Conditioning the body for parkour is essential, especially in preserving the body and building the strength, stamina, speed, and spacial awareness needed to practice parkour. Often people train and condition to feel sore the next day. There are key points to enhance your training so that you gain with less pain.
Heart Rate: Often overlooked is our heart rate during our time of training and conditioning. It is important to keep the heart rate up when strength training. Elevating your heart rate will increase your core tempurature by a possible 5 degrees Fahrenheit, the effect of this allows biochemical reactions that unerlie muscle contractions to occur faster. Cardio also increases the brain's natural output of opiate-like substances such as endorphins (runners high).Therefore, more water must be consumed before each training session to maximize results and to support the oxygen needed in the bloodstream. Those in fair physical condition should train at a moderately fast heart rate, those with a more atheletic physical condition (marked by age, and amount of time training with the frequency of training) may want to train at a heart rate that is fast. It is important to keep this continuous throughout the training as it will help you develop faster and prevent soreness overall. Heartrate is a key component to the following main points.
Flexibilty (Range.Of.Motion. ROM) Flexibility is key in pain management because it reduces overuse injuries by half, it reduces muscle soreness, and strength training with good flexibility is 33% more effective. It is important to achieve the full endurance and ROM of joints to reach full potential. Stretches should be done AFTER a warm up (i.e. a light jog) to prevent muscle injuries.
Breathing Often overlooked is breathing, it highly effects performance in all aspects of life. In musicians it affects the way passages and pieces are played. It effects our stress levels and calmness to cope with everyday life. But it highly effects the performance of our body to physically undergoe challenges. When exercising it is proven that it helps to breath out with exerting energy, and breath in when gathering kinetic energy. Personally, blowing a quick puff of air out helped my wall climbs reach higher heights, and also achieve better momentum for kongs. Aerobic capacity is the "gold standard" of physical fitness, elite atheletes have higher breathing capacities, meaning they can breathe in more air with every breath, and breathe out more air also to supply to their bloodstream and aenhance their performance. So don't hold your breath.
Mind and Body Putting your mind to it is important, the performance and accuracy of vaults and movements are done best when the mind is aligned with the body, this means that you are not forcing yourself to do things with your mind, which often leads to injury. Confidence is not only a state of mind, but a feeling, a feeling your body can feel (or at least my body). When you approach obstacles approach with a mind conscious to the feeling of your body and vice versa. Often things are done better and more successfully when the mind doesn't fight the body. Clear your mind, feel the confidence radiate.
All is said, now it is to be done. Integrate these elements into your training, and remember that drinking a bottle of water before you train and drinking water during training is also key in achieving your full potential. "Train hard, stay humble" -BAPK motto