parkour vs bouldering: similar, but fundamentally different

17.05.2025

I used to do bouldering (still do occasionally), but currently my main sport is parkour. Both of them have a lot of elements in common and are often compared to each other. While that's true, I think they have something fundamentally different. The training, achievements and movement are approached from 2 very different mindsets on those sports; or at least are in my experience.

Bouldering focuses on peak performance. You train to climb the route that's just a bit too difficult for you, but still achievable. You condition your body to do harder routes. You climb easy routes to warm up. You progress by climbing more difficult boulders, near your physical and technical limit. You don't focus on the easy fun movements, you are on a grindset. Sure, every now and then it's fun to just climb the easy ones, feel the movement, do a route as energy-efficiently as possible. But nobody really cares about that, everybody cares about sending the hard stuff. The achievement comes from finishing a really difficult boulder.

In parkour, focus is on smoothness of the movement. You train the same movements over and over again until you can do them without thinking. You learn new moves, and while they do get more difficult, the focus is not on being able to do the most difficult move, barely, once, and move to the next one. The focus is on the movement; how it feels, how it looks, how they link together, getting creative. Sometimes you do push your boundaries and send hard something you're barely able to do, but I've found that most people don't even like sending the hard stuff, they just focus on the fun stuff.

Parkour has this quote "once is never" which encapsulates pretty well that if you can only do it once, it doesn't really matter. That's not what the sport is about. In bouldering the mentality is opposite, something along the lines "a send is a send" or "ugly counts". Just finish the route, any way possible, even if you have to scream on every move.

This is of course oversimplification, and only my experience. Both sports contain both of those elements. Both sports can also be done with the exact opposite mindset: one can only climb easy routes and trying to do them as smoothly as possible, and one can only send hard stuff in parkour with absolute no interest in the "flow". There is no better is or worse, just different.

While I personally prefer the parkour philosophy of "once is never", I can see just as well how someone just wants so focus on climbing the hard boulder, no matter how, and getting to the high grades.