Saturday, June 14

Parkour has given me a lot of benefits. I've been doing parkour here in cebu for the past 2 years and 11 months. I really want to share with you why you should also practice parkour.

why you should practice parkour
courtesy of Parkour Sugbo

A Full Body Workout

parkour full body workout

Am I right? A full body workout? Yes! The discipline itself is a full body workout. Even without the conditioning part of parkour. You climb, run, sprint, jump, roll, vault, and other different stunts when you are doing parkour. Then add parkour conditioning. :)


Parkour is Fun

courtesy of Parkour Sugbo
Parkour is just like playing. You were a child once. It is like bringing out your inner child. When you were a kid, you are running, climbing, and doing other physical activities, and it was fun, right? But to know how fun parkour really is, you must try it.


Self Awareness

self awareness parkour sugbo
courtesy of Parkour Sugbo
The longer you practice parkour, the more you will understand the environment around you. A traceur (parkour practitioner) must adapt to his/her environment. This kind of awareness reminds me of a saying, "If you want to change the world, start with yourself". Parkour makes you aware of your strengths and weaknesses as a person and your overall personality. 


Increased Confidence

courtesy of Parkour Sugbo
Practicing parkour increases your confidence. Why? Parkour training and conditioning not only trains you are body, but also your mental and emotional aspect. Parkour push you to do your limit. In doing your best you feel more accomplish, and when you feel more accomplish, then you feel more confident. When you lack of confidence on something that you are doing, just remember your training in parkour.


Makes You a Better Person

why you should practice parkour
courtesy of Parkour Sugbo
In a sense, parkour is about obstacles. Just like our problems which can be an obstacle of what we want to have or to be. Parkour gives a good mental pattern on how to handle a situation. How you handle obstacles in parkour is somehow like in correlate on how you handle your problems in your life or in a given situation.

Thank you Parkour Sugbo for letting me use some of the photos. Do you want to be part of the parkour community in Cebu? Do visit their facebook fan page and facebook group page.

Do you have any questions or anything to add? Comment me below. :)



Posted on Saturday, June 14, 2014 by Zoren

2 comments

Friday, June 6

If you want to learn parkour, you need to build your body. Build your muscle strength, coordination and other factors the will affect your performance.

If you don't condition your body chances are, you may always come up short when you are doing parkour moves like wall run and climb up, you will or might struggling climbing up a wall or the worst get injured.

You will feel unnecessary feelings, like scared in jumps and low in confidence to your movements. You need to hack that away. Building up your body will get you far in parkour, your movements will be fast and smooth. You won't be scared in big jumps because you know yourself you train  your body to react fast. You will avoid many injuries. You will be doing parkour for a longer time.

What kind of muscle and strength you need to build in learning parkour?

Picture a gymnast, not just an ordinary gymnast, but an olympic gymnast. Fast lean muscles, agile, flexible, and very strong. You want that kind of body, lean, ripped, very efficient. 

How do we build that kind of body?

parkour fitness
ta-da! taken feb 2014
We need to train in bodyweight exercises a lot. Yes, a lot! Build your strength, flexibility, and endurance. 

So here are my top 5 bodyweight exercises to get your body parkour ready like gymnast:


1. Push-up


Push-up is a basic bodyweight exercise that most people can do. For beginners, you can do normal push-up, progress it to do different push-up variations, such as diver bomb, handstand push-up, etc. Push-up builds strength and endurance  as well as your chest, back, triceps, and shoulders.


2. Chin/Pull-up

Do the pull-up and chin-up. Honestly, this is where I am weak. I am still struggling to do 50 pull-ups. But I'll be there soon. Pull-up and chin-up is a great bodyweight exercise with a lot of variations you can play with. It is good for your back, shoulders, triceps, biceps, and other muscle areas.


3. Dips

To complete your upper body workout. Dips is good bodyweight exercise. It builds your chest, shoulders, and triceps. The more you get use to it, the more variations you can play. Always do the proper form for best result.


4. Sit up

Sit-up is a good exercise to build your abs and core muscles. If you want to have an ab, then do a sit-up. Again, there are a lot of variations you play with sit-up. There are v-ups, russian twist, etc. For beginners, do a simple sit-up and progress to advance variations.


5. Squats

The King of Lower body exercise, Squats. It is the best exercise for your lower body. Some say that when you are doing a squat you should not go beyond 90 degrees. Don't listen to them. I've been doing squats beyond that range for more than 5 years now, and nothing bad happen. But instead, it makes my knees stronger. Squats is good exercise to build your leg muscles.


That is my top 5 bodyweight exercises to get your body parkour ready. All these exercises are calisthenics. If you want to know what calisthenics is, then frequently visit my blog for new updates and posts or you can just search about it. :)

If you have any questions or anything, Comment me below! :)

Posted on Friday, June 06, 2014 by Zoren

No comments