Parkour from Jean François Belle
Posted by misterparkour on June 21, 2008The following information is from an interview with David Belle’s brother Jean François Belle. The details are a little hard to understand, but if you focus on the concepts then it will become very clear. We initially found this text on Parkour.net, but that site is temporarily closed so we are not able to provide a link to the original context. Jean François Belle is also mentioned in David Belle Teaches Parkour to Firemen in Paris and No Obstacles by Alec Wilkinson.
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The Parkour is:
1 – A utility sport that serves you in first place, you move, climb, jump, you don’t continue to be blocked by a wall or by an obstacle that hinders you to advance.
2 – A training method that aims to make you stronger, then, is normal that you have to train very strong.
3 – What must make you more agile, you jump, recoup, roll, co-ordinate your movement as a monkey… agility…
4 – The work force that allows you to increase gradually your physical and psychological capacities to cross step by step what limited or what hindered you to advance and to continue your Parkour… the strength. To carve with that you diminish your fears and your apprehensions to the will of progressive work in jump’s with gap’s, the more distant jump’s. Your body must become accustomed gradually but it is a long work and difficult and, diminished the fears, you learn (and you must) to know your body, its possibilities and its limits.
All of this is Parkour.
But it is also to know to suffer and to know if you made badly (not too much badly) but is also to become hardened… the warlike spirit and determined that one must learn… David it lost some time because it was the only one… nowadays he allowed many to follow much more fast and to prevent all its former errors and all being a constant search and trainings to be able itself to say that I know my body and that I develop an above average physical condition.
David for example, he’s 34 years old and he’s stronger now then when he was 20, but that’s because (Parkour) it’s his life and he lives it every day, because it is an art of living but is also physic… it’s difficult for that who doesn’t know and that doesn’t understand the effort and the physical suffering… because if Parkour is pretty, it is because it is dominated, and that is the result of very effort and suffering…
To train it is enough to find educative exercises (in which) you work regularly and gradually, your physical capacities will increase, it’s automatic, the exercise must be done to the more extreme possible. It is normal and logical, one does not have nothing without nothing.
Later, all people speaks in the acrobatics, if yes or not… for us, the gymnastics and the acrobatics it has the base of trainings in the gymnasium and are also a base of the coordination of the movement of the body. To carry through a jump demonstrates that you know to command and that you dominate your body, and, if making 4m of height, you demonstrate that you have the force, the crave and the physical power to carry through this type of exercise that a specialized gymnast couldn’t do. But one should not chain acrobatic movements on a wall or an automobile, this become only acrobatics for the show, it’s not the useful Parkour, is the “Parkour acrobatic show of.”
If one day you will be in difficulties in the roof of an apartment in flames or you are to be pursued by people how want bad things for you, you use Parkour as in the B13, if you don’t know what to do, then you make pirouets, you make as the Yamakasi on the automobiles or walls as in its film.
We spoke with (non-revealed) brand. They want that David’s Parkour becomes (non-revealed brand Parkour)… they had said that don’t want freerun from the UFF, they know that are we and that we know better than no nobody to speech (about our Parkour), to form, and pure and simply to show what we created.
Parkour is free for he who practices it… is for you, later, if to want to make of this your mark, it is only necessary to be good at it, and not to hide behind the movement that you transformed. But well, the objective is that you understand the spirit and that you (must) advance in security, without useless risks, therefore the goal is also the security. The important thing is to advance in this world with the idea of a basis of an action art that is Parkour… it’s enthusiastic to create an economic sporting movement that can allow many people to live its passion. But we guard so that the ones that live it, deserve it… it’s very simple.
We are going to federate the Parkour of DB, to form instructors with 3 levels of formation with periods of training in France and events in the foreigner so that all and each one of us speak only about one and the same Parkour.
1º period of training will be in (dates not divulged) and only the formed people will be able to form people for Parkour. The objective is to be able to have a national representative for country in contact with us, he will be the judge of what’s happening in his country and to form new practitioners.
One will not try to stop the people who make “extreme Parkour” but this will be practiced on the responsibility of the one making the extreme, such as the person who makes ski out of the ski track.
One will not try to stop that who wants to do Parkour by himself, but if some accident happen and this person doesn’t belong to our organization, it’s a matter of protecting us so that we are not responsible for all the accidents on hearth, and, if that person it’s affiliated, during an event this person will have complete insurance, but if out of the event is on its responsibility.
The goal is to transmit and transmit well.
-Jean François Belle
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