Parkour

Mark Toorock: Hi, I am Mark Toorock from American Parkour. Today we are showing you how to do Parkour. It's important to realize that Parkour is more than just a sum of a bunch of movements. Parkour is a practice and a discipline that is good for both your mind and your body. But to begin to learn Parkour, you need to master some of the basic techniques. So we are going to show you some of these techniques today.

The techniques we are going to show you start with landing and rolling which are really safety items. You need to be able to land well to do Parkour and transfer your momentum well to land safely. Then we are going to move on to precision jumps. We are going to do vaults of three different kinds. We are going to do a basic Two-handed vault, a Speed vault and a Monkey vault. We are also going to do tic- tacs, wall runs and cat leaps.

One of the great things about Parkour is that it really requires very little or no equipment. The only thing that will really help is a good pair of shoes. A good pair of usually light-weight running shoes especially with good traction. K-Swiss are some excellent pair of shoes that are made specifically for Parkour and they have really great traction.

Aside from that, there is nothing you need, except to go out and start training. Safety is absolutely crucial in Parkour. Parkour is a physical discipline. So there is some chance for injury and specially if you rush into it without learning the basic movements first. That's why we show you landing and rolling first. It's very important to be very comfortable with where you are and only increase in very small increments. This is one of the mantras of Parkour is increasing but slowly. Slowly building your boundaries and building what you are capable of doing.

There is some misleading information out there in the form of videos where people are jumping even between two buildings. But these videos don't have labels on them. So you don't know if either the person is going to get hurt because they haven't practiced enough or maybe this is a practitioner who has done this for ten years and is very comfortable with what they are doing. In any case, don't try to imitate others. Working your own pace and keep safety first when doing Parkour.

I started practicing Parkour in London about six years ago. Since then I have been part of some of the world's largest organizations based around Parkour. Currently, I run the americanparkour website, with help from the guides on the tribe and also a team called the APK Alliance. Together these guys put together a great information about Parkour. There are tutorials, articles, so whether you are just getting started or you have been practicing for a long time, there is great information here. It's also a large community with a forum so that you can meet and train with other people around you.

The important thing about Parkour is that you only get the benefits of it by actually training. So let's get started.