The safety vault is one of the first vaults a person learns when they start training in parkour. It is easy to learn, and one of the safest, fastest, and most versatile vaults in any traceur’s repertoire.
Vault over the vault? Huh?
You’re going to see me use the word vault in two different contexts throughout this and future articles. The first is as a technique for getting over or around an obstacle (like the Safety Vault). There’s another use, though. A common training tool for practicing vaults is called a vault box, which is commonly shortened to just vault:
So in this case, the word vault is actually standing in for the obstacle you’re trying to circumvent. Granted, outside of a gym you’re not going to see vault boxes, and I probably should use obstacle all the time, but it might slip in out of habit, and besides, obstacle is way longer.
*Ahem* Moving on…
The safety vault is an asymmetrical vault, which means you’ll mostly be using one side of your body. You’ll jump off the ground with one foot, plant on the vault with one hand, and land with one foot. The safety vault differs from a lot of other vaults in that you also plant a foot on the obstacle on your way over.
The order progresses like so: Whichever foot you jump off the ground with:
– Plant on the vault with the same hand and the opposite foot, on opposite ends of the vault.
– Move your same foot through the empty space between your same hand and opposite foot on the vault, and land on the other side with the same foot.
So if you jump off the ground with your right foot (like most people), your right hand and left foot will touch the vault, and your right foot will pass under your body and land on the ground in front of you. If you jump off the ground with your left foot (like me), it’s just the opposite: plant with your left hand and right foot, land with your left foot and keep running.
That last part is one of the things that’s so great about the safety vault: it doesn’t have to slow you down much. You can jump at the vault from a run, and continue running on the other side with one fluid motion. It’s not quite as fast or as smooth as a speed vault (which I’ll talk about a little later), but it’s fairly close, and much, much better than running around or scrambling over that same obstacle.
Uses
The most obvious, and most common, implementation is to get over an obstacle in front of you. The ideal obstacle is from knee- to waist-height and relatively shallow (anything deeper than two or three feet would be better served with a roll vault or kong vault – more on those later). The obstacle is preferably level (that is, the top runs parallel to the ground), but it can work at an angle, too, if it’s oriented so that the tallest part of the vault is on the same side as your planting hand (so if you jump with your right foot and plant with your left hand, you’d want a surface that’s level or that rises to the left). If it rises the other way, you’ll want to use a turn vault (again, more on that later). Same goes for direction: you can use a safety vault to go over an object straight on, or to one side, as long as it’s the side you plant your hand with (again, use a turn vault for the opposite side).
Fast and versatile
If you’re not going to go deep into parkour training, you need to have a few vaults that will do a lot for you. The safety vault is extremely versatile and definitely fills this need. In addition to being able to vault over a normal obstacle this way (like a low wall or a picnic table), you can use a safety vault to get down from height. If you can get your legs below the ledge before you drop down, you decrease the height of your fall by the length of your leg. Suddenly the ten foot drop is only seven feet, much more manageable.
Safety While Carrying
If you’re carrying an object in one hand you don’t need to do anything differently. Just make sure it’s not in the hand you plant with and you’re fine. A bag isn’t much different, either. I’ve already told you how to run when you have a bag: pull the bag itself across your back and hold the strap taught with one hand. For the safety vault, just keep that position, raise your hand up to keep it out of the way, and plant on the opposite side.
It’s that simple folks. The safety vault is easy to learn, fast to execute, and extremely versatile. Learn it, and you’ll survive a little longer.
I’ll work on getting a video tutorial up soon, so keep your eyes open for that. I’m also going to go back and tweak the running rules soon: they’re a little too complicated and I think I’ve improved the method anyways. See you soon!