The Alibi of Strengthening, the who, what, when, where, why, and hows of Conditioning.

Who?
Everybody of course! If you are an avid traceur that trains with the intent of continuing to progress for any duration of time, then you should be undergoing some sort of strength and conditioning regimen.

What?
My definition of conditioning is any movement that can be repeated to the point of some type of muscular fatigue without causing short or long term damage to the anatomy (excluding muscular fatigue of course).

Therefore, what movements are considered conditioning will be different for each traceur. One practitioner may be able to repeat a climb-up 15 times, but another may not be able to match that with out feeling pain and discomfort in the wrists and elbows. One practitioner may be able to make repetitions of a 48 inch box-jump followed by a 48 inch drop, but a less able-bodied man or woman may not be able to for risk of acquiring overuse injuries in the ankle and knee.

The key here is to find where you stand in terms of strength, be honest, be smart, and to progress at your own rate.

When?
I see there are two different ways go about when to condition.

Most traceurs set aside a period of time for conditioning, otherwise known as a “conditioning session”. Often times this is the most economic use of our time because we can allot our full attention to strengthening, but I suggest this be done at the end of the training for the simple fact that: fatigue can lead to loss of focus which more likely than not will lead to injury. So condition in this way only when you are feeling funky fresh and 100% focused.

The alternative would be an almost MovNat, or Methode Naturelle inspired style training, where the skill training and strength training are done simultaneously. Often, it is challenging to train this way without a very solid back ground of conditioning. The idea is that the skill work is done simultaneously along side the strength work by way of over loading the muscles through more skill oriented movements in a very safe and controlled manner.

What better way to become stronger at wall runs, than to drill wall runs? What better way to improve muscle ups, than to drill muscle ups? Perhaps, a great way to progress, but a common issue as I have stated before, is that without a very solid base of strength and conditioning there is little room for error, and I’ve gathered that most practioners have a very hard time gauging their boundaries. Therefore, overuse injuries could be commonplace under those circumstances.

Where?
Often, people say to me “O noz i havs no wheres 2 train el oh el X(” and I always retort “If you have an environment, then you can train ways to move through it”. Well, the same goes for strengthening. If you have an environment, then you can find ways to condition yourself with it.

No pull up bar? Use a tree branch or scaffolding. No dumbbells? Use rocks, logs, or hell, even a small child if you obtain their consent(trust me, it‘s not implied). Parallettes? Use protruding parallel roots growing from beneath a tree. Even if all you have is an empty room, you can still use the ground and the walls to perform countless push-up variations.

The point is: be creative. With a little imagination anywhere can have potential for a full body workout.

Why?
As stated before, if you are an avid traceur that plans to continue to progress for any duration of time, then you should be undergoing some sort of strength and conditioning regime. The stress parkour, and related activities such as free running, MovNat/ Methode Naturelle, tricking, ect., will put on your anatomy is great and without a strong body, you will inevitably be injured many times.

I don’t know how many overuse injuries I could name that could have been avoided with proper strength and conditioning. Various forms of tendonitis in the ankle, hip, knee, shoulders, elbow, or wrist could almost 99% of the time be prevented with proper strength and conditioning. Shin splints and stress fractures could have been dealt with in the same manner.

How?
How you strength train should be dependant on your fitness goals. While I do believe you should engage is some GPP (general physical preparedness; think junior high PE class) training, though in my opinion majority of your work should be goal based.

Fortunately, a great guy down at APK has allowed me to link articles from his blog in order to spare myself the hassle of writing a thesis paper on goal-based training and to spare you the hassle of trying to make heads or tails of it.

So, without further ado, lets give a big thanks to Mr. Chris Salvato for making our lives a hell of a lot easier!
http://www.chrissalvato.com/2009/05/fitness-goals-with-high-translation-to-parkour-and-life/

Another article Mr. Salvato has so kindly provided us discusses the importance of intelligent goal setting.
http://www.chrissalvato.com/2009/05/10-common-mistakes-in-acheiving-fitnessperformance-goals/

Well boys and girls, these are my opinions, ideas, and thoughts of the wonderful world of strength and conditioning. I sincerely hope you enjoyed the read:)