Uniquely Urban Cross-Training - Parkour

It's time to step it up a bit! In June, I wrote about yoga as a cross-training opportunity for runners. This month my foray into the wilds beyond running introduced me to parkour. Parkour is an urban sport from France that Wikipedia describes as "focused on moving from one point to another as smoothly, efficiently and quickly as possible using the abilities of the human body." In truth, parkour often looks like adults using urban fixtures - stairways, railings, benches, and barriers - as a jungle gym. It actually was a jungle gym that got me thinking about this sport. While I was visiting my sister we took a walk and ended up at an elementary school playground. We sat talking on the swings and eventually moved to the monkey bars where we quickly realized we had lost most of our childhood limberness and strength. There was a twinge of sadness to that realization, and when I heard about parkour my interest was piqued.

There's a vibrant parkour community in New York City and NYParkour hosts classes every Sunday on a small, turf-covered spot under the Brooklyn Bridge. The beginning of the above video happens to show one of NYParkour's classes. I signed up for a session and arrived expecting to be one of half a dozen students, but there were almost 20 assembled! Approximately half were new to the sport like myself. It was easy to spot the regulars as I waited for class to begin. They were climbing and hanging off nearby trees, vaulting benches, and referred to by names like Pyro and Torque.

There's a significant possibly you're ready to write parkour off as a sport for punks and juveniles. But not so fast! Parkour involves serious physical conditioning and focus, and over the next two hours I got the best workout I've had in recent memory. Here's what the instructor led us through:

Warm-up

• Extensive stretching of all joints - wrists, shoulders, knees, and ankles
• 1/4 mile jog while stretching and loosening elbows
• More stretching with a focus on quads, hamstrings, and hips
• Curb running - running on a narrow curb without touching the ground
• Squats
• Quadrupedal walking - walking on all fours while maintaining a straight back
• Arm circuit - 3 rounds of 4 kinds of push-ups, plank (1 min), side plank (right and left each 30 sec)
• Ab circuit - 3 rounds of plank (1 min), dip push-ups, airplane (1 min), 20 crunches, boat pose (30 sec), 10 leg/butt lifts

Conditioning

• Instruction: Jumping and landing on the balls of your feet
• Bench jumping - 15 iterations
• Bench jumping circuit - Entailed jumping on the edge of the bench’s seat making sure to land on the balls of your feet, establishing balance in that position, leaping over the back of the bench, running on a slanted surface and a curb back to the bench. Repeat 15 times.
• Hip stretching
• Distance jumping on the ground - always on the balls of your feet with a focus on bringing your knees up to your chest while jumping and landing softly (30-40 reps)

Cool Down

• 4 lengths quadrupedal walking - 2 forward and 2 backward (so much harder than during the warm-up!!)
• Stretching

The class focused on three areas - abs, arms, and quadriceps. As a runner, ab strength is a weakness of mine and I always welcome an opportunity to work on it (see yoga post). Arm strength is a far off dream so I was humbled to attend to it. Working on developing explosive power in the quads is very easily correlated to improving one’s sprinting, and it made me anxious to plan some interval training. The sense of playfulness inherent in the exercises was also infectious. It made it easy to interact with my classmates who were a blend of both genders and many ethnicities.

"I didn't feel ready for the wall climbing (running?), but I'd have liked to try the barrier vaulting."

During the conditioning portion of the class beginners and regulars were separated and it was inspirational to watch these regulars scale a 7 foot wall further topped by a 3 foot metal railing. They then ran down a ramp back to the base of the wall and repeated the route - 25 times! They followed this up with an exercise that involved vaulting (think Kerri Strug without the flips) over a concrete barrier about a dozen times. I didn't feel ready for the wall climbing (running?), but I'd have liked to try the barrier vaulting.

At the end of the two hours my legs were unstable, my water bottle was empty, and I had made a couple of friendly acquaintances. It was a full body workout and a decidedly exciting way to cross-train that opened my eyes to a new set of muscular ranges and possibilities. I love knowing and relearning my capabilities and parkour definitely exposed them. I won't regularly be attending the classes going forward, but I think I'd like to be a 'regular' drop-in every few months, and you can bet I'll be jumping on a lot more park benches from here on out! My quads will be thanking me during my next interval training session too, but I know I'm going to be mighty sore for the next few days.