In a perfect world, we’d all have all the time we need or could ever possibly want to train and play. Sometimes life does us a solid and grants us that kind of opportunity, but for most of us, that’s far from the case. Unless you’re lucky enough to work at a gym, are so successful at whatever you’re doing with your movement that other people are paying you to do it, or have the space and money to install equipment in your home, you’ve likely got to fight and sacrifice things to make room for consistent training. Training outside or at a gym is ideal, of course, but getting to a gym or outdoor training spot as often as we’d like is a herculean task when we’re also trying to balance full work schedules, family time, other pastimes and personal projects, social activities, and the general burdens of ‘adulting’. So what are we supposed to do?

Train at home.

No. Seriously. You can train at home. IN your home. Anytime you’d like without a lick of equipment. You can literally cook dinner and train at the same time. Are you going to break double kongs, or your personal wall-run record this way? Probably not. But there’s an awful lot you can do inside of the spaces you inhabit on a daily basis that will strengthen and widen the sorts of foundational skills that WILL help you master those larger challenges.

One of the greatest benefits of learning and practicing parkour is the way in which it trains us to view and observe our surroundings in revolutionary ways. Generally that applies to the great [urban] outdoors, but why stop there? Evaluate your indoor environments the same way you would evaluate any outdoor location. But, as always, remember to check your surfaces. The same rules that apply to outdoor training apply to training indoors as well. The risk of injury may be lower, but the risk of damaging stuff is much higher. A lot of indoor furniture and even some built-in structures aren’t made to support the…physics of parkour, so be careful. Check to make sure any furniture you’re using is solid and stable. Coffee tables may break, couches tip, and tables slide. If you live in an apartment, you’ll probably also want to consider whether or not the noise and vibrations produced by your movements will travel through the walls and floor. But this can also be an excellent lesson in keeping your movements quiet and light.

Things commonly found in homes that work surprisingly well include tables (dining and coffee), counter tops (especially ‘island’-style), hallways (especially narrow ones), door frames, beds, couches, stairs, and banisters. Below is a list of some of the things you can do with these objects and throughout your home in general:

Rolls of all kinds. Forwards, backwards, right, left, over things, under things, off of, onto, or across things (sturdy counter tops, beds, solid coffee tables, through small or awkward gaps like doorways or narrow hallways).

QM (quadrupedal movement). The conditioning classic! You can do this literally anywhere. Moving around your home this way is super entertaining and makes for an excellent exercise in expanding your repertoire of dynamic, functional lowline movements. Especially if your home has multiple floors or any sort of atypical layout. Consider challenging yourself to spend a day navigating entirely by QM. Non-breakable objects can be balanced on your back as incentive for keeping your core engaged and your hips level. If the layout of your home just isn’t that interesting, try scattering small targets (like hand towels or washcloths) around your living room floor and playing QM-based ‘floor is lava’.

Floor vaults. Step/safety vaults, speed vaults, reverse vaults, and even kongs all have progressions that can be drilled on the floor.

Small obstacle flow. Smaller pieces of solid furniture can make for fun small obstacle flow sessions. I’m particularly fond of coffee tables. You can vault them, roll across them, slide across them, trick, do handstands on them, QM around and underneath them, dive roll over them. The possibilities are endless!

Couch vaults. That’s right. I said couch vaults. They’re softer than a lot of other things you could be vaulting over and the backs are very often roughly vault box-height. Bonus points if you can vault and come to rest in a seated position between two friends. Be careful though! I’ve learned the hard way that some couches will tip if you put weight on the back.

Landings. You can do these from anything that gets you a little height. Stairs, a sturdy chair, the edge of a bed, even a solid counter top if you’re willing to put your feet on it.

Handstands. Not technically parkour, but still relevant. Do them against a wall or door, in the middle of a narrow hallway, or in the middle of your living room floor.

Door frame climb. Who doesn’t love hanging out at the top of a door frame? Most aren’t terribly tall, so the risk of injury is minimal, making it a great place to explore and experiment.

Upward and downward precisions. Stairs make great spots for training upward and downward pre’s. The narrowness of many household stairs encourages clean foot placement and jumping up the stairs requires both upward power and forward momentum.

Topouts. If you’ve got a counter or other built-in surface that’s both tall and wide enough, you can use it to practice topouts, or topout progressions.

Downward kongs and other dismounts. Again…coffee tables and countertops.

None of the things listed above require any equipment whatsoever, but if you can get your hands on some, it’ll increase your indoor training options by quite a bit. You can build your own objects if you’ve got the means, or you can buy some. American Parkour sells a variety of home training equipment that you can order here (link).

I don’t think too many of us have enough space inside our homes for things like vault boxes, but precision trainers are great! They can be made (or purchased) in a couple different styles, take up hardly any storage space, and are entirely mobile. With them you can practice things like…

Static precisions at any distance you’d like. To increase the challenge, place an object like a box, small stool, or chair between the trainers.

Precision landings.

Height drop precisions. Place a trainer at the bottom of a flight of stairs, or in front of a coffee table or wide counter and practice your precision landings at height!

All sorts of balance and foot placement exercises. Work with one trainer, move around on it, and see how long you can maintain your balance. Jump and turn 180 degrees. Close your eyes and wiggle around. Anything you can think of. If you’ve got a rail trainer, you can do any of these exercises there and seriously up your rail balance game.

Strides and plyos. All you need is a moderately long hallway and a few trainers. In a pinch, washcloths or other small objects with some cling will also do, but they don’t give you any feedback on foot placement or balance.

Variable distance running precisions. These CAN be done. I promise. If you’ve got room for strides and plyos, you’ve got room for running pre’s.

Anything else you can think of.

So the next time you try to tell yourself that you don’t have the time to go find a space to train in, think about these lists and look again.