These grown-ups are turning to parkour for healthy aging | Canada Voices

By the end of Jane Henry’s first parkour class, one week before her 46th birthday, her legs had turned to jelly.

She had spent the past hour-and-a-half laying the groundwork to attempt manoeuvres such as the Kong vault, which, when mastered, would involve taking a running jump toward an obstacle and using her hands to leapfrog over it with ease.

“It’s very contradictory to what your brain would say is a smart thing to do,” she says. And yet, ever since she walked into Vancouver’s Origins Parkour 14 years ago, something about the sport that involves jumping, crawling, swinging – and generally, monkeying around – has always excited her. She had initially visited the gym to enroll her son in classes, but to her surprise, felt drawn to parkour herself.

“I watched what all these primarily young people were doing, and my brain said, ‘I want to do that.’ It just looked like so much fun and I didn’t think about whether I could or not.”

Now 60, retired from building houses with her husband and a previous career in fashion and costume design, Ms. Henry has outlasted her son in parkour by a long shot. She’s found that the sport, which is centred on navigating built environments with your body, has improved her balance, strength, co-ordination and reaction time.

Parkour might not be top of mind for most middle-aged people seeking out physical activity. But some adventurous older Canadians, as well as those taking dedicated seniors classes in the United States and Singapore, are customizing the discipline to meet their own health goals. For these enthusiasts, parkour strikes just the right balance of movement, problem-solving and play.

“I don’t think age in itself is a limit as to what people can try,” says Teresa Liu-Ambrose, a physical therapy professor at the University of British Columbia and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in healthy aging. “It’s about individualizing the activity for the person.”

The typical loss of balance, strength and muscle power in midlife can lead to a higher risk of falls as we age. However, targeted exercises – such as those central to parkour – that challenge these trouble areas are “highly effective” in preventing falls, Prof. Liu-Ambrose says, reducing fall risk by upward of 28 per cent.

Origins Parkour instructor Tom Coppola says all newcomers to the sport start by trying exercises low to the ground, learning the core skills that underlie more advanced moves. While the gym doesn’t offer classes for seniors specifically, he says their clients range from as young as 5 to “as old as is willing to give it a shot.”

“I really do believe parkour is for everyone,” he says.

He says the key to parkour is breaking down moves into bite-sized parts. For example, students are first taught a bear crawl, in which you move using both your hands and feet, before eventually using that quadrupedal movement to push off an obstacle or pull themselves on top of a ledge.

Part of why Werner Tanzo, a 50-year-old from Burlington, Ont., took up parkour after a teach-your-parent session with his son was because improvement felt accessible and achievable. In one of his first classes at Play Project gym, Mr. Tanzo, an IT professional who stands 5 foot 7, was confronted by a slanted wall about six feet tall. The expectation was that he’d eventually be able to run up that wall and pull himself on top. “When you look at it, you’re like ‘I don’t know if I can do that,’ ” he recalls.

But by the end of the class, through instruction on how to use his momentum to clear the wall, Mr. Tanzo was able to complete the slanted wall run. “It encourages me to keep on going when I’m able to see that type of progression,” he says.

Part of achieving physical gains in a full-body sport such as parkour is building confidence in your movement and understanding your limits. When undertaking any new exercise program, Prof. Liu-Ambrose says it’s important to start at your baseline and consult with a physician to ensure the activity is safe for you. Parkour moves can also easily be modified for someone at a lower fitness level or with limited mobility to participate at their own pace, Mr. Coppola says.

Challenging your body to move in different ways does come with risks. Mr. Coppola says some common parkour injuries include hand rips, which is when a callus is torn off by friction, and ankle injuries, such as sprains or impingements.

Ms. Henry has sustained injuries from parkour ranging from repetitive strain to cracked ribs. But as she continues to train, she has developed sharper instincts to avoid getting hurt. “I’ve learned how to assess that risk to be safe enough for me,” she says. “Sometimes you’re about to go and something says, ‘Nope,’ and then you stop.”

Students are also taught how to fall safely and bail on unsuccessful attempts. That could look like practising rolls on the ground to absorb impact or pushing off a wall with your feet to get them back under you – skills that can help prevent everyday falls.

“If you start going down, you might be able to do some sort of a side roll or a breakfall,” he says. “That might be the difference between being able to stand back up and keep walking, or a broken hip.”

Beyond physical benefits, Prof. Liu-Ambrose says a group sport such as parkour can also improve social well-being, which “is really important for all of us, but particularly as we age.”

In combining unfamiliar movements and co-ordination, Prof. Liu-Ambrose says learning parkour also involves taking on a beneficial cognitive load, similar to activities such as dance and tai chi. Mr. Coppola says the sport encourages people to problem-solve and see the world differently, through the lens of exploration.

“A curb is no longer a curb; a curb is something you can balance on or jump between. A tree is no longer just a tree, a tree is an opportunity to climb or swing,” he says. “Parkour is a very playful activity, it kind of gets back to the roots of being a child … seeing what you could do and testing your limits.”

When Ms. Henry and her training partner Catherine Beston feel like practising outside, they’ll sometimes go and do parkour on the playground. They jump from rock to rock, swing from the monkey bars, climb on the rope structure – and most importantly, they have fun. “Architecture is just something to play on, right?” Ms. Henry says. “I’m always going to be a child. I don’t think I’m ever going to grow up.”