Jane Henry was one week shy of her 46th birthday when she finished her first parkour class, and her legs felt like jelly.
She had spent roughly 90 minutes learning the foundations of moves like the Kong vault, which requires a running start toward an obstacle and a two-handed leap over it. The Globe and Mail reports that the manoeuvre struck her as the opposite of what her brain considered sensible — yet she was hooked.
That was 14 years ago at Origins Parkour in Vancouver. Ms. Henry, now 60 and retired from a career building houses with her husband and an earlier stint in fashion and costume design, initially walked into the gym to sign up her son. She left wanting to train herself.
"I watched what all these primarily young people were doing, and my brain said, 'I want to do that,'" she told The Globe and Mail.
Her son has since quit the sport. She has not. Over the years, she says parkour has sharpened her balance, strength, coordination and reaction time.
Why it matters
Parkour is not the first activity that comes to mind for people in midlife looking to stay active. But according to The Globe and Mail, a group of adventurous older Canadians — along with participants in dedicated seniors classes in the United States and Singapore — are reshaping the discipline around their own health goals.
The stakes are practical. Losing balance, strength and muscle power in midlife raises the odds of falls later on. Teresa Liu-Ambrose, a physical therapy professor at the University of British Columbia and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in healthy aging, told The Globe and Mail that exercises targeting those weak spots are highly effective at preventing falls, cutting the risk by more than 28 per cent.
"I don't think age in itself is a limit as to what people can try," she said. "It's about individualizing the activity for the person."
Starting low and building up
Tom Coppola, an instructor at Origins Parkour, told The Globe and Mail that beginners always start close to the ground, drilling the core skills that sit beneath more advanced movements. The gym does not run seniors-only classes, but its members range from five-year-olds to anyone old enough and willing to try.
The teaching method hinges on chopping moves into small pieces. A student might first learn a bear crawl — travelling on hands and feet — before using that same four-limbed motion to push off an obstacle or haul themselves onto a ledge.
That step-by-step approach appealed to Werner Tanzo, a 50-year-old IT professional from Burlington, Ont., who tried parkour after a parent-and-child session with his son. The Globe and Mail reports that in one of his early classes at Play Project gym, he faced a slanted wall roughly six feet tall and was told he would eventually run up it and pull himself over the top.
"When you look at it, you're like 'I don't know if I can do that,'" he recalled.
By the end of that same class, after being coached on how to use his momentum, Mr. Tanzo cleared the wall. He said seeing that kind of progress pushes him to keep training.
Confidence, risk and learning to fall
Progress in a full-body sport depends partly on trusting your own movement and knowing where your limits sit. Prof. Liu-Ambrose told The Globe and Mail that anyone starting a new exercise program should begin at their own baseline and check with a doctor first. Mr. Coppola said parkour movements can be scaled down for people with lower fitness or limited mobility so they can work at their own pace.
The sport does carry risk. Mr. Coppola said common injuries include torn calluses caused by friction and ankle problems such as sprains or impingements. Ms. Henry has dealt with repetitive strain and cracked ribs, but told The Globe and Mail she has grown better at judging danger as she trains.
"I've learned how to assess that risk to be safe enough for me," she said. "Sometimes you're about to go and something says, 'Nope,' and then you stop."
Students also practise falling and abandoning attempts that are not working. That can mean rolling on the ground to absorb impact or kicking off a wall to get the feet back underneath the body — habits that translate to everyday slips. Mr. Coppola said a side roll or breakfall could be the difference between getting up and walking on, or breaking a hip.
Play, problem-solving and people
Prof. Liu-Ambrose told The Globe and Mail that training in a group carries social benefits that matter at every age, and especially later in life. She also said parkour loads the brain in a useful way, similar to dance and tai chi, because it pairs unfamiliar movement with coordination.
Mr. Coppola said the sport trains people to solve problems and read their surroundings differently.
"A curb is no longer a curb; a curb is something you can balance on or jump between," he said. "A tree is no longer just a tree, a tree is an opportunity to climb or swing."
He described parkour as playful in nature, a return to the way children test what their bodies can do.
For Ms. Henry, that spirit has outlasted a much younger training partner. She continues to show up at the gym she first visited to enrol her son.
What to watch: whether more gyms follow the lead of programs in the U.S. and Singapore and open classes aimed specifically at older adults, and whether fall-prevention research begins tracking parkour participants over time.
