The camp curriculum is designed to ensure that everyone experiences as much of what Parkour has to offer over the week as possible, offering a great opportunity for a beginner to pick up the basics or for an experienced practitioner to push their limits.
Each day has a theme based around the core movement categories in Parkour, each matched with complimentary games and challenges to keep each day as exciting as possible.
3 hours can be a lot for even the most experienced practitioners to practise non-stop so we ensure there is sufficient time to relax and grab a snack to help keep energies high.
Let’s take a look at what each day has to offer!
Jumping, landing and balancing are important core skills in Parkour, so they are the perfect place to begin. Ensuring that all students have a strong landing technique and testing it in a variety of situations will enable them to access all other movements with more confidence and safety.
Balancing is a skill necessary to perform almost all other movements to a high level. Balance is simply about understanding where your body is at any given time and teaching your body to instinctively correct itself. Whether you are climbing up a high wall, landing on a thin surface or halfway through a flip, this level of spatial awareness and control is vital.
Today we are looking at how we can pass over or under obstacles efficiently and our main ways are either with a vault (to pass over) or a swing (to pass under).
Vaulting is perhaps one of the first moves that someone thinks of when imagining Parkour (well, maybe other than a backflip!). A vault is how we can pass over a low wall as if it wasn’t even there. It also has some of the most diverse variety of techniques of all the core movements of Parkour, each with its own specific use and application.
Swinging is perhaps the most difficult for the average student to learn. Most people don’t hang very much (but you should!) and therefore lack the grip and shoulder strength to produce a good swing. We use basic drills to develop this strength, and work through the core techniques and safety options for those who are ready.
Now it’s time to get upside down! While Parkour can be very practical, and offers efficient ways to pass obstacles, it can also be very creative. Students will be encouraged to experiment with their movements and the different obstacles, as well as explore the importance of learning to fall safely.
Many of our students look a little confused when we ask them to fall over on purpose, but they soon realise that it is a very important skill to cultivate. Falling and unsuccessful attempts are part of learning and progress in almost anything in life, so we need to learn how to fall safely and then how to get up again, and how to learn from the mistake and make improvements.
Once we feel students can fall safely, we begin to work on some of the more playful and creative movements that Parkour has to offer. These can be various types of roll for beginners or learning the basics of flips and even splints for our more advanced Parkour students.
The last core movement that we haven’t explored is climbing. Climbing up and down requires both strength and confidence and students will be working to build up both today. With a variety of drills and challenges, students are reaching new heights in no time.
Climbing is likely the most physically demanding core Parkour movement. Having the strength and confidence to pull up your body over almost any obstacle takes a lot of work and patience. However, learning good technique can minimise the strength effort required, plus it has the added benefit of helping cultivate the strength that will be needed later.
If you have ever climbed up somewhere high, you know that the way down can often be more difficult than the way up. It requires both confidence and technique to climb down efficiently and we will be walking through how to develop both during the Parkour Camp.
It’s time to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Our students will be given time to practise the skills they have learned and put them to the test through a number of challenges set by the coaches. They will also be challenged with bringing the movements together in a route or combo.
We have described Parkour so far as a collection of individual movements or techniques but if you have watched any of the coaching team in action, you know that it is when all the movements are put together that you see Parkour’s real beauty. Linking movements also has its own techniques and challenges that need to be overcome and that is what today is all about.
The final day of Camp also offers the opportunity for students to practise some of the other movements that they have experienced throughout the week and try to make some improvements.
While the daily themes repeat each week, the movements and challenges are changed and scaled by the coaches to ensure that everyone is challenged and making progress. Each movement category – jumping, balancing, vaulting, swinging and climbing – has a huge variety of techniques and options within them, and, as we always keep our coaching ratios no higher than 8 students per coach, every student at Parkour Camp will always get the attention they need.