Another core question for a movement athlete is the question of the balance between intensity and volume. As with complexity and intensity this is largely a parametric relationship, you can not sustain the highest levels of intensity for great amounts of volume or vice versa. High level sprinters and jumpers train far lower volumes then elite gymnasts, and gymnasts rarely touch truly maximal sprinting and jumping capacities.
The generalist mover needs to balance these approaches, I have focused on advocating sprinting, and maximal jumps repeatedly on this blog and in my previous work because these capacities are two often ignored in the parkour world and building that max capacity opens up many doorways, but if you do not work in the sub maximal ranges too if you don’t practice the movements a great deal you will never develop a wide ranging and diverse movement mastery.
It’s not enough to work on jumping bigger, you need to work on jumping with more control moving with more relaxation and efficiency and building the capacity to be consistent and adaptive in your jumping. This means practice and lots of it. As sebastian founcan said the repetition is very important.
This is not mindless volume this is focused intense repetition aimed at movement mastery not breaking the body down.
This is one of the areas in which the founders of parkour excelled those who followed in the willingness to put in incredibly high volumes of work to achieve mastery of a technique.
A second generation practioner who particularly exemplifies this approach is Chris “Blane” Rowat of the parkour generations team. Read his blog on one of his repetition challenges here
Then watch this video of his from several years back
While the size of the jumps and complexity is less impressive then some of the top stuff now this was way ahead of its time and one thing that really set Chris apart was his consistency and control having had the chance to train with him 5 years ago I got to see in person what this dedication to high volumes practicing specific movements imparted.
Today’s challenges, find a jump that is 80 percent or under of your max and do 50 jumps counting only those you land with complete control.
Add this to whatever other training you want but I would suggest not coupling it with a high intensity jump day, it is best in general to explore these two aspects of your training on different training days, train for maximal capacity on different day then training any type of high volume.
Sample training program for today.
General warm up 10 minutes
Foot and ankle activations 10 minute(preparing your landing gear)
Squat ground flow work 15 minutes (to open up the hips and activate the musculature to allow better tension relationship in the landing)
Jump of the Day 50×1 1 jump every minute on the minute
Climb up development drills
Explore connection out of the jump of the day 15-25 minutes
5×5 routes based on the jump of the day 10-20 seconds(don’t want to over do total volume)
Flow and exploratory training with any left over time
Warm down
