Strategies of Parkour practitioners for executing soft precision landings

ABSTRACT

Parkour landing techniques differ from performances of other sports as they are practiced in urban spaces with uncontrolled surfaces and drop heights. Due to the relatively young age of the sport, few studies have tried to understand how practitioners – called traceurs – succeed at performing these dynamic performances. In this paper, we focus on the precision landing technique, which has a fundamental role in most of the Parkour motions. We analyzed the lower limbs motion of traceurs executing the precision landings from two different heights and compared their performance with untrained participants. We found that traceurs perform a soft landing extending its duration twice than untrained participants do , increasing the range of motion and generating more mechanical energy to dissipate the impact. In the Parkour technique, the knee accounted for half of the energy dissipated. The peak joint torques and power were reduced in the Parkour technique. The increase of the landing height did not modify the proportion of individual joint mechanical energy contribution for dissipation. Our results could be used to enhance Parkour performance, and to understand new ways in which sport practitioners can land in order to prevent injuries.

KEYWORDS:

• Drop jump
• traceurs
• sports performance
• eccentric contraction
• energy dissipation

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Hugo Bitard for his help in data collection. Part of this work was supported by European Research Council for the project Actanthrope (ERC-ADG340050)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Part of this work was supported by European Research Council for the project Actanthrope (ERC-ADG340050)