Meet leading female parkour athlete Flora Labedens

Parkour champion Flora Labedens, 27 didn’t take a straight-line path into the sport. Growing up in Sète, a small town in the south of France with limited training spots, she was first exposed to parkour through her brother, Doran, who began training in 2013. Flora dabbled, but never fully committed.

That changed in 2019 after meeting her boyfriend, Abdullah, a member of Team FARANG. Six months later, a pair of Reebok Classics marked the real beginning. Her early years were inconsistent, shaped by distance, isolation, and a lack of local training partners. After moving to the UK in 2021, parkour became more accessible – but so did setbacks. A period of depression, injury and weight gain forced her to stop completely. Resetting through structured gym work and coaching, Flora rebuilt herself physically and mentally, losing 10kg and discovering a new love for strength training. Today, she’s known for powerful jumps, discipline, and a quietly relentless approach to progression-proof that parkour journeys don’t have to be perfect to be powerful.

EARLY YEARS

Tell us about your first success in your sport?
I’d say getting climb ups was a massive milestone and was the start of my progression.

GRASSROOTS

What would you say to someone thinking about trying your sport?
To try and find people to train with that have a similar level and do simple and easy challenges to learn the basics.

What do you wish you’d known when you first started out?
How important it is to go to the gym on the side to get stronger, this helps massively to progress, reduce injuries and be more confident.

What initiatives are happening to get people into your sport?
Parkour jams where a big group of people are training, this is an inviting and friendly environment for people to join and try the sport.

HEROES

Which sportspeople do you admire now, and why?
In parkour it’s Hazal Nehir, she’s always been my favourite parkour athlete and is a huge inspiration to me. She is very strong, technical and breaks down very mental and scary challenges.

TRAINING

How often do you train?
It depends on the time of the year, it can be around 3/4 times a week in summer and then twice a month in Winter. In winter I focus more on going to the gym a lot and get stronger.

Describe a typical training session
I go to a spot with other people, warm up and then try to find challenges to do, if I feel good I’ll try to push myself and if I don’t I’ll do easy challenges.

What is your favourite training session/exercise/drill?
I love standing and running jumps the most, so I’d naturally do more of those if I find good ones to do at a spot.

Which part of your body suffers the most in your sport?
I don’t really have any pain at the moment but in the past I suffered from chronic lower back pain and abductor.

What’s the toughest thing about being an athlete?
To balance not overtraining and listening to your body when it hurts or is sore. Also to have to take a break from training when injured, this can be tough mentally.

What’s the hardest part/skill in your sport to master?
For me it’s Kong precision, I find them pretty scary and hard to commit.

MOTIVATION

How do you keep going mentally when things get tough?
Listen to how I feel and accept that it is a part of life and things will get better.

What’s been your greatest sporting moment so far?
Doing a running jump that I was thinking about doing for a year and after failing two times. Finally doing it felt amazing after spending so long thinking about it and being scared of it.

How do you deal with defeats/set-backs?
Would say I don’t deal with it very well when it happens but I try to think that it never lasts and improvement will happen again, it’s a part of the sport to have ups and downs.

What do you do to freshen-up your training routine? Practice movements I wouldn’t do often and try to get better at them.

NUTRITION

What performance foods do you enjoy most and why?
Carbs and protein for energy.

What are you go-to feel-good treats?
A can of Red Bull before training.

How does nutrition improve your performance?
A healthy and high protein diet helps me with maintaining muscles and have high energy levels.

Have you got a favourite recipe you can share?
I am on an anti-inflammatory diet because of my eczema and at the moment my favorite recipe for a sweet snack is banana brownie which only has 3 ingredients : bananas, almond butter and cocoa powder.

FUN STUFF

Can you share a few quirky facts not many people know about you

Are there any sports you aren’t good at?
I am not good at team sports, I’ve tried it when I was younger and I realised I was better at individual sport.

How do you unwind away from sport?
It’s difficult for me as it is a massive part of my life but I’d try to focus more or work or travel if I need a break from sport.

What’s the strangest thing that’s happened during competition?
I haven’t really had any strange things happen, maybe I should try and spice up my rounds a bit more!