Parkour and the 5 hindrances: Sense craving

I have been studying buddhism for the last few years and within the last year or so established a solid daily meditation practice. Traditionally there are "5 hindrances" that obstruct the process of meditation.

These are:
sense craving
Anger/Ill-will/Aversion
Lethargy
Restlessness/worry
Doubt

While I have found the dissolution of the hindrances helpful for meditation, it's clear that these hindrances affect other parts of our lives. I will start off with how the hindrance functions in meditation, then move on to explore how it can affect parkour training.

Sense craving refers to craving the pleasurable sensations we get from the world. So any set of outside conditions that bring us pleasure can count as sensory pleasure. It's not the world or the pleasure itself that obstructs us but our craving for it. One can enjoy certain pleasures without actually wanting them. The flipside of craving is aversion, not wanting things. In mediation we try cultivate the mind state of neither wanting nor not wanting. The more we can do this, the less swept up by the pleasures of the world we will be. This means not craving rich unhealthy foods or getting sucked into entertainment for hours on end. The result is contentment with how things are, equanimity. Oddly enough, equanimity is both the result and the antidote to sense craving. In Culadasa's "The Mind Illuminated" he points out that Unification of Mind is also the antidote to sense craving. What I have interpreted this to mean is that the ability to direct all of one's attention to a certain meditation object eliminates sense craving because there is no room left in the mind for other considerations. The ability to identify and redirect from the thoughts and imagery of craving help us to not get hooked by them.

For parkour practice, sense craving can serve as a similar obstruction. If we want to eat to excess, it will effect our strength to weight ratio, so our movement ability will suffer. If we spend our days bingeing on netflix we can miss out on consistent training. If we have resistance to train because we know it may be difficult, we have aversion in our minds and it hinders us from getting up to go out and train. If we spend all day watching parkour videos, we miss out on training. Our motivations can transcend the instinctual drives to seek pleasure and avoid pain which will foster being more in tune with what's going on with our bodies during a training session. Often people will overtrain for days on end because parkour is so fun and addicting. I think it is possible to view this obssession as a form of sense craving. It seems like an innocent desire but it can become an obssession that causes chronic injuries, muscle tightness and general restlessness.

I'm mostly talking about some of my own problems that I have had with overtraining and hurting my body. Even now I have so much work to do to get my body more flexible and supple due to overtraining. Nowadays I am seeing my parkour practice as a sort of skillful means by which to keep my body healthy and promote mindfulness and therefore my overall happiness. But I have changed my initial motivations for training since the fuel I was using often pushed my engines too far.