What is Parkour and what are the benefits of Parkour?
Parkour in its original form started, as a French military-designed training that utilizes obstacle courses. The obstacles require extreme focus and a can-do attitude and heavily utilize physical abilities such as running, jumping, swinging, rolling and even climbing. It’s is a fun and exciting way to exercise and anyone can enjoy it. Our Kids Parkour Classes provide a safe environment in which children can learn the fundamental movements and methods of parkour.
We know that regular movement and exercise is a vital aspect of every healthy child’s upbringing and we think that Parkour could be the right sport for your child, here are the Top 10 health benefits of Parkour according to Health Fitness Revolution:
- It is a full-body workout – Parkour workouts encompass total body fitness. Running and jumping over and through obstacles requires work from all muscles. It encourages play while tackling practical and fundamental movements.
- It promotes quick-thinking skills – Parkour requires participants to negotiate obstacles quickly. These sudden moments require you to exercise your brain and think on your feet. Practising instinctive decisions making skills in parkour can lead to participants trusting their instinctive decisions in everyday life.
- It fosters creativity – Parkour encourages participants to use their creativity. Every obstacle you meet in parkour won’t have an obvious solution, so you must use your creativity to overcome it.
- It will help to boost confidence – Parkour builds confidence by allowing people to be able to conquer things they would never have even attempted before. For example, when you see a large wall that before seemed like an impossible feat and you learn how to scale and get over it you may feel as though you can accomplish anything.
- Skill-related fitness – Skill-related fitness includes agility, balance, power, speed, coordination, and reaction time. In parkour, you have to call upon these skills when jumping, climbing and balancing through obstacles. Though these skills aren’t required for everyday life (imagine using parkour to get to work or school!) they are still very beneficial to have to ensure your physical fitness.
- It builds core strength – The core is the centre of your entire body and is responsible for helping you bend, twist and transfer power and strength across your body. Developing a strong core through parkour exercises also helps to prevent lower back injuries. Having a strong core fostered by parkour helps you manoeuvre through obstacles with ease.
- Improves bone strength – Like many other high impact sports, parkour helps develop bone strength. You do a number of lower body and upper body high impact movements, enabling your body to build stronger bones from the impact they endure.
- Improves Cardiovascular endurance – Parkour requires participants to be extremely active. The constant moving and jumping lead to increased stamina by participants, ensuring your heart is strong and enabling increased oxygen supply to your body.
- Reduces antisocial behaviour – Parkour has been proven to reduce antisocial behaviour. In a study conducted through a youth incentive in Westminster in conjunction with parkour coaching, the crime rate between youth ages 8-19 was reduced by 69% during the time they coached parkour. Parkour gives people a positive way to direct their time and energy by presenting them with new challenges and obstacles each time they engage in the activity.
- Anyone can do it – Popular media makes Parkour seems as it consists of only large movements and flips, however, that is not all there is to it. Most parkour movements come from simple movements that are easy to learn.
If you would like for your child to get involved and reap the benefits of parkour then get in touch with us at info@startasticgymnastics.com or via our contact form