Parkour
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The buzzword ‘functional’ has become so misused that it now means next to nothing, and for effective training I favour practical movement over functional fitness any day of the week.
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One of the best documentaries made on parkour, the Turning Point is a fantastic TV series produces in the USA which seeks to highlight pivotal moments in the development of an organisation that works to better the world in some way. This documentary follows the lives of three young people in London, detailing how parkour…
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Documentaries on parkour typically showcase the extreme elements of our discipline and focus solely on the movement spectacle that results. The guys behind Breaking the Line were a refreshing change in that they wanted to go deeper into the origin, principles and core values of the discipline of parkour, things I much prefer discussing and…
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Being asked to deliver the keynote talk for the fantastic Dance UK organisation in London was a real honour and a great pleasure, and gave me the opportunity to air some thoughts on the importance of pushing physical boundaries and how I view injury as simply feedback – something that is not necessarily negative or…
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A little while I ago, during one of the trips to South Korea to run an ADAPT certification course and a couple of workshops, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the fantastic guys at Parkour Generations Korea on all things parkour. During the interview we covered: Beginning parkour training Handling injury A philosophy…
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Here’s a truth I want everyone who doubts their physical and mental potential to keep at the forefront of their mind: beneath the shell of the soft, sedentary people we have become lie the raw materials of nature’s most adaptive and capable athlete. The key word here is adaptive. If you’re not already convinced that…
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It is quite common for us as practitioners of parkour, I think, having broken a new jump or mastered a new movement or overcome a new challenge in training, to then look back and remark: well, that was easy. And it is good, in a sense, to be buoyed by such achievements and successes in…
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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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Several years ago the world of running experienced a seismic shockwave that was the emergence of barefoot running, which has gone on to spawn the minimalist shoe trend and whole new ideas on running rehab and technique around the world. That movement was largely kickstarted into action by the work of one man – a…
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My good friend and colleague at Parkour Generations, Chris ‘Blane’ Rowat, and I had the pleasure of being grilled by Justin Goodhart of Well Rounded Athlete fame. The podcast became known as the Tao of Parkour, and was basically a damn good chat about all manner of training concepts, ideas, methods and so on. Justin’s…
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This was a great discussion with Wes Kennedy of Elite Training Programs, a USA based strength and conditioning group of coaches who really know their sh*t. Wes was particularly interested in the Parkour Tactical™ and elite athlete training programmes we run at Parkour Generations, so we mainly focused on those areas but also managed to…
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It was a real pleasure to be interviewed by the hugely knowledgeable and downright likeable Dr Perry Nickelston of StopChasingPain.com about the natural movement principles embedded in parkour. I met Perry at the world’s first Barefoot Training Summit, held in Delhi, India, where we were both presenting and teaching. I spent a great few days…
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One of my favourite chats so far has been with the team behind the phenomenon that is the Spartan Race, and their Spartanup! Podcast. Joe De Sena, founder of Spartan Race, has built an incredible community around the world of people of all shapes, sizes, builds, athletic backgrounds and experience who take part in these…
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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…
Dan Edwardes 