Parkour for Women: How to Start, What Helps and What Holds People Back

Parkour is for women as much as anyone, and far more women train now than in its early days. The fundamentals are the same for everyone. What’s different is usually the route in: fewer female coaches and role models, groups that can feel male-dominated, and a few moves that some women find easier to adapt. Women in the community give similar practical advice: find a welcoming class or a women’s session, build upper-body strength early, progress gradually, and adapt technique to your body rather than copying someone else’s.

How Women’s Parkour Has Grown

In an article for Parkour UK, coach Georgia Donati Clarke writes that women were rare in parkour’s early days in the late 1980s. Their visibility grew in the early 2000s, helped by documentaries and dedicated women’s classes in London. She describes a 2014 Women’s International Parkour Weekend event where more than 70 women trained together in London, and reports gyms seeing more girls in classes over the past decade.

That weekend is closely linked to shecanTRACE, a Parkour Generations initiative to support women in movement. It’s open to women of all ages and abilities, including those held back by fear of judgement or failure.

What Holds Women Back

The same Parkour UK article lists the reasons many adult women stop training:

• Family duties, limited time, injuries and travel costs.
• No local community or indoor space to train in.
• Few older female role models.
• Events that don’t actively signal that women are welcome.
• Far less public attention for female athletes than for well-known male groups.

None of these are about ability. They’re about access, and the right class can remove some of them.

How to Get Started

1. Find a welcoming class. Ask local gyms whether they run women’s sessions or have female coaches. In a second Parkour UK piece, women describe a small, welcoming community and the example of other women training as what kept them going.
2. Build upper-body strength early. In “Parkour: A Woman’s Perspective” for Parkour Generations, Lauren Stokes writes that she couldn’t pull herself up from a wall run or a cat leap when she started. She recommends push-ups, pull-ups and core work as the foundation. Our guide to building grip endurance is a good next step.
3. Progress gradually. Stokes advises only attempting a move once you can picture yourself completing it, and trusting your own judgement over peer pressure.
4. Adapt technique to your body. Stokes notes that chest contact during cat leaps can be uncomfortable and that a larger chest can make it harder to bring the knees in on some vaults. She treats adapting the technique as finding your own method, not as a lesser version. She also mentions that a good sports bra helps with running, although it doesn’t solve everything.
5. Train with others. Stokes points out that training partners of any level can give useful feedback, because a less experienced partner may notice something a more experienced one overlooks.

Girls and Teenagers

Donati Clarke writes that girls often drop out around ages 10 to 13, as puberty brings self-consciousness, comments from peers and physical changes, often in a training environment dominated by boys. Her recommendations include more female coaches and supportive coaching that explains how puberty can temporarily affect jumping performance, so a dip isn’t mistaken for a lack of talent. If you’re a parent, our guide on what age kids can start parkour explains what good classes look like at each age.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do women need to train parkour differently?

The fundamentals are the same: landings, rolls, vaults and precision jumps, built up slowly. What may differ is the order you build strength in and how you adapt a few moves, such as cat leaps, to your body.

Isn’t parkour too dangerous?

It looks more dangerous than it is in practice. In a 2019 SBS News report on women’s parkour in Sydney, Macquarie University researcher Kath Bicknell argued that parkour is less dangerous than it looks, because practitioners assess risk and build the skills to manage it. Beginners start at ground level, not on rooftops.

Am I too old to start?

Probably not. According to the Parkour UK article, the weekly girls’ class at Hal5, a gym in Belgium, has students aged 12 to 62. For starting later in life, see our guide to parkour for adults over 50.

Where to Go Next

Begin with How to Start Parkour Safely, then read How Often Should Beginners Train Parkour to plan your first weeks.