How to Get Started Training For Parkour
If you want to start training for parkour, then you’ve come to the right place. Parkour is a fantastic discipline that has the potential to improve your physical health, athleticism, confidence, and not to mention, look pretty cool doing it. Just like any other sport, parkour requires time, effort, practice and some dedication to truly advance so if you’re still here, lets get to work!
To get started with parkour, we will start from the ground up. The best type of shoe for parkour is honestly cheap running shoes. You want a shoe with a grippy rubber sole, which is light, semi flexible comfortable. While there are some parkour specific shoes popping up now, it isn’t quite necessary to have a parkour specific shoe. I actually prefer cheap Nikes compared to some of the parkour specific shoes out there. You may hear many different opinions on shoe types, whether you should train barefoot or not, or a myriad of other arguments. The cheap to middle of the pack running shoe will do you just fine when starting out and you can develop a preference as you go.
Past that, you should wear whatever is comfortable to work out or play sports in. It’s pretty simple so we don’t need to complicate things. The only other thing that helps out tremendously is a small backpack. Since parkour is about movement, you will probably be moving around a lot. With a small pack, you can carry your water bottle, wallet, keys, phone and perhaps spare clothing if its cold. This way you don’t have to jump around with cumbersome items in your pockets and you don’t have to remember to pick them up every time you want to move.
Okay, now you are ready to start getting into your parkour training. The first thing that you need to understand, is that like any other athletic discipline, the ability to do parkour is built from putting together many different abilities and strengths. Parkour is made up of building blocks of skills that culminate in the ability to move with strength, precision, and grace. These building blocks take time and a little dedication to develop so unless you have been training vigorously in gymnastics, martial arts, or a similarly related discipline, be prepared to do some work before you see results.
With that said, parkour is incredibly rewarding because you can constantly improve and see your progression. You don’t have to beat the other people playing like other sports because parkour is about challenging yourself. If you have the drive to succeed and become a phenomenal athlete, all it takes is some time, work and dedication.
