Parkour Fears: How To Overcome Your Fear Of Doing Parkour
You have trained your body, day after day, doing pull-ups, lunges, squats all to develop the explosive power that you need for Parkour. However, when you stand there, face to face with your obstacle, you stop dead. You hands start getting sweaty, you start encouraging yourself: you can do this! You can do it! Yet your body remains frozen. You have failed.
What you witnessed is the gap – the gap between your survival instinct and your desires. Your survival instinct sees no reason to perform such a dangerous trick when you can simply walk around but your desires crave the adventure, the rush you get when you complete the trick. I myself have met this gap in myself many times. To overcome it, I have developed the following tips and strategies.
Witness the Trick:
Through the power of the internet, we have YouTube and YouTube contains hundreds of clips on Parkour. Use YouTube to find the trick that you wish you can do and watch it over and over again to convince yourself it can be done and how it’s done.
Imagination:
After seeing the trick done in third person, now imagine yourself doing the trick yourself. Do everything in slow motion. Imagine yourself running up to the obstacle, feel every muscle contraction, feel where your body is, feel the amount of power you need to overcome the obstacle.
Join A Group:
In most cities, there is a Parkour group. It is a group of Traceurs who meet and practice Parkour around the city. They can give you encouragement and tips on your current problem because all of them have been there before. They also know many different Parkour and a change of scenery might just be what you need.
Start Small:
Pretty explanatory but I’m surprised by the amount of people who try to perform a trick without trying a smaller version first. For example, if you wish to perform a double Kong, try to perform a leaping Kong first.
To overcome your fear is all up to you. The source of everybody’s fear is different, you must find what works for you.
