Figure I'll edit this for quick reference. This'll be a doozy. Please remember to contact me if you have any questions or need any advice on parkour or freerunning.
Pretty straightforward. A proper landing is crucial. The human body is capable of incredible feats with the proper manipulation. Many people find heights like two-story houses frightening, but if you land properly you could prevent suffering any damage at all (don't quote me on this).
The most proper way to land is by touching down with your toes, on
both feet, bending your legs as you move towards the ground to soften the impact, and doing the same with your hands by placing them between your knees, if you need to. You should do this as much as possible, no matter the height difference. If you need to maintain speed, or soften and extra long fall, a roll would follow.
Some people think to roll like Link from Ocarina of Time. This is not the case, as represented in the above video. Doing a full forward somersault could damage your spine, and is somewhat more difficult to perform than a proper roll.
A proper roll follows a proper landing when you need to soften an especially hard landing or transfer momentum forward to maintain speed. After touching down with your toes (or hands if you need to), push forward with your legs in a jumping motion to shift the momentum. Don't just fall on your side like I often do. It hurts. Turn downwards and land on your dominant forearm and roll on that shoulder until you are brought to your feet. Don't slow. Keep running.
Use a lazy vault to preserve stamina, whether you're traveling to a location to train, taking a break, if you're tired, or if you're just...lazy. It's probably the easiest vault you can perform, but is only useful on fairly thin obstacles.
To do a lazy vault, no momentum is needed. Simply approach the obstacle, put a hand on it and use it along with a hop to propel you up and over the obstacle, lifting your legs up horizontally to clear it. On your way across, you may place a second hand behind you to support you further, but it might not be necessary. If you're having trouble getting yourself over, you can do a scissor kick with your jump to put yourself higher and at a more horizontal level.
The speed vault is easy and will probably feel more natural to do as opposed to other vaults (especially if you're used to jumping over fences and junk). It looks deceptively similar to the lazy vault but is used very differently, the main difference being the speed at which it is performed, as you can see from the video.
To perform a speed vault, you need a lot of momentum to push yourself over the obstacle unaided. Take a running start and leap off of the foot of whichever side you intend on turning your body. Use the hand of the same side to push yourself back upright once you're over the obstacle. You should use the opposite foot to help drive yourself over or, as others might say, use the same foot you jumped off of, and land on the same foot you jumped off of. I use them both in a scissor-kick motion.
More to come.
other parkour free run technique moves
Tancuras blogged
