American Parkour

Parkour is a great way of exercise for me. Its one form of maintaining your body in an alternative way. I'm new in doing parkour or barely a beginner in this and hoping to master it day by day.

That was random 

I wish my feet were small enough to fit into women's shoes.  Some of their shoes look awesome, but wearing a size 13 in men's makes it hard to even find the right size without crossing the gender line.

Training in the rain can be very aesthetically pleasing as well.  It can be a fun, beautiful, experience.

I think there is no greater experience in Parkour than in training alone.  When you train alone, you know you are committed, and motivated, and there is a sense of solitary might that cannot be stifled.

But training with others is usually preferable.  Learning from others and having that support group is useful.

Basically, I've been on a hiatus for the last year or so, and have finally forced myself back into action. Unfortunately, like many others I have seen on here, I live in an area with a general distrust of the sport and with very little apparent training areas. I have, however, found some of my own in my free time.

Keep in mind that this is a custom-made training method for someone who is practically beginning his training again, and I thought it might be useful to others in my situation. Also remember that the only real limit to your training abilities is your imagination.

1.) Stairs- Pretty much everyone has these. I generally use quadrupedal movements up and down these to start out a warm-up, followed by a cycle I came up with of jumping to stairs 1, 1, 1, 1, 2 (first, first, first, first, second). Do as many of each of these as you feel necessary, followed by a number of burpees and stretching.

Then, if you have stairs like mine (with a high ceiling over them), you can use the first or second step to vault you up the set of stairs (Mine are 7 high, generally starting off the first step), followed by a jump back down them to start it all over again. This, again, depends on how your stairs are built (otherwise, this might be a bit more dangerous :/)

2.) Schools- High school bleachers and staircases/handicap ramps have proven extremely useful to me. The railings on the ramps and stairs are good for practicing precision jumps and doing strength building exercises. Bleachers are good for endurance exercises, climbing around on the framework beneath for extended periods of time.

3.) Churches- This may not work with every church, but I find that catholic cathedral-like styles have a unique architecture with many ridges which make them great surfaces for climbing. Not really anything to describe here, as when you see them you will likely know what to do.

Remember, imagination is key in situations like mine, and many of yours'. If you have any other suggestions to add, or improvements on my methods, feel free to add them. I am gladly accepting insight on how to improve my workout and training methods.

I try to stay away from churches and other religious structures.  People think it is sacrilegious to train there, or something.  So be careful 

Injury > lazy.

Training safely and smartly decreases the risk for injury by a great deal.  You can be injured in any activity, including walking down the street, if you don't do it correctly.

So recently I've been searching for parkour shoes, I've heard of Ariakes and those but I found this shoe, what do you guys think about it? I don't have this shoe btw, so any opinion would be good.

http://sneakernews.com/2012/03/22/nike-footscape-free-quickstrike-black-sail-available/

Check out the Consumer Whores section for more shoe reviews and ideas.

As for those shoes, I would avoid anything you can't tightly lace up.  Also, I would imagine the soles getting ripped up within a couple weeks.  But who knows?

Momentum and fluid motion will help you out.  Your feet only need to stick to the wall long enough for you to move on to your next movement.  As for your hands slipping, they will get stronger if you work them.

Back when I lived in Colorado Springs I would run into traceurs periodically.  Surprisingly, Colorado is pretty big for parkour/freerunning.

High school students, so anywhere from 13-18. I am definitely keeping them on the ground, and am teaching the basic movement, not flips.

Sounds great.  Be sure to let us all know how it goes.  Parkour can also be a strong force against drugs and alcohol, which is always an issue with high school age kids, so that's awesome.

So my dad teaches at college so I decided to do some park our while he was doing a lab.  It was very awkward at first since there was a lot of college kids around watching a fourteen year old try to do PK.  About fifteen minutes in I started to just do whatever came naturally to me.  I found out that I could do a monkey vault really well as well as a lazy vault.  I also had kind of a fear of being made fun of because I was the only one actually running around by myself.  It felt weird for a while but I got to a great spot where not many people were around and I also gathered a crowd of four or five people watching me.  I felt that I got a really good start for my first time but next time Im going to go with a friend or two.  Any advice on next time I go would be fantastic!  Thanks all and have a good day

Just keep training.  Master your roll.  Be careful not to do any big jumps too soon.  At 14, you can damage your growth plates and have lots of problems from that.