Thursday 18 April 2013

One to one Parkour coaching

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when a 36yr old lady contacted me about learning Parkour.
This particular lady came to a couple of my Parkour classes earlier in the year, although she enjoyed the activity, she was conscious about training with a group that were all so much younger than her.

This week she called me up and asked about 1:1 training. I was glad that she still wanted to train and learn Parkour so we set it up.
So we agreed to meet at mi-gym to warm up, then onto some general movement and mobility work.
Once warm I took her through takeoff and landing techniques followed by some ground level jumps between lines we marked on the floor.
I was being especially careful in making sure she could jump and land correctly before we did anything outside.

After the basic technique drills I was very happy with how capable she was. We then jogged 1km to the training spot I had planned for the main portion of our session together.
Conscious that she might be nervous jumping around in public, I chose a spot that wasn't in the middle of town, but also wasn't too enclosed or secluded.

We began with quadrupedal movement forwards and backwards at a moderate height, then we repeated the precision jumps we had drilled earlier, only this time we were jumping between walls instead of between lines on the floor.
My lady student was perfectly comfortable and unfazed by the walls or the height (only around 3ft at this point) and was landing the jumps with grace and balance.
I then got her to link multiple movements together, foot placement and plyo jumps between obstacles.
Other than a little hesitation at the start, she took it all in her stride.

Finally we went for a small cat leap and some shimmy movements after landing the cat leap. The only thing that I threw at her during the outdoor training that she wasn't able to do was a climb up from cat leap position.
Even when I allowed he to use her elbows on top of the wall, she still was unable to get herself up.

The Parkour climb up and the muscle up are very similar movements. With a climb up you are able to use your legs to push your body upwards as you pull with your arms.

As it was almost the end of the session we went back to mi-gym and finished off with some of the pull up and muscle up exercises I posted about recently.
We'll be revisiting these exercises next week to help her get the strength required to complete a climb up.

All in all a great session and a great student.

Parkour 'Cat Leap'

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