Parkour
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You ready for this? You need to stop exercising. And you need to start moving instead. What do I mean by that? Well, when we think of exercise we typically imagine high frequency, low variety repetition of consecutive and limited movement patterns. You hit the gym or the sports ground or the running track 3-5
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Parkour – that explosive visual spectacle of superhuman movement feats you now see in every Hollywood action movie and TV commercial around the world. At least, that’s how the majority of people think of it, their exposure being limited to YouTube videos and those very same movies that idolise the big jumps and acrobatic manoeuvres
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Athletes call it ‘the zone’; Maslow named it ‘peak experience’; the martial arts of Japan dubbed it mushin or ‘no-mind’; most recently it has been dubbed simply ‘flow’. Whatever you choose to call it, this elusive state of heightened, focused awareness and immersion in a given activity is without doubt when we are at our
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I made that jump to find out who I was. And in that process of self-discovery there is growth, there is improvement, there is transformation. I know now that the person who landed was different – subtly, but significantly – from the person who took off. I had gained something, understood something about myself on…
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Occasionally we get asked why the ADAPT Qualifications are so physically demanding, when in principle they are only coaching qualifications? It’s a fair question, I suppose, and one the creators of ADAPT thought about long and hard when the system was developed around 5 years ago now. And while a small part of me does think
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1. States Parties recognise the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and arts. 2. States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic
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For the last two months the PKGen UK team has been ensconced in East London at a mysterious location, hammering, painting, designing, heaving, dragging, assembling, redesigning and generally working like never before – all to create the UK’s first dedicated Parkour Academy centre. It’s known as The Chainstore, after the official name of the building
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We live in a strange world. If you want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a shaper of people’s minds in a school, there are considerable and rigorous processes to go through to qualify to do those things – and rightly so, as such individuals are putting themselves in a position of responsibility
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Coaching is a hard thing to do well. That’s something we’ve learned over the last decade or so of passing on the principles, methods and concepts of parkour to tens of thousands of people across every continent on the planet. It’s something very close to our hearts and as we’ve seen the global network of
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Recently I had the distinct pleasure of chatting to Abel James for his number 1 health and fitness podcast show out of the United States, The Fat Burning Man Show. Abel is a fascinating guy who found his own natural way to health, fitness and strength after doctors, diets and training fads had all failed
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This past week has seen us introducing parkour in various ways to one of the world’s largest annual professional fitness events, the Idea World Fitness Convention in Los Angeles, USA – and having a great time while doing so. It was our first time at Idea, the first time in fact that parkour has been
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It was the final Q&A session following a talk I’d given to a corporate group of a few hundred people on personal growth and risk-taking, illustrated with examples from my own experiences of being involved with the unusual profession I’ve chosen for myself – parkour coaching – when this particular question was put to me,
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For as long as records have existed, people have found ways to improve their movement abilities. Indeed, the human drive for physical self-exceeding is so great that it has at times become a religious passion. Native American runners, Tibetan yogis, Taoist monks, and Eastern martial artists have all developed control of movement to an extraordinary
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How often have you stopped simply to listen to the world around you? Indeed, how often have you actually listened to yourself? Admittedly, against the constant background drone of an urban society this can sometimes be hard to manage. Noise, bright lights, the rush of the city – these things are the trappings of our modern
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It is often thought that the one true bane of all parkour practitioners is rain. Most, especially beginners, will grimace at the sight of dark clouds or the feel of cold winds, head for home and resign themselves to another day without training. A current prevailing view within the parkour communities seems to be that the
Dan Edwardes 