With high impact jumping, bounding and the need for good mobility, everyone in Freerun/Parkour will at some point come across joint problems or know someone with them. So it is no wonder that the most widely consumed supplements by any freerunner/traceur are those that are intended for joint pain relief. There are a hell of a lot of supplements out there offering apparent joint relief and it can be hard to decipher which is which is best suited to your needs, so be careful what you spend your money on despite what the attractive girl in the supplement store might say. Here is a by no means a comprehensive list of useful supplements that can or could help you with joint pain. Starting with in what my opinion is the most useful first. Read more…
Nutrition isn’t an easy subject to master, talk of insulin, hormones, macro and micro nutrition’s gets a lot of people turned off the idea of proper diet. And to be honest a lot of the athletes I work with really don’t care for the science of the subject either, all they want is some direction and advice.
Found that the discipline has given you a new lease of life and has shown you the ‘way’, but feel that you aren’t doing yourself justice by eating the wrong types of food? If you want to get your body in gear and try out a healthier way, below are a few tips to help give you a nudge in the right direction. How many times have you heard “You are what you eat”? Its so true. Especially so with a sport/art/discipline like ours which sees us expending so much energy while practising… Read more…
Why is diet so important? Traceurs and freerunners make efforts through training, conditioning, and practice to improve performance. A critical link in this process is proper nutrition. Improper nutrition can not only hinder performance, but is a detriment to overall physical health. The macronutrients (water, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) can all have major implications if low or deficient. Parkour raises numerous energy issues, such as body weight maintenance, proper nutrition before and after training. So how do we need to eat for parkour?. Lets take a look at what parkour is on a physiological level. Parkour is characterized by high-intensity anaerobic activity interspersed with sub-maximal aerobic work. Traceurs need to rapidly generate muscular force in a quick series of movements. Aerobic endurance is required to assist with recovery between bursts of high-intensity activity and to support performance through several different movements. In parkour the traceur must move his body as fast and as explosively as possible during play, carrying unnecessary weight is costly energy expenditure so staying lean is important. Another problem with traceurs is that they tend too over train and under eat, leaving them listless, tired, sleep deprived and increasingly prone too injury. With this in mind the traceur will get the most out of each training session if they are adequately fueled and hydrated. Read more…
Variety is the spice of a healthy eating lifestyle. If you ever get to the point where you are out practising and find your energy levels badly depleted or you are just generally feeling fatigued, ever thought of trying to eating healthier? Maybe you’ve thought about turning your PK hobby into your job? In order to do this and to be taken seriously, you’ll have to consider yourself an athlete and follow a routine accordingly. A change of eating will be an important first step: vitamins and minerals play an important role in unleashing the energy stored in other foods we eat, maintaining fluid balance in tissues and improving muscle function, which all helps to maximise your training sessions. In addition, vital body functions such as our immune system are dependent on vitamins and minerals to function. If you are clueless about which route to take or how to go about it, below is a quick guide to vitamins and what they can do for you. Read more…
The internet, magazines, sports matches, supermarkets; everywhere we look we are told about the best energy/sports drink to improve our performance. As practitioners of Parkour/Freerun, we often train longer and harder than we set out to do so, depleting our glycogen energy stores in the process. We all know that we are at our most vulnerable to mistakes and injuries when we are tired and our energy levels are depleted, but the addiction of training (especially when we’re having fun) often makes us ignore of ‘forget’ to fuel our bodies properly. Read more…
Proper hydration is vital for everyone, not just the physically active. Water is so important because it is your body’s main chemical component, making up, on average, 60 to 70% of your body weight.
Every system in your body depends on water. For example, the liver and the kidneys need water to help flush out toxins, the brain needs a constant volume of water to function correctly, regulate body temperature and joints need it to help reduce friction and facilitate movement.
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What many practitioners don’t realise about Freerun/Parkour is that exercise and fitness are not the only things required to achieve ‘immortality’: An aspiring freerunner or traceur must have a proper diet as part of his lifestyle and daily practise, or else his/her skills will soon amount to nothing. Of course, dieting does NOT mean cutting down on what you eat – it actually means eating more of the healthy foods out there. To put it as simply as possible, it all comes down to eating natural, unrefined foods whenever you can – fruits, vegetables, fish, some meat, etc – and maintaining good levels of hydration. Read more…
“Once upon a time there was a bear and a bee who lived in a wood and were the best of friends. All summer long the bee collected nectar from morning to night while the bear lay on his back basking in the long grass. When winter came the bear realised he had nothing to eat and thought to himself ‘I hope that busy little bee will share some of his honey with me’. But the bee was nowhere to be found - he had died of stress induced coronary disease“. - Banksy 2005. Read more…
