My hubby claims I have no sense of safety (or not enough for his peace of mind!), citing my desire to travel to crazy places, climb into deep caves, and participate in potentially injuring activities while knowing that we have no health insurance and live where there is no great medical care. I say that’s not true – I sense it, and then I ignore it! That I view the risk as lower than the reward of the experience!
Yet I feel that, in the grand scheme of life and compared to many others, I am actually a cautious person. But when it comes to these parkour workouts, I become extra hesitant. It looks so ridiculously easy to sprain, twist, break, or damage your body in these youtube vids! And I am older than the youth who tend to participate.
Yet I still want to try, so I launch into my nerdy method of researching.
Yeeeesh! Shtudying!
I must have watched a dozen videos just on proper parkour landings for a standard jump. You know the one: you’re standing on flat ground… and you jump straight up… and you.. ya know… land right where you started… Crazy impressive, right? Ha! Impressive or not, I spent 3 days working on nothing BUT jumping like that, working all the way up to a whopping 2-steps height.
Seem pathetic? Maybe so, and I’m sure if young or experienced traceurs (check it, I’m learning the lingo!) out there watched me, they’d get a good laugh – and probably do some harsh trolling, as the comments show many of them tend to do. But, like I mentioned.. No health insurance, no good medical care: no doctor to set a cast if one is needed, and definitely no orthopedic surgeon. Add that to “nursing a spine issue” and I am happy to take it super slowly for now.
I also went to Pubmed and did a search for parkour research. As a new growing activity, there were only 11 studies shown – most which I could not access, and most focusing simply on risk and injuries sustained from the sport (no big surprise there!)
But there was one fun little gem! In 2013, the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine had a study called Ground Reaction Forces and Loading Rates Associate with Parkour and Traditional drop Landing Techniques. It’s a short study that compared three different landing styles:
- a traditional jump landing that most people do, and which is common in sports like basketball
- the parkour precision technique
- the parkour roll.
Traditional Landing – notice the flat feet, angle of knees and hips
With n=10, the participants all performed the different landings from the table onto a force plate that allowed them to compare the ground reaction force (essentially the amount of impact the ground causes on YOU) and loading rates (the speed of the force) of these various landing techniques. They found Parkour precision and Parkour roll trials resulted in significantly lower maximal vertical force during the landing, significantly slower times to maximal vertical force, AND significantly lower loading rates than traditional landings. To sum that up… less stress on the body and joints from getting this technique down, and thus less risk of injury!
So THAT is why I spent 3 days watching videos and practicing this specific landing.
Parkour Precision Landing – notice the lifted heels, lowered hips
And in my own personal study of n=1… In the p90x Plyo workout, I have not been able to do the “jump knee tuck” exercise in almost 3 years because 1-2 of those jumps would jar my low spine and start to hurt my little protruding disc, even if I was trying to “land like a cat” per Tony’s Tip Of The Day. Same in Insanity-Asylum’s Speed and Agility workout. But then I changed my form and worked on the parkour precision landing, I can now do over 10 5-foot long knee-tucking broad jumps in a row with no pain! It takes the pressure out of the knees and spine, reduces the force, and uses the body movements and angles to cushion the impact.
Parkour Roll
The ability to jump is one of many things we take for granted. And I feel excited that I may be on my way to healing, and learning how to protect my body as I go.
SOURCE
Puddle, Damien L.; Maulder, Peter S. “Ground Reaction Forces and Loading Rates Associated with Parkour and Traditional Drop Landing Techniques.” Journal of Sports Science and Medicine 12 (2013): 122-129. Print.
Quest for the Healthy Grail 