Parkour. . .for seniors?
It’s “life-changing,” says 78-year-old Alice Kissling.
A little over a decade ago, she discovered a local class in Madison, Wisconsin, called Ballroom Basics for Balance. Taking those classes led her to take Learn to Fall Safely, and that led her to Parkour Senior classes a year ago.
“[It] got me over the fear of falling, and that had become a very big thing in my life,” Kissling says, sharing her history with osteoporosis. “I had fallen over nothing and tripped over nothing for a long time, and now I’m not so scared.”
These Madison classes are relatively new. Physical therapist Susan Frikken and Darcie Olson, a now-retired occupational therapist, began teaching them in late 2022.
About a year later, they teamed up with Madison School & Community Recreation (MSCR) to offer the classes, and they have steadily grown in popularity since. MSCR reports that almost 90 unique participants from age 50 to 84 have taken the class over the past couple of years.
Personal trainer Barb Brown co-teaches Parkour Senior as well as Learn to Fall Safely classes. She has been training in aikido, a defensive Japanese martial art, for 40 years and teaching for 30. Aikido includes lots of practice in falling, rolling, and getting back up.
“I heard the statistic that Wisconsin is #1 in deaths from falls in the country,” she says. “I thought, ‘That’s ridiculous; I think I have something to offer here.’” Brown began observing the parkour classes and then became a volunteer instructor in 2024.
Learning New Things
For Shelby Copeland, the youngest MSCR Parkour Senior instructor at 40, her interest in teaching the class piqued when she saw a video of older adults going down slides, jumping off things, and “just having the best time.”
As a parkour and ninja athlete, Copeland was interested in exploring creative, natural movement with seniors, but she initially had hesitations. “My stereotype was like ‘They’re grumpy; they don’t want to try new things,’” she says.
Copeland discovered that the reality was very different.
“They’re so willing to be playful… not afraid to make mistakes, not afraid of failure, not afraid of looking silly,” she says, adding how valuable it’s been to work with older adults.
Olson agrees: “We see them approach the different activities that happen through class with so much creativity and so much peer support.”
Carl Zimm, a 71-year-old retired engineer, appreciates both the social and the creative problem-solving aspects of parkour. “I like the idea that you do what you can, and if you can’t quite do it, you figure out some other way of doing it,” Zimm says.
Kissling remains delighted by the pure sense of fun that the classes offer. “Parkour for seniors is like ‘Romper Room’ for old people,” she says. “You should see us when we’re doing parkour out in the parks. I feel like a kid again. I can have fun again. I can play every day!”