Master Your Movement | Master Yourself
There is a crisis happening in parkour coaching.
It isn’t dramatic. It isn’t dangerous. It isn’t even intentional. It’s quiet, almost imperceptible. Slow, steady, and—if we’re not careful—irreversible…
Today, parkour is more visible than ever. It is shared, edited, competed, branded, and consumed. None of these things are inherently wrong. But they do raise an essential question that every practitioner must eventually confront:
Why do you train?
In this episode, we sit down with Dan Edwardes—coach, athlete, author, and founder of Parkour Generations—to explore the intersection of movement, mindset, and human potential. A pioneer in the world of parkour and personal development, Dan has spent decades teaching people around the globe how to harness the power of movement not only for physical growth but also for emotional resilience and self-discovery.
‘There’s something rare and special about moving through a city at night, most people are asleep and the whole world feels like it’s yours and yours alone.’
“About 25% of all play is what’s called locomotor play. So, if you leave kids alone, at least a quarter of their time will be spent in very physical, very active play. All kids want to do that because It’s what we evolved to do – to move over terrain.”
Parkour is that rare discipline that develops in its practitioners the competent use of all the (land-based) human locomotion patterns.
The function of the human body and the brain is to move over variable terrain and to adapt to your environment.
Parkour was born out of the process of solving movement problems, or challenges. They began simple – can we cross
The French founders of parkour were motivated by the singular desire to become ‘strong’ individuals, but not just muscularly strong:
If you train in parkour long enough you will come to understand that your body will quickly become strong, fast
Why the modern focus on safety at all costs is lowering our competence, confidence and capabilities while also making us
Repetition is the birthplace of skill. Skill, to me, is not best measured by the ability to do something well
‘Fitness’, I believe, is an almost redundant term. When you think about it for any short amount of time, you
Parkour has involved quadrupedal locomotion patterns, or crawling drills, since its inception over 25 years ago. Anyone who has ever
Parkour is true situational movement. It’s great to see so many movement enthusiasts and teachers discovering the power and effectiveness
Dan Edwardes 