Monday, November 28, 2011

Precision Jumping

Precision Jumping is one of the most basic techniques of parkour and one of the easiest to learn. Its mainly targeting a spot you want to jump to from your original spot with well placed accuracy. This technique is good for jumping from a table to a thin rail. Precision jumping is especially useful for long gaps and planning ahead of where you land. This techniques requires you to understand how much potential and kinetic energy you place with your jump and how far you need to jump. Also, take the height of the jump for account as well to time your landing. Be wary of the surface area of some of the objects you wish to land like rails or ledges. For good practice start out small on low tables or curbs to get a good feel of it. As you progress increase the difficulty by jumping to something farther away, from a greater height, or demands better footing and balance to land on correctly.

Basic:


Intermediate:


Advance:

Basic excerise:Cartwheel

Cartwheels are one of the most basic and easiest parkour excerises you can try. The key physics behind cartwheels is the momentum placed into the motion. The kinetic energy output increases as you begin to advance to more difficult versions of the cartwheels. Your mainly letting the momentum do the motion for you with the and your placing all of the energy straight into the ground. Judging where you will land is not difficult at all since it just takes figuring out your height and how much you strech your legs out, which can change the timing you land to your target from your starting position. Cartwheels help in getting a good feel of how kinetic energy can be distributed through your body and how it can do all the work for you. All it takes is looking at the spot where you plan to plant your arms in and going into a swinging motion. Your mainly going into an oscillation motion for the cartwheel. Keep looking towards the ground and let the momentum carry your leading foot towards the ground. You should not feel any strain from the movement, which also tells you that it was done correctly. Practice the cartwheel daily to get a basic understand of how to use momentum as a leverage in climbing walls and flips. When you begin to get use use to the swing, circular motion trying using only one hand. When you get used to one handed cartwheels than you can try the advance version which is a no handed cartwheel or in parkour terms an Aerial. Aerials demand much more momentum and accelration since your are only using your legs to perform the oscillation motion. Do not try this unless you are supervised and practicing on grass or mats.

Cartwheel variations:

Basic:


Intermediate:



Advanced: