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:

Twisting techniques

Twisting techniques takes timing, coordination, and quick calculating. Remember, the more rotations you create in the twisting motion the more you increase the accerlation of the technique itself. Calculate the velocity with the additon of weight and gravity in order to figure out the maximum height you can reach in terms of jumping. When you have an idea of your jumping capabilities you can than figure out how many rotations you can pull off in that one jump. The rotations also help in gaining more hang time from friction with the air resistance from the. The twist demands excellent body execution with the right amount of momentum in to gain the amount of rotations you wish to achieve and once your in the air it all depends on keeping your center gravity focused the direction of the rotations. Placing your arms closer to your center gravity also helps in faster accleration in rotating and better control of the twist. Timing comes into key of when to land in order to avoid having all of the kinetic energy created from the twist going through a single point in the body which will cause injury. Use your eyes to spot the place you planned to land in order to have a cleaner landing. When you begin to get used the physics of twisting you can begin to try out the more advanced techniques that require strong whipping force from the legs and flipping mixed in to add more aero dynamic efficieny. Some of the more advanced parkourists use these techniques in order to gain more height from already high points in order reach higher ledges or get over obstacles.
Examples:
  
Butterfly twist
-does not take much height and can be done from a stand still position, but requires a lot of built up potential energy.

Corkscrew
-similar to the butterfly twist, but instead goes into both a twisting and flipping motion that helps greatly in gaining more hang time and flips.
Please comment tmy blog and thank you for reading.

Tuan Tran

How do they do it?

Lets first get this one thing out of the way, parkour and free running are actually two different styles of dynamic traveling. Parkour is all about getting from point A to point B in the shortest time and most efficient manner possible. Free running is taking an urban area and turning it into a improvised, tricking playground. The risks for both are the same and the methods are similar, but parkour is no where near as flashy as free running.  I prefer parkour since the physics of the style can actually still improve and it has a lot of potential in terms of the techniques themselves. It has it dangers, especially when it comes to rooftops or huge gaps, but the techniques uses the physics of the human body and how to redistribute the energy in order to decrease the force by 60 or 70 percent. A good formula for clearing a gap when it comes to distance would be v^2/g. Basic techniques that require a lot of practice and a lot of calculating of placement, energy, and timing would be the flips, drops, jumps, and climbing. Good examples:

The Wall run:

Accounts for friction, weight distribution, and velocity.

Precision Jump:

Calculate the potential energy to kinetic energy in order to land on the specific point.

Roll:
 
 Used to decrease the energy greatly from high falls and to redistribute the energy through the shoulder back into the ground.(spot where you want to land in order to begin the roll)

Parkour also demands that you train your body in order to get used to the physics of the techniques and also have you figure out your techniques that you can apply to the originals that helps you move better or safer. The more advanced techniques go into the longer hang time for flips or do more flips in one leap and some require high velocity rotations in order to even start the technique.Hope this was a decent introduction to the physics of parkour and feel free to give your opinions they would help out a lot.

Tuan Tran