This month, I want to address a significant problem I have seen growing quite rapidly in the parkour realm. The problem is simple, but the solution is often not so easy to implement. This month, I want to address the “rest day.” 

      Let’s face it, we’re all here for one universal reason and that is because we absolutely love Parkour. It’s amazing and since becoming traceurs, parkour has filled our thoughts, dreams, aspirations, and has redefined our concept of fun. Parkour is what gets us going and turns us on. Sounds great right? 

      Wrong. Well, okay, to a certain degree this is absolutely wonderful but here in lies the problem: Parkour is exhilerating but too plyometric to be performed or trained as it often is. We go, go, go from dawn to dusk and often times repeat it the very next day. Why? Because it’s fun? Because we want to get better? Because we know that tomorrow we can make that extra foot on our precision, wall climb, kong, what have you?  

      The amount of stress placed on your body during these training sessions is often overshadowed by the sheer fun factor. By continuing the cycle, day in and day out, or even with as little as one day rest, your body begins to deteriorate and overuse injuries begin to take over.  

      In comes the rest day! A wonderful training implement high performance athletes have been incorporating into their training ever since they, themselves, were beginners. Rest and recovery is terribly important when considering protein synthesis, hormone production/secretion, and psychological wellbeing. Implementation of proper rest is simple, but not always easy. The first step is allowing adequate sleep every night. 

      Proper sleep every night is a gimmie that everyone knows (and most don’t follow, myself included) to allow yourself adequate time to recuperate and rebuild, but sometimes you need more than that. For this, we will be looking at active rest and passive rest.  

      Passive rest is pretty easy: sit and do nothing. Yeah, nothing. No, no. Please fight that urge to get up and do muscle ups, handstands, a vault over a rail, or any form of plyometric. Sit back and relax and just let your body heal. Usually a day of passive rest is followed by a highly strength oriented workout or high plyo day, or just a day placed at the end of your week where you take an extended break from all training. After placing significant load on your body, you will need the extra day of complete rest to allow for recovery so you may go back and do it again harder and faster. Because of this however, it is possibly the hardest form of rest to implement. Judging from personal experience, a day of full passive rest makes me feel like a bum and if I don’t keep myself pre-occupied with work or school or something else, I simply cannot enjoy the day. Find a book or other form of useful distraction to keep you busy.  

      In the middle of the spectrum is active rest: a day where any work you do is light intensity or low plyometric to help spur on recovery. Where on a passive rest day you block your temptation to do anything, active rest is your chance to get up and do a handstand if you want to, balance on the rail while walking to class, go for a light jog around the block, or climb that tree to watch the sunset. Or if you’re more of a gym trainer, go to the gym and cut back the weight/intensity significantly to just get your muscles active and your blood flowing a little bit more.  

      Active rest is a much more viable for many of us who probably implement some of these days sporadically throughout the week anyway without knowing it. We have our jams or get togethers where we go high intensity for long durations, and during the work week take it a little easier.  

      It’s important to realize that this concept of rest is not just for those of us who take parkour training seriously, but also for those weekend warriors or recreational traceurs. Parkour is innately plyometric and requires that, although we may have had fun from a particular meet up or jam, we rest in some form the next day. Else, you accept the fact that you will placing yourself in a great position to get such injuries or diorders like tenonitis, over-training, shin splints, bursitis, or welcome yourself to a possible stress fracture.  

      The previous topics mentioned deals with short term recovery revolving around a week long stint of training. Another useful tool is long term recovery. Take yourself out of that week long mindset and start thinking about your yearly training. How much long term rest do you take? This is anywhere from 1-2 weeks of passive and active rest where you avoid all gym or parkour training and take a break. Maybe go on vacation or just switch focus for a week. Learn something new! Take up a new martial art or anything else you’re interested in. Go camping! Just make sure it’s different. It’s amazing to see what happens when you change focus for a week and then go back to training. You feel more alive, energetic, powerful, and suddenly something that used to be a challenge is relatively easy!  

      This month, I want everyone to look at their training and think to themselves about their training. Are you going too much, too fast? How long have you been training and what point are you at now? Have you even thought of rest before or have you just been go, go, go? See where you can implement rest and what steps you can take to make your training more well rounded or more efficient or more complete.  

Happy training

Charles