Conditioning for Parkour

Written by Jack

In parkour, conditioning refers to strengthening and readying ones self for the discipline so that the practitioner can move faster and easier, and also minimising the risk of injury. Sufficient conditioning for parkour is vital. In the past the founder of parkour, David Belle, has been asked about the effects that practicing parkour has had on his body and his answer: none. This is due to the large amount of conditioning that David has done over the years, preparing his body for what he does. If he had simply gone straight into doing big jumps and large-scale movements he would have undoubtedly incurred injury, and unfortunately this is the case with many young practitioners today.

So what exactly does conditioning involve? Conditioning includes all types of strength training such as gym training, jogging and CV (cardio-vascular) training, press-ups and sit-ups etc. but also includes things such as climbing and rock-climbing. Physically demanding tasks such as these are often encountered in parkour and help to improve strength, and so are helpful not only to general strength but directly to your parkour skills. Practicing movements such as climb-ups (climbing up and onto a wall or ledge from a hanging position) and muscle-ups (the same as a climb-up but on a horizontal rail or bar) are popular methods of conditioning and are beneficial to upper body strength and are also useful in parkour.

Jogging and stamina training is an area of conditioning that many practitioners ignore, yet a real-life parkour situation would rely heavily on ones stamina and speed. Jogging and general stamina work should not be ignored and should be trained regularly by all practitioners of the discipline. Strengthening of the lower body is a must, as parkour involves a lot of impact to the legs, and jogging along with exercises such as Squats, pistol squats (one-legged), and quadrupedal movement (moving on all four limbs).

How often and for how long should you condition? Well, conditioning is a very large part of parkour and should not be ignored. However, conditioning fully every day of the week is also not advisable as rest days are necessary so that injury does not occur. It is hard to suggest a perfect routine of how often to condition, but popular routines are: conditioning every other day, conditioning lower body one night, and upper body the next, and conditioning with one or two days rest a week. You may feel this is too much or too little depending on your age or amount of training, but a significant amount of conditioning should be done by every practitioner. Conditioning sessions should last for approximately 30-45 minutes but this changes on whether you are conditioning both upper and lower body and how you choose to condition. A basic but effective method is just to exercise until you are fatigued.

More information about conditioning can be found in the ‘conditioning and fitness’ section on the Lincs Parkour forum or on www.worldwidejam.tv.

Good luck with your conditioning!