Learn the speed vault: take-off, hand position and running landing in six stages — plus the band trick against shin fear and clear criteria for each stage.
The speed vault is the vault where you keep your speed: you approach at a slight angle, take off from one leg, sweep both legs sideways over the obstacle and briefly support yourself with one hand on the surface. You land on one foot and run straight on. It is the second vault after the safety vault — technically simple, but the first one that demands real commitment.
From here there is no abort button. That is why you practise it low until it is boring.
And that time is well spent: in a force-plate study with ten traceurs (drop from 0.75 metres), the peak forces of the parkour landings were 38 to 43 percent below those of a traditional landing [1] — the landing decides the load. We have no reliable measurements for the speed vault itself or for the single-legged running landing.
Translated: the speed vault itself is not the risk. Your landing is. A vault is only finished when you are running again.
Expect one to two weeks to the basic shape on a knee-high bar, and several weeks to fluid running pace. Experience values, not study figures.
Stand side-on to the wall, one hand on the surface, and step slowly over it with one leg after the other. There is only one goal: hand and hip stay on the same side of your body.
Milestone: 10 times per side without the hand sliding behind your centre of mass.
Now from standing: hand down, swing both legs sideways over the edge at once, land on both feet. Still no run-up, still full control.
Milestone: 10 repetitions per side with neither leg touching the edge.
For most people this combination works: take off from the leg nearer the wall, the outside leg leads over the edge, and the near hand plants behind the hip. Try both sides — the only binding rule is that hand and hip stay together. That is practice knowledge, not a study finding.
Milestone: you can name your combination and take off identically 5 times in a row.
Two steps, take off, legs up, hand briefly on the surface, land. What matters is your gaze: it rests on the landing spot behind the wall, not on the edge.
Milestone: 8 out of 10 attempts with no edge contact on the shin.
Now comes the real craft — the single-legged landing in motion. Forefoot first, knee and hip give way, run on for three steps. The traditional landing reached its peak force after only about 40 milliseconds, the parkour landing after about 80 [1] — the faster the force arrives, the harsher.
Milestone: 10 repetitions with a silent landing and no stop after the wall.
Only now do you change things: a higher bar, a wider wall, metal instead of stone, a different approach angle. In a cross-sectional study traceurs showed clearly higher eccentric knee extension torques than gymnasts and strength athletes [2]; it does not show that variation is the cause — as a training idea, variety still makes sense.
Milestone: the same vault on three obstacles and on both sides, always running on.
The speed vault has two risk zones: the shin at the edge and the ankle on the single-leg landing. In a survey of 180 traceurs the self-reported rate of ankle or knee injuries averaged 1.7 per 1000 training hours; the ankle alone reached 2.3, the knee 1.1 [3] — the ankle is the more vulnerable of the two.
There is a well-documented countermeasure: in a meta-analysis of seven studies with 3726 participants, proprioceptive training — balance and wobble-board work — clearly reduced the rate of ankle sprains (relative risk 0.65), and by about 36 percent in people with a previous sprain [4]. Five minutes of single-leg balance per session is the cheapest insurance you can buy.
This guide explains and motivates, but it does not replace supervised training. Your first speed vaults belong in a parkour gym or under the eyes of an experienced traceur — from here you can no longer abort, which is exactly why someone else should cap the height for you.
Stretch a tape barrier or a loose elastic band between two poles at knee height and practise the speed vault over that. The trick is psychological: your head knows a band gives way, so your legs automatically go higher and your take-off moves further back — precisely the two corrections you would otherwise drill for weeks. After twenty repetitions with the band, switch to the solid bar, and the shin fear is gone before it could settle in.
For most people, taking off from the leg nearer the wall works, with the outside leg leading over the edge and the near hand planting behind the hip. That is training experience, not a study prescription — try both sides. The only hard rule: hand and hip stay on the same side of the body.
Because your take-off is too close to the wall and you extend your legs instead of tucking them. One fix solves both: take off half a step earlier and pull the knees to the chest. Practise it over a stretched band instead of a solid bar and your head corrects the height by itself.
More dangerous is the wrong question — it is more irreversible. In a vault, the landing matters most: parkour landings cut peak force by 38 to 43 percent in a force-plate study [1]. The safety vault can be aborted, the speed vault cannot, which is why it sits behind it didactically.
Start at knee height, move to hip height, and stay there until the vault is boring. Above hip height the technique changes fundamentally because the legs no longer pass sideways — at that point you are doing a kong vault, not a speed vault.
In the speed vault yes, that is part of the movement — it exists to preserve speed. The single-legged running landing is more demanding than a two-footed one — we have no reliable measurements on it (practical experience). The condition is that your single-leg landing on flat ground is already silent and stable.
Learning the Kong Vault: Both Hands First, Legs Through the Middle