The benefits of Parkour

The obvious benefit of parkour is that it improves your ability to move between places. This is the very essence of parkour, practical movement from one place to another. You become aware of routes from one place to another that wouldn?t have occurred to you beforehand, and your ability to make use of these routes increases the more you train. This can also have self-defence applications because the ability to put distance between yourself and an attacker quickly will greatly increase your safety in many cases.

Physical fitness is another benefit to parkour. It?s not just that parkour utilises and exercises every part of the body, it is that almost every technique and movement involves the whole body, giving you an incredible workout. It combines short bursts of intense activity with long periods of light exercise, increasing both your muscle power and stamina.

The mental side of parkour shouldn?t be overlooked either. One of the vital aspects of parkour is that you must learn to assess situations on the move, on your own. The longer you practice parkour for, the more you learn to trust your own judgement, because when practicing parkour your own judgement is all that matters. The best person to judge what you can and can?t do is you.

In the same way, parkour helps you conquer fear in every day life. By actively seeking out situations where you experience fear you are forced to learn to overcome it. Once you learn how to cope with fear you can apply this to any situation, and you become much more confidence as a result

Your own self-confidence also benefits from the fact that parkour still isn?t socially acceptable. Parkour is practiced in public areas because the whole point is to be able to cope with practical situations that exist in real life, and so in order to practice parkour you need to learn to let go of the embarrassment of acting differently. As parkour becomes more accepted the problem will lessen and some of the benefit will be lost, but it is questionable whether parkour will ever become commonplace.

Parkour requires that you take responsibility for your actions as well, and therefore encourages honesty and independence. Parkour is completely against the ?compensation culture? that has developed in recent years. Parkour does involve taking risks most people wouldn?t and since it comes down to your decision to participate, you can?t in good conscience ask anyone else to take the blame.

Parkour also makes you feel good about yourself. Parkour is about personal achievement. By taking full responsibility for your actions you also take the full credit for your achievements without taking anything away from anyone else.

Parkour also gives you a sense of freedom, because through learning parkour you remove some of the limitations placed upon you by society. Your mind opens to new possibilities.

Article written by Feraess (Dave)
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