaulting, jumping, climbing, and other movements.
Of importance, parkour is not just about physical training and getting your body in shape. Rather, it includes conditioning your mind and seeing possibilities even where there seems to be none.
If you are interested in parkour despite its crazy and death-defying stunts, the good news is that you can learn it on your own. All you need is to use freedom as your guiding principle. This post will educate you on how to teach yourself parkour.
How to learn parkour
Anyone can figure out a way to traverse obstacles. However, when it comes to becoming a parkour enthusiast, you can’t expect to become a pro at it overnight. As with most techniques, there is a learning curve that you must navigate.
Here are steps and tips to get started with parkour:
1. Prepare your mind
Parkour is a sport that requires you to push yourself physically and mentally as it requires apt coordination and balance. To get yourself ready to learn the skills that parkour takes, you need to clean and free your mind of anything that can hold you back. This includes abandoning any theories that you know regarding parkour.
To learn parkour, you need to have a listening ear and be internally quiet enough to let your body speak to you. To quickly learn the skills and excel, you need to connect with your innate childhood desire to explore.
By preparing your mind, you will be able to know your limits and build confidence in what you can do. Of course, parkour involves some crazy stunts, so doing things with sensible moderation can minimize the chances of accidents occurring.
2. Get in shape
Parkour requires endurance, so get in shape. Notably, when it comes to getting in shape, in this case, it doesn’t mean losing weight; instead, learning endurance.
When beginning, start by working on basic calisthenics like push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and squats. Generally, you should be able to perform about 25 push-ups, 5 pull-ups, and 50 squats before starting to challenge yourself.
You also want to learn how to maintain balance when traversing different obstacles. To achieve this, train yourself to focus on what is at hand, avoid distractions, and place your steps carefully.
3. Practice shoulder rolls and how to land safely
Not all safety sporting rules may apply to parkour, but you still need to practice safety. Parkour involves lots of vertical movements and extreme jumps, meaning it can result in serious injuries if you don’t know how to land properly.
To get around these risks, practice proper landing and shoulder rolls without hurting yourself. Height between ½ meter and 1 meter is ideal for practicing.
Always avoid rolling on your back.
4. Learn jumping, vaulting, and climbing
After teaching yourself how to land and roll safely, you can start jumping, vaulting, and climbing. Mastering these skills allows you to traverse obstacles more safely.
Some manoeuvres like vaulting require the use of hands, and a single mistake could mean a serious injury. For optimal safety, start slowly and progressively add distance while checking on your limits.
If you also want to try wall runs, remember to start with baby steps.
5. Develop your style
Every parkour athlete has their style. Once you start practicing, you will quickly learn which moves are more favorable for you, which will help you develop your own style for perfecting them.
Although it involves death-defying stunts, parkour needs to be fun. Developing a style that effortlessly works for your body will help you excel.
Like all techniques and sports, practicing regularly will help you master and perfect your movements and even help you scale to more difficult maneuvers.
Conclusion
There are endless opportunities that aspiring free runners can explore and showcase their talent. The most exciting part about parkour is that it helps you expand your mind amid having fun. To quickly master this sport, be consistent, learn how to manoeuvre safely, and trust yourself to overcome any obstacle. Hopefully, this post will help you teach yourself parkour.
If you want to go beyond being just a beginner at this or any other skill, and work toward developing a real mastery, then you are going to need a deeper and more powerful strategy. What you need is a way to hack your brain so you can develop a winning mindset.
A winning mindset is a state of mind that allows you to enter a flow state at will. You do this by programming your subconscious mind.
Believe it or not, most of what you do throughout an average day is NOT freely chosen by your normal waking consciousness even though it may seem that way. The truth is that most of what you do on a day-to-day basis is done on autopilot. An example of this would be when you’re driving your car and as you do so you get bored and begin daydreaming. Before you know it, you find yourself several miles further down the road with absolutely NO memory of having driven those last several miles.
So, who exactly was driving while your waking consciousness was in la-la land, and how exactly did you manage to avoid an accident? Your subconscious mind was in control. You already spent years programming your subconscious with how to deal with a broad range of possible driving scenarios and thus it had no trouble taking the wheel while your waking consciousness took a little break. In other words, you were able to take effective actions without having to THINK about them.
The same way you programmed your subconscious to drive, you can also program it to automatically take successful actions toward mastering any other skill you decide that you want to learn. CLICK HERE to learn a proven, step-by-step formula to help you attain mastery at any skill you choose and achieve everything in life.
