Absorb What Is Useful Part 1: Parkour

"Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is uniquely your own." - Bruce Lee

Maybe I'm partial to Bruce Lee since the very first art I studied was Jeet Kune Do, but biased or not it's good advice.  However most people, if they do apply this concept, only apply it directly toward the technique aspect of their martial arts, and even then they seem to tend to restrict it to martial arts.  Let me give an example, an artist finds that a particular elbow strike from his art is ineffective in a certain situation, he learns about a differing method for executing a similar strike in another art that would be far more effective so he learns it and implements it.  That's the standard example.

What about reaching out to other disciplines entirely though?  What about a taekwondo student looking into how ballet dancers or high jumpers train to make their enormous leaps into the air.  What about jiujutsu student studying gymnasts to see how they get such a high strength to weight ratio and extreme flexibility?  For whatever reason this no-less-valid practice is something that people just don't seem to think of.  I'd like to change that. So, through my Absorb What Is Useful series, I'm going to start introducing a new discipline to you in each article that can improve your martial arts and how it can accomplish that.

The very first discipline I want to introduce:  Parkour.

Some of you may already be familiar with Parkour or Freerunning, but (sadly) it still seems like a majority of people aren't so I'll do my best to explain a little bit about what Parkour is.

Parkour, while hard to define in some cases, can essentially be boiled down to getting from point A to point B in the quickest most efficient manner possible using the human body.  From a training perspective, this tends to mean learning to smoothly and efficiently traverse obstacles.  Better people than I have been more able to capture the definition of Parkour in words, so I'll leave it at that and link to some elucidating sites at the end of the article.

Freerunning on the other hand is ever so slightly different. Originally Freerunning was slated to be the English word used to replace the original French name Parkour.  However, it has taken on something of a life of its own.  Now, Freerunning more generally refers to a form of Parkour where efficiency (while still important) can be sacrificed for aesthetics.  This means that potentially inefficient but acrobatic moves like flips can be done.

Due to the fact that to a martial artist the benefits of the two are largely equal, I'm going to use the word Parkour to refer to both arts for simplicity's sake.

So why should I care?

An excellent question.  I'll let American Parkour answer that one.

"Being that Parkour is made up of a lot of movements that are natural to the human animal, the body is strengthened evenly and synergistically, meaning that all the parts of the body learn to work together.  This helps to balance the body and improve all movement in general. Aside from the physical benefits, many people find training Parkour develops mental clarity, confidence, self-discipline, the ability to deal with fear, and many other mental gains." - Americanparkour.com

Hmm, physical benefits coupled with mental clarity, confidence, self-discipline... why, that sounds a bit like martial arts now doesn't it?  Here are some more reasons you might be interested in supplementing your martial arts training with a little Parkour:

• One of the most balanced workouts you can get - American Parkour wasn't kidding.  Parkour itself has its foundations in a fitness system/philosophy called the "The Natural Method" (la methode naturelle) which emphasized synergistic total body fitness in all aspects; strength, balance, coordination, endurance you name it.  Parkour requires running, jumping, rolling, climbing, swinging, vaulting almost an infinite number of movements.  Unlike doing bicep curls in the gym, these movements require you to use almost all your muscles, resulting in a more balanced level of fitness that's hard to get elsewhere.

• Extremely honed sense of balance - As a martial artist you may think you have a wonderful sense of balance, but can you take a running leap over an 8ft gap and land solidly on the thin round handrail bar running down the center of a staircase?  That is, without needing first aid shortly after?  What about walking down that rail only to leap from it to another one?  What about doing a handstand on that rail? (That is still under the category of balance). Parkour emphasizes balance for a wide variety of its movements, and it is hard to be involved in Parkour for long without seeing your balance improve tremendously.

• Kinesthetic sense and proprioception rivaling a tigers - Your kinesthetic sense is essentially a big word for your coordination and your proprioception is your ability to interpret tactile input from your body.  Power is nothing without control (I know it's a tire ad, but it's relevant).  Achieving the balance requisite to land on a thin round slanted railing and making it look like you'd landed on your living room floor requires a high degree of control over your musculature, both minor and major.  Let alone the coordination needed to land on such a small target so far away.  That's not even counting the coordination required for vaults, wall-flips and the like.  Once you can do a wall-flip or make a flying leap and land on something only a few inches wide, that flying spinning kick to hit that little focus mit doesn't seem so hard anymore.

• Intuitive spatial awareness - Parkour, if you get down to it, deals largely with manipulation and assessment of space.  You have to be able to look at an obstacle, be it a gap, a wall, a table or whatever, and effectively judge its dimensions and its distance from you while running right at it.  You have to know how far you can jump in a real-world sense and apply it on the fly to decide to make that leap or not.  You have to be able to evaluate whether or not you can slip through a gap for an underbar, or be able to get enough distance off of a kong vault to make a cat grab on a nearby wall (sorry about all the terminology, if you're curious what all these moves are I'll provide links at the end).  The point being, a key aspect to martial arts is the ability to quickly and effectively judge the distance between you and your opponent and take appropriate action depending on your range.  Replace 'opponent' with 'obstacle' and this is also a fundamental of Parkour.

• Confidence, confidence, confidence - Believe me when I say, if there's one thing in the world that rivals martial arts for improving a person's confidence it's Parkour.  The confidence benefits from Parkour are two-fold.  First, by performing movements you probably never thought you could in the first place, and by learning what you are capable of and what you aren't, you develop the ability to critically evaluate a situation.  In Parkour terms, you want to leap across a gap and land on a rail, but that little voice in your head says 'Don't do it, you'll miss or slip and wind up singing falsetto with no hope for kids'.  Since you've already done the same movement a million times, you know your little fear voice is wrong, you have the knowledge to be confident and you pull off the movement.  The second form of confidence comes from a curious little by-product of Parkour.  When you spend so much time overcoming obstacles, you start seeing them differently.  No longer does a wall, railing or other physical obstacle say 'You are blocked'. Instead, those obstacles become playground equipment shouting 'Come play on me!'  This viewing of physical obstacles as challenges and sources of fun bleeds into mental obstacles as well.  You soon start viewing your problems as opportunities for fun, which makes you an overall more confident person.

• "Be like water..." Flow and creativity - I know, more Bruce Lee, can't help it.  One of the bigger aspects of Parkour though, especially as you improve in skill, is your 'Flow'.  Loosely defined, this is your ability to perform the movements smoothly and flow from one movement to the next and one obstacle to the next.  It's hard to accurately describe, but if you've ever seen an Aikido-ka in randori effortlessly sending one opponent sailing across the room and then gliding swiftly to the next, it's kind of like that.  From an artistic standpoint, it also increases your creativity.  Especially when doing a run through a very crowded space (in terms of obstacles not people) you don't always have time to think of what you're going to do next, you just react.  If you've ever been thrown into a sparring situation as a beginner martial artist, you know how important developing that skill is.

I'm sure there are more benefits a martial artist can reap from taking up Parkour, but honestly do you need any more?  Parkour and martial arts almost go hand in hand, some people in the Parkour world even classify it as a martial art in the sense of it can be used to effectively elude aggressors.  Isn't conflict avoidance the highest level of martial arts?  Hopefully this has, if not encouraged you to take up Parkour specifically, at least inspired you to open your mind to other disciplines to improve your martial arts.

Special thanks to Zachary Cohn, Dalton A. and Matthew W. for their contributions.

If you have any questions, suggestions or anything to add, please leave a comment.

Last, but not least, some links and videos to explain Parkour a little better and get you going if you're interested:

Links

American Parkour

Urban Freeflow

3Run

Videos

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