The Newbie Guide to Parkour

A guide for new and aspiring traceurs.

Who Should Use This Guide?

This guide is based on the experience of traceurs and coaches affiliated with PNWPA but is in no way a comprehensive or universal guide to learning Parkour. A fundamental component of Parkour is personal responsibility. This means that at all times, you - not the PNWPA or anybody else offering assistance - are responsible for your body and your actions. If accepting personal responsibility for the movements you attempt, the places you choose to train, and the people you train with does not appeal to you, Parkour is not for you. Please use this guide to the extent that it helps you learn and advance in Parkour, but do so at your own speed and in a way that ensures your safety and well-being at all times.

Understand Parkour

To begin training Parkour, it is important to understand that it not is about taking reckless risks or doing stunts. It about progressing towards an ever-increasing ability to move powerfully and effectively through your enviroment. Risky behavior will bring injuries that will slow your progress. For the beginning traceur the first question should be how do I most safely overcome this obstacle?.

To learn more about Parkour, we recommend you read through our Parkour Info Packet. For younger beginners and their parents, we also have a FAQ for Parents that covers important safety topics and common questions we hear from parents. Additionally, you should seek out other traceurs in your area. Visit our Communities page or search online to locate a Parkour community in your area. The online forums, particularly at Washington Parkour, offer a wealth of advice from experienced traceurs on how to get started and begin to safely learn Parkour.

Respect Your Training Ground

Before you go out to train, remember that your training grounds, whether at home, at a park, on a college campus, or anywhere else, are probably not stress-tested for Parkour. It is critical that you evaluate the ability of any obstacle to bear your weight, and to ensure that you will not cause damage to public or private property as you practice Parkour. This is important not only for obvious safety reasons, but because you're going to want to come back and train again! The PNWPA stresses the importance of leaving no trace. Regardless of your level, it is always your responsibility to respect your training ground and leave it in the same - or better - condition as you found it.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that not everybody is familiar with Parkour. Whenever you train, you are a delegate from the Parkour community. As such, be respectful of other people around you and if asked to move along by an official always do so respectfully.

Get Out and Try It

It's best to try Parkour with the help another experienced traceur or a Parkour coach. The progress of traceurs who have been received training from more advanced traceurs is always faster then people who train on their own. In addition, injuries are less frequent when you learn Parkour in a more structured program. It is of course possible to start training on your own. Many of us at the PNWPA learned by ourselves by training with only the videos we found online for inspiration, but this was part of our motivation to provide more and better resources to other beginners.

To get started training with a coach or an experienced traceur, visit a PNWPA-affiliated community and look in the online forums for public Parkour gatherings ("jams"). Most major regions in Washington and Oregon have regular Parkour jams, and other communities are sprouting up all over the Pacific Northwest.

If you do choose to begin training on your own, seek out simple, safe obstacles at the ground level and focus first on getting over them safely, with minimal impact. In our beginner sessions, we tell traceurs not to jump off of anything they can't jump up on to. Move up to faster techniques on these same obstacles before incresing the difficulty of the obstacles. If you're completely uninitiated or unsure of your fitness level, go out and get a feel for your body moving around. The key is simply keep the level of impact minimal; you don't need to start with big drops, long jumps, kongs, or high wall passes. These things may come after your muscles develop and your body has built up a resistance to impact. Run, jump, crawl, and climb safely and progressively, working at all times with obstacles are safe at your level of fitness.

The best advice for learning Parkour from a mental standpoint is to start without even thinking about the techniques. Go find an obstacle. A small one. One that you feel confident you can overcome, and pass over it without thinking about how; do what comes naturally. It doesn't matter if it is the fastest, most efficient path over that obstacle; just find your path. When you achieve fluency in Parkour you will be able to move through ever more complex environments without being conscious of your movements. While it's good to know the movement that your body can execute easily, that does not mean they are necessarily the best techniques. That's why we teach the basics first, vaults, rolls, and jumps, and stress good form. Training for Parkour is process of learning the mindset of Parkour, and training the most fundamental movements until they become second nature. So drill the basics, but do not be confined by them. Balance your training between practicing basic movements and going for Parkour runs to explore new movements and obstacles. Run out of every movement, don't just let the energy die. Don't get too obsessed longest or the highest vault; find the most effective way through your environment.

Once you have started to explore your own movement, and hopefully started training with some more experienced traceurs, watching videos can provide good inspiration for what movements you can use in your training. The key is to remember that the movements in videos may not be the best for you and may be unsafe at your level. Don't get caught up trying to keep up with what you see on YouTube. Spectacular stunts in videos are not always good training methods but they might provide some inspiration for new skills to work on. Also remember that what works best for someone else may not work best for you. Look to online resources, Parkour instructors, your fellow traceurs, and your own imagination for new ideas.

Find Your Ground

But there is nowhere good to practice where I live! Look harder. There are obstacles available in every environment. The most simple one is just distance: running, jumping, rolling, and quadrapedal movement can all be practiced in even the flattest of spaces. Running is the most basic and most under-trained element of Parkour. Your Parkour will be much better if you invest in developing good running form and condition. Run fast, run far, and transition quickly out of techniques and into running; your Parkour will improve rapidly. Practice both standing and running long-jumps, as well as standing and running max vertical jumps. Before you go trying huge gap jumps, find some ground with nicely marked divisions like cracks in the sidewalk and practice jumping from crack to crack. Aim for precision and landing on the balls of your feet. Learn to move easily on all fours as this can help you when crossing narrow objects, on steep slopes, and when going under obstacles. And remember that Parkour is not just an urban sport: trees, rocks, and water can all be excellent obstacles to overcome.

I just heard about Parkour, and I so have to learn a flip, right? Not so much; acrobatics are not Parkour. If what you aim to learn are flips, you're not really interested in Parkour. There's nothing wrong with that. Many traceurs are also gymnasts, martial artists, and acrobats and it can be fun to mix Parkour's techniques with these disciplines. But learning acrobatics is a whole different thing than learning Parkour. You should start by focusing on one or another and take it seriously. If you want to learn how to do acrobatics the best place to learn is a gymnastics center. There are some incredible self-taught acrobats but the danger in learning on your own is much higher than learning Parkour. We recommend seeking out professional gymnastics instruction if that discipline interests you.

I saw a video of someone leaping from one building another, taking a huge drop off a bridge, or flipping off of a wall. Is that what I'll be doing too? Go to YouTube and look up rock climbing; you'll find videos of people scaling immense cliffs, climbing mountains unroped, and falling tragically from great heights. But ask any rock climber you've ever met if that's how they got their start, or indeed if they're attempting those feats now. The reason you see these amazing videos is not because every day rock climbers and traceurs do these things, but because they're extraordinary. The regular day to day practice - even for the most elite traceurs - is mostly on the ground level. Do not be in hurry to try the spectacular stunts and big drops. It takes years of hard practice and physical conditioning to reach the point where you're ready to take big drops like David Belle does. In addition, when you are ready to safely move on to more advanced techniques, take a few seconds to mentally prepare yourself. If you can't achieve the right mental state, come back to it another day. There is no shame in going home uninjured and not being physically and mentally ready for something will result in failure.

Finally, remember to always warm up and warm down properly, and pay attention to your body. When you're tired is not the time to practice dangerous techniques.

First Steps

Beginning techniques to train. If you don't know what these are, check out the online tutorials below or find a Parkour class or a more experienced traceur to help you out. Be sure to practice rolls and vaults on both sides. You'll find that you have a dominant side and it's tempting to only use that side for techniques, but Parkour requires being prepared for any obstacle, which requires proficiency on both sides of your body.

Rolls: critical for the health of your joints, to protect yourself on higher jumps, and to keep momentum coming out of drops and jumps. Learn to roll to both sides, backwards and forwards.

Running: learn to run on the balls of your feet. This will make you faster both running and transitioning into other techniques. Most Parkour runs consist of constant running with other techniques thrown in as you meet obstacles. Interval training is the best way to improve running condition. Look into srints, running drills, and other running techniques.

The vaults: adapt the vault to the environment; don't try do adapt the environment for the perfect vault. When doing vaults, position yourself to transition quickly into and out of them. You want to land softly (a quiet landing is a good landing), usually one foot in front of the other so you can continue running. The transitions are as important as the techniques themselves.

Ready? Go!

We'll say it one more time ... BE SAFE! We wish you safe and happy training. We'll see you out there.

© 2008 Pacific Northwest Parkour Association. We are a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Some rights reserved: CC License BY-NC-SA applies to content on this site unless otherwise noted. Photographs and video are © by their respective owners and are used with permission.

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