The Story of A.P.E. Parkour #APEstory

Zach Wiebe and Chad McDonald met each other in a gym. They both had prior experience in fitness disciplines. Zach, with a wealth of knowledge in first aid and life saving skills and Chad, who had been practising Parkour since 2007. Together, both brought a wealth of knowledge and experience to what would become Grande Prairie’s own parkour community.

Alternative Physical Education Inc. (know to Grande Prairie as “APE Parkour”) began as a

Our first adult class using the first wall ever built for APE Parkour.

small 5-8 participant parkour course at the local gymnastic gym. We had no equipment of our own, but we were able to find our own space to teach the fundamentals of our sport. It wasn’t long before our membership was growing. The first piece of custom equipment that was build: a portable wall that had to be moved in and out of a storage room every single class -a small price to pay for teaching proper wall climbing technique.

Deciding to pursue careers in fitness, both Chad and Zach enrolled themselves in the personal trainer diploma program at Grande Prairie Regional College. They would work to build the parkour program whilst studying sport science and applying their knowledge to better their parkour program.

Chad teaching shoulder rolls at Muskoseepi Park

No more than 18 months after our first class at the gymnastics gym, our membership grew to roughly 150 weekly participants. Clearly, the program needed space to expand that the gymnastics gym was not able to offer. In May of 2015, Chad graduated the diploma program at GPRC (Zach had one more semester to go). Over the summer, the two had set up everything they needed to take registrations and teach parkour on their own. Come September of that year, they were teaching some 60+ kids out at Muskoseepi Park. This was their first 10 week parkour session as Alternative Physical Education Inc.

Despite the success of their first session, both Chad and Zach knew that they couldn’t continue teaching outdoors throughout the winter. Without flinching, they made the decision to use the money from teaching at Muskoseepi to build their own gym. It was a leap of faith, but somehow the two had no reservations about taking the risk to realize their dream and cater to the growing parkour community that they had worked so hard to build.

Teaching classes in the gym while it was still under construction.

Over the month of October, 2015, they had rented a building and simultaneously built parkour equipment inside whilst still teaching parkour at the park. By November, the gym was developed enough to teach classes inside. This couldn’t have come at a better time because the first day of snowfall that year was the exact same day classes were moved into the new gym! Phew!

One of many events we would volunteer at for AMA Safety Patrollers

The business had it’s fair share of growing pains because of how fast development took place, and how busy the classes became. Regardless of the ups and downs, the community remained supportive. Even before we had the first gym, we had worked with so many hugely supportive community organisations. We went into schools to teach parkour often. We have worked extensively with local sporting groups such as the Grande Prairie Storm and the Piranhas Swim Team. We even attained a higher level of athletic experience by working with the college athletes at GPRC. We wanted to bring as much experience as possible to every participant that would step through our doors. Without the community, there would be no APE Parkour.

From 2016-2019 APE Parkour grew. We offered more services such as birthday parties, dry-land training, daily physical activity, personal training, summer camps, and more. We went through learning curves while figuring out how to market ourselves and grow whilst maintaining the quality of service our community knew us for. We are proud to consider ourselves an innovative and relevant business going into 2020, and we have much more that we are planning to offer.

We are also extremely proud to have a growing team of employees who allow us to handle the growth of our community. With a growing team, APE would now be able to grow in ways that were simply impossible with Zach and Chad teaching all of the classes.

The final plan for the new facility.

Toward the beginning of 2019, an opportunity to build a new gym presented itself. It was just an idea at first, but by that summer we were going through the process of having a development permit approved by the County of Grande Prairie. This new building would quadruple our square footage and allow us to grow to a size that sufficient to service Grande Prairie for a long time without expanding. It would also establish us more professionally because even in 2019 with all of our success, we were still more-so an underground business. By fall 2019, the development permit was approved and construction began shortly after. We had many setbacks in 2019, including having our facility robbed in May but the support from our community was amazing. Our clients donated bottles and athletes even donated their allowances. Our hearts were overwhelmed and we found the strength to push on. Nothing would stop us. We had a strong set of summer camps that year, and pressed on into our fall session with determination and excitement as our new facility plan began to become a reality.

The new facility foundation going up - Fall 2019

Now, as 2019 has ended and we venture into the fifth and final year operating at our first gym, we are once again in unfamiliar territory. We have this amazing opportunity to bring something truly great to Grande Prairie, and we have an amazing community behind us. Being young business people, we still need a lot of faith to keep us from getting overwhelmed but we truly believe this is all going to work out. We have nothing but gratitude for our community and their undying support and we hope to continue bringing a positive, accepting, and healthy space for all to enjoy.

Regardless of what lies ahead, the team at APE Parkour would like to thank every single client who has come through our doors. We are proud to be not only growing the grassroots parkour community in Grande Prairie, but also to be pushing forward the athletic and safety standards in our industry as well. We wish you all a happy 2020, and we can only hope to serve you beyond expectation.