So, you want to progress with your vaults (or your cat leaps or your top outs or your laches. . . ), but you're just not confident your arms will hold you. Stereotypically women have weaker upper bodies than their male counterparts, but don't let this be an excuse you can get strong enough arms to do any move in Parkour. You may not be able to take it to the extremes, but that's not what Parkour is about.
So, on with the upper body drills.
First, the basics, pull-ups and push-ups. These moves can be challenging what ever your skill level, but they are also extremely flexible, so you can scale them to your abilities.
The basic push-up:
Ok, you say, I know how to do a push up, right? Well, I've found that most people new to training Parkour have a lot of creativity in their push-up forms. If you do a push-up wrong, you're not building strength. A push-up is usually thought of as an arm exercise, but it really works your core. Start lying on the ground, with your hips, chest and chin touching the floor. Your hands should be right under your shoulders or very slightly outside of your shoulders. Push, using your arms, in a smooth movement until they are straight. Throughout the push-up, your chin, shoulders, hips and toes must all be in a straight line (this is plank position). Slowly let your body back down until you're flat on the floor again. Did any part of your body hit the ground before the other parts? If it did, this means you're cheating. Avoid pecking (lifting your hips so your face hits first), humping (sagging your back so your hips hit first) or breakdancing (some funky combination of hips and head). Repeat ad nauseam. Things to focus on: keep your core tight so your shoulders, hips and feet are aligned. Keep your face up, eyes looking forward. Things to avoid: pecking, humping, breakdancing.
Are 10 regular push-ups out of your level right now? You can easily scale it down. Slightly easier are knee push-ups: pivot on your knees instead of your feet, cross your feet behind you. Still focus on keeping a straight, strong core. Easier still are incline push-ups put your hands on a step or box 8-10 inches off the ground. This puts more of your bodyweight on your feet or knees. Taller boxes make for easier push-ups so find the height on which you can just barely do sets of 10 push-ups and work on that. At any of these heights, you can build strength more quickly by focusing on letting yourself down VERY slowly rather than on pushing yourself up. If you need just to learn the position of a push-up, but can't do 10 leaning on a box, stand an arms-length from a wall, lean in and push yourself back out.
Have you been doing 10 regular push-ups for ever and ever, and still not feeling strong enough? Decline push-ups help here. Put your feet on a low box or step, and keep raising the height as your skill increases. Eventually, you can work on hand-stand push-ups start facing the ground, and walk your feet up a wall, until you are nearly vertical (the higher your feet, the harder the push-up), push-up from here. You can also work in other modifications as well: 1. You can push up explosively, so that your hands come off the ground when you reach the top. You can even add a clap. 2. A T-push up involves lifting one arm up and reaching it towards the ceiling at the top of the push up (you end up in the shape of a sideways T). 3. Push-ups with your hands on medicine balls or balance boards increase arm strength.
Pull-ups: The bane of children forced to take the president's fitness tests in grade school (does anyone else remember these? - I could do everything at the 95% level but the pull-ups, to my everlasting frustration). Pull-ups may seem intimidating because it doesn't seem like there's any way to build up the strength you can either do them, or you can't, right? WRONG. Like everything, pull-ups are scalable.
First, The basic pull-up. The basic pull-up starts from a straight-arm hang from a bar, hands facing forward, legs straight and relaxed. Using the arms and the core, pull the body up until the chin is above the level of the bar, without swinging the legs. Let the body back down slowly until the arms are fully straight again. Things to keep in mind: tilting your head to look up at the bar helps put your arms and shoulders in a more powerful position. Always go through the whole range of motion make sure your arms are fully straight at the bottom of each pull-up.
How to scale it: If 10 regular pull-ups are too difficult, try one of these modifications. Easiest are negative pull-ups. Find (or place) a bar that is about shoulder-height (or put a large box or chair or something sturdy under a higher bar). Grab the bar so you are in the position at the top of a pull-up, with your arms bent, hands forward, chin over the bar. Bend your knees until your arms take the weight of your body (ideally cross your feet behind you so all your weight is on your arms, but you can keep some weight on your feet if you need). Let yourself down into the fully extended position VERY SLOWLY. This builds more strength quickly than pulling yourself up. You can work negative pull-ups from any starting position to build strength.
The next step up is the jumping pull-up. Find or place a bar that is about the same height as your elbows or forearms when your arms are fully extended up. Hang from this bar, arms straight, with your feet on the ground and your knees bent to accommodate the height. Swing your hips forward slightly, keeping your feet in place. As you swing back, push strongly with your legs, while pulling with your arms, and jump into the full up pull-up position. Make sure your chin goes above the bar. As you come back down, place your feet on the ground and absorb with your knees enough that your arms come fully straight, and go right into the next pull-up by swinging forward again. A lower bar is easier because you can use more of your jump, a higher bar gets harder.
Once you've got jumping pull-ups down and can easily and regularly do many sets of 10 or 15 in a row, you're ready for kipping pull-ups. A kipping pull-up has a lot of the same motions as a jumping pull-up, but your feet don't touch the ground. Here, you start in a full hang. Swing your knees back and forth a bit to get used to the motion, notice as you swing your legs, your hips and shoulders move, too, and you start to achieve a feeling of lightness at the top of each swing. Once you're comfortable with controlling a swing, you're ready to kip. Look up at the bar. Swing forward, and as you swing back, explosively lift your knees and hips forward (this will somewhat force your shoulders back, this is good). While your knees and hips are up (at the peak of their motion, so they are, in effect, in free-fall), pull up with your arms. Your legs will swing back as you get to the top and begin to let yourself down. When you reach the bottom your legs should be at neutral so you're in a good position to swing them up again. Getting a good rhythm is the hardest part of kipping pull ups, but once you have it, you can keep going for ever. Things to keep in mind: Your hips and shoulders move in opposite directions. Keeping your head tilted up and eyes on the bar puts your shoulders in a better position to pull.
The muscle-up: If regular, dead-hang pull-ups are easy (and you're doing well on push-ups, too), you might be ready for the muscle-up. This is a basic pull-up (usually a kipping pull-up), followed by a rotation of the arms so you end up above the bar with your arms straight. At the top of a pull-up, lift your legs again, and swing them back to give yourself a little lift. While you swing, rotate your shoulder so one elbow points upwards and your shoulder on that side is above the bar (watch out here, if you're not careful you can mash your breast again the bar, ouch!). Swing again, and lift the other elbow up, the follow it quickly with a push-up on the bar. Let yourself down sloooooowly to build strength. As you get more skilled, you can try to lift both elbows at once, and cut out the extra swings.
Like with push-ups, you can try doing explosive pull-ups, and clap at the top. Another good variation is to made a circular motion with your chest: pull-up more strongly on one arm, so you're closer to one side. as you reach the top, switch sides, so you become closer to the other arm, and let yourself down. as you reach the bottom, switch directions.
