If you are the type of person who enjoys listening to music whilst training, there is nothing worse than jumping a gap, vaulting a rail or even falling face first into the treadmill of the running machine in the gym, and having your headphones torn from your ears or, worse still, having your MP3 player crash to the ground and break into a hundred tiny pieces. God knows it’s happened to me a few times!
Fortunately, Sony has come up with the perfect solution - the NWZW202 W Series “wearable” Walkman. Read more…
Since 2003 we’ve been constantly inundated with questions asking which shoes are best to wear for our discipline. Opinions are mixed and at times, heavily biased depending on which sponsored athlete you’re talking to. Long before we were sponsored by Adidas, we went through hundreds of different pairs/brands in search of THE perfect shoe but never found any that really stood out from the crowd. Read more…
As you may have already realised by now, Parkour is a highly physical extreme sport that involves key activities such as running, jumping, climbing, vaulting, swinging, landing, balancing etc, all of which are necessary for the goal of fluid motion and all requires the use of a lot of muscles. We can be prepare our muscles through training by doing effective warm-ups and conditioning, but one set of muscles that we rarely train are our inspiratory muscles. Read more…
These martial arts shoes have created a little bit of a stir recently in Parkour/Freerun circles, with our first proper introduction to these type of shoes coming in 2005, when Sifu Shi Yang Ming gave us some to use while at his Shaolin Kung Fu academy in New York. Read more…
This is a slick piece of kit. Fact! For anyone who’s into conditioning their upper body via bodyweight exercises, this setup comes highly recommended. It is a simple piece of apparatus that serves a simple purpose - to develop upper body strength. The best thing of all is that it can be set up within your home in 5 mins, used for conditioning drills and then quickly packed away for easy storage. Read more…
For those looking to boost body strength without having to go through the rigmarole of weight training, these exercise bands are spot on and very cheap too. For as little as £10 you can purchase this extremely versatile bit of kit that can effectively exercise the entire body, while being small and compact enough to stash away anywhere or pack into your backpack. Read more…
‘Even though I seek perfection, I wear my scars with pride’ - Urban Freeflow
For those new to Freerun/Parkour, one of the first things you’ll encounter on your journey, are the initial scrapes to your hands as you get to grips (literally) with grabbing on to rails and practising cat leaps etc. Read more…
During the winter months we spend most of our time drilling specific techniques indoors or (if the weather permits) doing the same focused training outdoors, but in isolated hotspots. In these cases its fine to bring a backpack with all the necessary items (keys, wallet, mobile phone etc) and leave them lying together in a corner while training close by. Read more…
Practising outside in the winter periods can bring a whole World of misery. Sure, once warmed up you just need to keep running about to keep warm, but that takes a lot of time and effort. A lot of people (especially beginners) are deterred by cold weather and either prefer to look for somewhere to train inside, or just give up the ghost totally and head home to the trusty Xbox. Read more…
For many people new to Freerun/Parkour, among the many questions asked are “How do you guys have the strength to get up and over walls like that?!” Its no secret that key muscle areas are used to enable this. Generally strength conditioning increases with practise, but for people wishing to work on specific exercises, this little gizmo is definitely worth a look. Read more…
Want to take your balancing skills to the next level? This baby can do that while also acting as a superb muscle strengthening tool. It can be used to help build ultra resistance to all the ballistic movements that day to day practise puts you through, and with practise can bring your balancing skills up to a level that is near perfection. Read more…
Before filming began for Jump Britain, I managed to pick up a very nasty knee injury (Patella tendonitis) that I couldn’t shake. After seeing specialists I was told that I would be able to carry on with filming as long as I kept everything in check….Plenty of ice, adequate strapping etc. I was also advised that some good quality rest would be called for once filming had ended, but in order to try and clear it up totally, I was told that specific strengthening exercises would be necessary to build up the muscles around the injured area to alleviate pressure. Read more…
Injuries suck. Nuff said! From my point of view, I’ve always firmly believed in self preservation first and foremost. With Parkour, if practised correctly and safely, you’ll get very few problems along the way. But if you fail to carry out little safety measures, you’ll only be lining yourself up for possible injury and then having the hassle of sitting out on the sidelines while everyone carries on practising. This on its own is probably one of the most frustrating things ever for an active free-runner. Read more…
Most recently I did some minor damage to my knee from excessive Parkour training. One of our friends from France happens to be a sports physiotherapist and he gave me a load of different exercises to help strengthen my knees. One of the many variations given was balancing one foot at a time on railings. Read more…
One of the things that really worries me about most traceurs is that they show almost complete ignorance when it comes to self preservation. I hardly see anyone using correct warm up routines before training and just as importantly, when warming down at the end of a session. Read more…
A lot of people out there are unaware that dropping from height carries a real shock factor. Even if you have correct fluid form when rolling and transferring the energy of a drop, you still need to ensure that your feet are well protected. In most cases, you’ll find that regular running trainers provide adequate cushioning. But if you take the time to have a closer look and take out the standard insoles of the trainers you are using, you’ll more than likely find that they are wafer thin, thus offering you almost zero. Read more…
These are the trainers that have received a lot of hype, seeing as Sebastien Foucan and co used to be sponsored by Nike, and they sung the praises of the Nike Air Pegasus as being near enough perfect for PK. In my quest to find the perfect pair, I went out and bought some Pegasus shoes and put them to the test.
