Stuck in the mud

By: Henry Collie 2009

Many of you out there may remember how fun and carefree your childhood was. Perhaps playing games with your gang of buddies was the best form of entertainment. I know this is true for me, and in this article I’ll tell you how it can also be a great way to spice up your parkour training with a bit more fun.

A while ago I hit a slump in my training, and found that although I still enjoyed parkour, my progress training had become quite dull and boring. I’m sure this happens to most people at some point or another. However, I was searching through the net and found one of Demon’s drills \called “Add On.” Immediately I began thinking of other ways to create a more fun, personal regime and after a couple of days of this my attitude to training had completely transformed. Now instead of going out to train for the sake of training I train for fun and that keeps the practice alive for me and allows me to continue progressing without the fear of becoming a burn-out. Here is one of the games I’ve been using:

Q.M. Stuck in the mud

The reason I am beginning with quadruple movement is because it forms part of the overall base of natural movement. A lot of people don’t realize that no matter what you’re doing in parkour you’re always using Q.M.in some form, as you are always coordinating your limbs to complement each other. As well as this you need to learn to coordinate each limb eparately from every other one. Rather than simply learning several movements to get past an object learn to improvise yourself individually so you can weave your way through your environment more fluidly.

The Game:

1. Begin on all fours you can use any method of Q.M. you like no matter how unconventional (that becomes more important later on).
2. Everyone is in it for themselves… last person standing.
3. It begins like a normal game of tag using Q.M.
4. The tagger must tag their opponent on a limb and then the tagee must stop using whatever limb was tagged and freeze.
5. The tagee is unfrozen when someone crawls underneath them they then have a five second head start however they are still not allowed to use whatever limb has been tagged.
6. This continues until there is one person left with any limbs.

Rules:

1. You must number parts of your body e.g. left arm 1, right arm 2, etc. and you may only tag with the lowest number body part you have left during the game.
2. You can go anywhere you want as long as it is with Q.M. e.g. over a fence or table.
3. You cannot tag someone off the ground however you can only stay off the ground for ten seconds or less.
4. Your chest must be less than two feet away from whatever surface you are touching.

Hopefully you enjoy this game as much as I do, it’s really fun and helps with strength, coordination, Q.M. (obviously), and games like this have helped to keep me from reaching a plateau in training. And even if you have no friends who practice parkour it can be played by anyone and would be a great way to get someone started.