Flux Movement Seminar:
INTRODUCTION TO PARKOUR
“The Impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way”
-Marcus Aurelius
Parkour is rapidly gaining in popularity across North America and grown ups are realizing it is not just for kids!
Join Darci Anderson in this introduction to the Parkour Basics and learn how to incorporate and/or program parkour for yourself or your fitness students, regardless of their physical level.
WHY PARKOUR FOR ADULTS?
By definition, parkour involves multi Joint and multi plane movement that require full body coordination - much like life itself! Parkour is an exhilarating way to incorporate non-linear movements into your student’s everyday exercise program and an opportunity to bring a quality of playfulness into your student’s lives.
Parkour is also an opportunity to honour our ancestral origins as well as the biological complexity of human animals. As a society, we tend to place great emphasis on metrics. How fast can you run? How many pull ups can you do? How much can you squat? And indeed, this focus on metrics has created some truly astonishing athletic achievements. But, too much focus on numbers and outcomes can also trap us and greatly diminish our capacity to explore. To get stuck in a numbers game is to run the risk of narrowing our appetite and zest for anything beyond convention. The physical practice of parkour is an opportunity to embody feelings of curiosity and wonderment - qualities that can enhance our overall wellbeing in life itself.
DEVELOP KINESTHETIC AWARENESS AND BODILY INTUITION
Parkour requires and develops the physical negotiation of one’s environment. To practice such negotiation is to develop our kinesthetic awareness and bodily intuition. There is nothing more empowering than the ability to negotiate your physical landscapes with sure footed confidence - especially when things do not go as planned.
INJURY PREVENTION THROUGH REFLEX DEVELOPMENT
As grown ups get older our reflexes tend to slow down. We typically become more cautious in our everyday negotiation of our physical landscape. We tend to feel less spontaneous in our bodies. Through the incorporation of basic, task based improvisation, we can train ‘“true to life” and learn how to move under conditions not entirely of our own making.
EXPOSURE TO NEW SITUATIONS
In order to increase our neuroplasticity we must expose ourselves to new situations.
Imagine a child that was never exposed to new physical landscapes, new physical challenges? Imagine how stunted their physical development would be. It is the same for adults. It is never too late to develop and strengthen the neural pathways that are critical to longevity. For seniors, such exposure and neural development can be the difference between a broken hip and a care home versus a few minor scrapes and bruises and independent living.
BECOME MORE EXPLOSIVE
It is commonly recognized that parkour athletes are developing the explosive power of olympic level athletes through massive jumps and landings on a myriad of surfaces and objects. Parkour offers an opportunity to not only learn jumping mechanics but to also learn how to jump and land in a more improvised setting.