Parkour training — how we warm up
For anyone who has wondered how you warm up to doing parkour, or how a parkour class begins, wonder no more.
I train ~twice a week at the Brooklyn Zoo NY. Standard class size is anywhere from three to seven people. Going regularly, you get to know the people and enjoy training alongside them, seeing them progress and being challenged by them.
Classes are an hour. The first 15 minutes or so are spent warming up and stretching. The next 45 are spent doing whatever the instructor (usually Basilio) decides, which can involve vault sequences, swinging on bars, running up walls, climbing up walls, or some combination of the above. I could go into detail on each of those movements during the class, but in this post, I’ll explain the warm up movements.
The warm up begins with quadrupedal movement, known as “QMs” in the parkour world. That’s where you crawl on hands and feet, but without sticking your butt up in the air (think as if you are imitating how a cat walks). These QMs can be done forward and backward and side to side (which looks more like a monkey). For the really hardcore, QMs can be done backward up stairs, but we don’t do that at the gym fortunately (though people do at the Barbarian Sessions on Saturday mornings in Central Park).
We also do precisions. Precision jumps are where you stand with both feet on a line, swing your arms, and you jump to land on the next line. If you want to jump without stopping, that’s called a “plyo,” short for plyometric movement, I think. We sometimes throw in strides, where you precision jump to one leg and then land precision with two feet (2–1–2), but that’s a little easier because of the way your momentum works, so we work that less.
We do lunges forward and backward, which works our quads and calves and also helps us stretch out as we are warming up. It’s efficient, so I’m not surprised it is used as a warm up in what is a discipline about efficiency.
We also do this thing called “inchworms” where you touch your toes, keep your legs straight, then walk your hands all the way down to as far in front of you as you can stretch. Then you walk your legs up to your palms, which are still on the ground. If you’ve ever done it, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, be glad you don’t.
We sometimes do rolls followed by a push-up, as we roll our way across the floor and back.
We also sometimes “kong up” onto vault boxes and then kong off backward and do a push up. Kind of the parkour version of a burpee.
If we don’t run around the room in a circle, maybe we’ll run and leap into the foam pit, and have to work our way across and back. The drills that involve the foam pit are some of the most challenging. Sometimes we drop ourselves into the pit, turn and grab the edge as we fall in, and pull ourselves back out without using our knees.
There are more warm up movements, but don’t take my word for it — sign up and experience it for yourself!
Warm ups are kind of no joke in the parkour world. I sometimes get winded. That is the point of entry. If you don’t do it, you end up pulling something, or doing something stupid and falling on your neck (which I have done)…that kind of thing. So don’t skip your warm up. Even if you’re just running around outside and throwing in some QMs for good measure. Then stretch—and after that, the fun begins!
