As a parent you may have some concerns about the safety of parkour – especially if you have seen any of the many videos on Youtube. While what you see is certainly a part of parkour, it represents the very highest level of skills from people who have trained years in the discipline. One does not have to execute such moves to be training parkour,  in fact when you first start most of the movements and techniques are done on the ground, or at very low heights.

Actually Parkour is safer than most sports like basketball, football and other team sports, because it is a discipline that only involves the practitioner and the environment. There is no risk of accidents between practitioners.

Parkour is all about learning about yourself, your abilities and your limits. When someone understands the training philosophy and operates within those parameters it is one of the safest training available. You only do things when you are ready. At Superfly our goal is to guide students to gain this self awareness and philosophy so they may train and stay healthy and strong for many years to come in line with the philosophy of “TO BE AND TO LAST”

We take a proactive approach towards injury prevention, and one of the keys to that is understanding the situations when injuries and accidents do happen:

1. Trying something when you (your body or mind) is not ready. This happens when people attempt something when their body is not strong enough, their technique is honed enough or they are not mentally ready. This is usually caused from over enthusiastic people wanting to try something without the proper training or conditioning. This is where we emphasise to follow the instructors advice and to not attempt anything outside of what is asked. . Over time students will develop their own guidance and wisdom of know when they are ready for new movements.
2. Executing a move when your body and mind is too tired, Especially when trying to do something for the first time, or an exercise that challenges you to push your limits. . Always make sure you are 100.
3. Not checking surfaces / obstacles before using them. Before landing, climbing over and putting your weight on any obstacle or surface its paramount to check the surfaces are not slippery or have any protruding points that could cause injury as well as making sure the obstacles are stable and strong enough to support the movement.

By observing the above 3 key points. Accidents and injuries should be kept to a minimum. Having said that we are proud to say over nearly 5 years, and teaching 1000’s of students in over 1500 classes from ages 3 to over 60, we have had no broken bones or major accidents in our parkour classes. We hope to keep it that way.