Contents
- 1 Body Weight Excercise For Parkour
- 1.1 1. General Pushups
- 1.2 2. Jump Squat
- 1.3 3. Wall or Parallel Bar Dips
- 1.4 4. Lunges
- 1.5 5. Depth Drop or Depth Jumps
- 1.6 6. Air Squat
- 1.7 7. Broad Jump
- 1.8 8. Wall Handstand
- 1.9 9. Step-Up
- 1.10 10. Toes-To-Bar/Knees-To-Elbows
- 1.11 11. Plant Plyos
- 1.12 12. High Box Jump
- 1.13 13. Dead Hang Pull-Ups
- 1.14 14. Commando Crawl
- 1.15 Conclusion
Body Weight Excercise For Parkour
In Parkour, your playground is your surroundings. You have to adapt to your environment to perform the Parkour. But Parkour requires body strength and fitness. So, what you must do to gain such power and developing of your muscles. So, here we come with most high body weight exercises to build your muscles and strength to perform the Parkour. Let’s explore:
1. General Pushups
The push up is a useful exercise which helps to increase the body functional strength as it activates every muscle present in the body. It mainly strengthens the upper body parts like biceps, triceps, shoulders, chest, and back with the support of lower body parts.
Pushup helps to improve a proper body posture and reduces the chances of lower back injuries while performing Parkour. While performing this exercise, make sure to maintain a good high plank position keeping your core tightened, back flat, neck neutral and eyes straight.
2. Jump Squat
Jump squat is beneficial for building and toning the lower body muscles like calves, hamstrings, quadriceps, ankles and glutes. So, being a Parkour member or a traceur, this exercise is must strengthen the leg muscles as legs have the primary involvement in performing running, jumping and vaulting actions.
Jump squat helps to maintain the mobility and body balance while performing Parkour. Besides, it contributes to preventing the lower part injuries and is beneficial for burning more calories. While performing jump squat, make sure to land on the toes keeping the hips, legs, and knees bent to absorb the impact.
3. Wall or Parallel Bar Dips
Dips, an upper-close kinetic chain exercise which involves the movement of the body while keeping the hands and feet in a fixed position. This exercise helps to build up the upper body muscles and is recommended to be more superior exercise than full pushups. Dips can either be done using a wall top or parallel bars. Dips are mainly focused on building the triceps which, in turn, benefits the runners to perform climbing, hanging and other related techniques more effectively.
4. Lunges
Lunges are the lower body exercises conducted to build the leg muscles mainly the quadriceps. Also, it increases the hip flexibility, glute activation, and core stability. Lunges also help to keep the back away from injuries. While performing lunges, make sure to maintain the back straight and the chest lifted. Lunges are unilateral leg exercises where training to develop power in both legs is done independently.
5. Depth Drop or Depth Jumps
The quality of this training is that it focuses on increasing the shock absorption power of the lower body parts and improving muscular excitation for bilateral landings. As Parkour involves extreme landing impacts, it is a must that the body muscles are strong enough to absorb such pressure while jumping or rolling. Such exercise is also beneficial to improve vertical power and the jump height.
6. Air Squat
The best exercise to build lower body strength. Air squat toughens the inner thighs, glutes, quadriceps and hamstrings in a powerful way. Also, it helps in pumping up the body fluid and toning the back and lower abs. Besides, it boosts up the Parkour performance by increasing the body mobility and balance. It enhances the flexibility of hip flexor and strengthens the stabilizer muscles and ligaments, thus, reducing the risk of meeting with injuries.
7. Broad Jump
The broad jump is considered to be the most efficient bounding exercise to develop explosive power in the lower body to enhance large jumps. The most superior benefit of this exercise is that it improves the response of fast-switch muscle fibers. It helps to contract the leg muscles so to produce maximal force with each bound. Besides, it overcomes the risk of getting injured from high-impact jumps and landings. When doing broad jumps or any advanced movement make sure you have proper athletic shoes.
8. Wall Handstand
Wall handstand is best to make the upper body healthy. It focuses on building back, biceps, shoulders and the triceps. As a person has to stand on his hands to perform such exercise, it helps to improve the balancing skills while performing similar activities in Parkour running. This activity contributes to making your mood fresh and away from getting depressed by reducing the stress hormones i.e. Cortisol. Besides, it improves the body circulation in the body and builds the core strength.
9. Step-Up
Step-up is the most useful to enhance the leg training progression. It is a unilateral leg exercise which helps to create strength in both legs by training them independently. Such training helps to improve the symmetry of leg musculature and, thus, the balance. It helps the Parkour runners to overcome the fear of pesky plateaus while performing jumps or other techniques. Besides, it also builds the lower back strength and contributes to performing squats and other deadlifts a lot easier.
10. Toes-To-Bar/Knees-To-Elbows
Toe-to-bar is a grueling core conditioning exercise to develop abdominal and arm power where a person tries to flip his body to make the toes touch the bar. Besides, it also helps to improve your gripping strength which is a must for climbing activities where grip matters the most. It also enhances the hip flexibility and helps the Parkour runners to maintain the body weight balance while performing extreme body movements. Similarly, knees-to-elbows is the exercise where a person using the same bars, touches his knees to the elbows. The main aim of this exercise is to lift the knees closer to the chest while vaulting and jumping over the huge objects.
11. Plant Plyos
It is the combination of various exercises to build the strength all over the body. The fact is that the activities performed under this are the commonly-used movements like crouching, landing, ducking, punching, hitting and much more. Overall, it is a strenuous conditioning technique to enhance the Parkour skills and performances.
12. High Box Jump
It is a plyometric activity to improve the elastic energy in the lower body parts. It aims at exploiting the stretch-shortening cycle of the leg to enhance the shock-absorption capacity. Also, box jump improves your vertical jump, speed, and endurance. Box jumps make your leg strong enough to perform all Parkour techniques with more strength and enthusiasm.
13. Dead Hang Pull-Ups
A calisthenics exercises to build up the forearms and the shoulders. Under the use, hold the overhead bar with arms extended and the feet suspended from the ground. Now, sustain the dead hang and hold for as long as you can. The aim if this exercise is to make your upper strength and the grip holding better to perform the climbing, vaulting, and other activities much efficiently.
14. Commando Crawl
It is an exercise where you crawl from one point to another using your arms and legs. Under this, lie on the ground and using same forearm and foot or toe to push the body forward. This exercise is helpful to strength the mid-section of your body and to sculpt the arms, and shoulders.
Conclusion
Parkour is not easy at it looks. It demands complete dedication, time and efforts to perform all strong movements and techniques come in this game of taking risks. The above-mentioned exercises are especially recommended for Parkour practitioners as all these practices focus on speed, muscles, endurance, jump, flexibility, grip and other essential aspects required to perform best. So, start with these exercises on a routine basis and chase your passion. Hope That Helped!