David Belle – The World is a Playground

Posted by misterparkour on November 3, 2009

What follows is the video transcript of a fantastic interview with David Belle called “The World is a Playground.” At the time when we published the interview about 5 months ago we called the video, “…one of the best interviews ever conducted with David…” With the video transcribed and the text posted below you can now read and study the words of the founder himself. If you would like to view the video please click here.

David Belle : The World is a playground

Hello, I’m David Belle, actor, choreographer and also behind the Parkour movement.

Parkour is a real training method to face obstacles. It’s to be strong to be useful. The goal really is to train thinking “what can I do with it”?

In real Parkour, there’s no flip. The goal is to keep it simple, efficient and to train movements in which you trust.

When you’re learning parkour, everything in front of you is training. When you start, during the first two or three years, you never stop. Day and night. Every time you see something you’ll get interested in climbing it, because you know that’s when you’re building your training. Then, with time, when you’re pretty much done everything there was to do, you calm down and see what’s left. At that point, it’s really “the feeling”, it happens that I don’t train at all for three weeks or one month, two months and then for one week I’ll train day and night.

Movements are simple. Cat pass, arm jump, precison jumps, saut de fond [jumping off high stuff], I’d say if you really wanted to know all the different techniques. But Parkour is a mix of them all. You should train sauts de fonds to train your thighs. Precision jumps to help focus and be able to land on a small rail. Focusing is really important. Then, running to build stamina. Parkour is a mix of them all.

Doing Parkour is pretty much forgetting those paths socity traced for us and making our own. Even though people say “Don’t go there, you’ll get hurt”, we’re adults, we know what’s dangerous. Take a little kid, tell him not to do something, he’ll do it. But put him in front of a big gap: he’s not stupid, he won’t jump.

When I’m on top of a building, it’s just like is I was on top of a mountain. I don’t look at the mountain, I look at the sky and I’m comfortable with that height. I could be on a roof or on a big rock: it’s the same for me. It’s a quest for height, for freedom, to take paths no one else takes, were nobody else has been: that quest is what makes Parkour interesting.

The wrong way of doing Parkour is to impress, it’s not a sport where you jump off things and show people you get hurt and you don’t care. No. The goal is to end up in good health, to respect your body, respect others, and not to move with a group showing yourself just because it’s new the crazy thing around.

My brother is a fireman, my father was a fireman too and my grandfather was a fireman for 32 years. So, it’s in our family. It’s a bit for them too. My father went to Vietnam, then went with the firemen and thought me this art. I made it into something more definite: Parkour. The goal is to become more and more confident with their body and for that, Parkour is only a complement.

My advice to young traceurs would be: it’s normal that when you’re 15-16 you want to be someone. But when you’re training Parkour with passion, if you’re good, people will notice you. Don’t go around saying: Hey look at this new move I just got. No. We used to say: if it’s good, we’ll tell you. Do it for yourself first. If people like it or not, who cares? As long as you feel good doing it. Now if with that spirit people notice you then good for you. But you should do it for yourself.

Thank you.