At just ten years old, Luke Sabal, now 28, started out on the white walls of the Terrace Courthouse and developed into Canada’s best parkour player, remaining undefeated for the past four years.

Parkour is a sport that involves moving from point A to point B overcoming obstacles while doing flips, running, climbing, swinging, jumping, arching, rolling, and the like. The roots of this sport lie in military obstacle course training and martial arts.

Sabal, a self-taught parkour practitioner born and raised in Terrace, first learned about the sport while scrolling through YouTube videos.

“Even before I knew what parkour was, I was already running a kind of parkour around the city and trying to do somersaults and stuff like that,” Sabal said.

“But I just didn’t know there was a name for it, and when I saw a video where they actually gave the sport a name, I was kind of obsessed with it.”

Sabal recently competed in the Sports Parkour League, where he placed sixth out of 80 parkour players from around the world. Sabal was at the top of the list among about eight competitors from across Canada.

Describing it as one of the fastest-growing sports, Sabal said teaching yourself to dance comes with its own challenges.

“Nowadays, if you mention the name of the sport, most people at least know what you’re talking about because they’ve seen the reference in movies before,” he said.

The officea popular sitcom series, the name of the sport was mentioned in one of the episodes where all the characters rolled around the office screaming “Parkour”.

“But since I was self-taught and the only one doing it at the time, I found it difficult to find the motivation,” Sabal said.

“If I wanted to try something higher risk, it would have been easier if I had someone to encourage me or call the ambulance if I got hurt. When you make a mistake and no one is around, it’s harder to make an effort.”

However, being self-taught also helped Sabal to analyze techniques better and more effectively by watching YouTube videos in slow motion.

After moving to Kelowna in 2018, Sabal met two other parkour athletes and then began training parkour at Kelowna Gymnastics. However, many people were not interested in the sport at the time because parkour was high-risk, Sabal said.

Sabal has trained in several places over the years and says the sport has become more popular now that people have realized they “don’t have to be on rooftops to do parkour.”

Instead, it has become popular with both children and seniors because of its safety benefits, Sabal said.

Through parkour, toddlers learn how to land safely, climb and overcome obstacles without injuring themselves.

“Parents love this for their children, it strengthens coordination and muscle strength,” he said.

Sabal also teaches parkour to seniors ages 73 and up, focusing on basic movements and safe falling techniques. He says this helps seniors feel more confident and less afraid of falling or getting off things safely.

“On all these different levels, it’s still parkour,” Sabal said.

Sabal pointed out that the sport is predominantly dominated by men.

He believes the low female participation is partly due to misconceptions that parkour is too dangerous. Many women, Sabal says, may be hesitant to try parkour because they see the more extreme aspects and think it is beyond their abilities.

However, he notes that women with experience in gymnastics, cheerleading or dancing often fall in love with it once they try parkour.

“But convincing them to start is a challenge,” he said.

In 2023, Sabal founded the Canadian Parkour League with the owner of Ethos Parkour and Movement in Penticton because they wanted to create more opportunities for semi-professional athletes in the country. The goal of the league is to provide a competition platform for athletes who are not quite ready for the World Championships.

Since its inception, the league has organized four competitions, including events in Quebec and Ontario.