Take Flight

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.

A few days ago one of our members in the MisterParkour.com International Forum posted a link to a spectacular video featuring Stephane Vigroux. The video was so good that we have decided to add the video to the MisterParkour.com library which is what we have done in this post.

The short documentary below, by Craig Pentak, features an extensive interview with Stephane Vigroux intermittent with scenes of Parkour training in London. During the interview Stephane talks about the origin and history of Parkour, the Yamakasi, and the word Tracer. He also discusses the mental aspects of Parkour, and his own personal journey finding Parkour and establishing Parkour Generations. In addition, Stephane discusses the obstacles he feels the art of Parkour is currently facing including the push by some to commercialize Parkour and promote Parkour competitions. To this end the documentary is concluded with Stephane discussing his own views, including David Belle’s and Sebastién Foucan’s opinions, of the recent World Freerun Championships.

This video is definitely a must see for everyone in the community; great insight from one of the humblest and most skilled practitioners on the planet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d1AxUPPcF8

Ruslan and others have the opportunity to take Parkour to Tokyo and Taipei as shown in this excellent video. Characterized by superb production and film quality, great editing, a perfect music accompaniment, and technical mastery of proper Parkour technique, this video is a must see. This video also features Fall Out Boy.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x87bib_parkour-video-featuring-ruslan-dzav_sport

Ok, for the record the Germans are hilarious…in a good way. This is the third German news feature we have found that covered the same Parkour event! And we suspect there are a few more out there! This one was produced by Sat 1: Blitz and features David Belle at the 2006 OSRAM World Meeting in Berlin, Germany.

This broadcast is a little more fun than the last two German news features we uncovered because in addition to having some unique footage of David it also mixes in some clips from David’s Accroches Toi video, and some clips of people falling during the workshop. We are not making fun of people falling in any way because not only has it happened to us countless time, but this can be a serious and dangerous occurrence. Furthermore David himself says, “I fall all the time. I fall like monkeys.” To strictly make fun of someone for falling would be flat out distasteful. Nevertheless, in all honesty these falls made us laugh so it definitely added to the entertainment value of the video. Something else that might make you laugh is the fact that this feature is completely in German and thus, again, we have absolutely no idea what they are saying. But the anchors do interview some of the same Tracers that spoke in the Kabel 1: Abenteuer Leben news feature which we posted yesterday. So if you understood that post than you will probably understand this one as well.

Since we don’t know what these people are saying specifically -although in reality most Parkour news features to date have pretty much all said the same thing which we won’t repeat for the sake of further repetitiveness and lack of originality- you may wonder why we even decided to post this video in the first place. To that we have a very simple answer: it features the greatest Tracer of all time David Belle, a performer who never gets boring no matter how many times we hear him say the same things or watch him do the same moves over, and over, and over again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA1R2dpDOOs

Here is the official video from the 2006 OSRAM Parkour World Meeting which took place on October 21 in Milan, Italy. This video is virtually the same as the other version we previously posted, and the quality is noticeably better. To view the alternative version and to read more details about this event please click here.

http://www.dailymotion.com/airmout/video/x4dint_milan-titre_events

Here is the official video from the workshop that took place in Florence, Italy on October 16, five days before the 2006 OSRAM Parkour World Meeting. This video is the same as the one in our previous post except the quality is slightly better. To obtain a link to embed this video with the Google customer player please see our original posting by clicking here.

http://www.dailymotion.com/airmout/video/x4dlft_florence_extreme

For part 3 of 3 we have a DBProd filmed during the OSRAM Parkour World Meeting in 2006 in Milano, Italy. “The video shows the David Belle training method and some good Parkour…performed by the Team Parkour by DB. The APKI Team (Italian Parkour Association) helped the French team with the teaching and the stage sessions.” Tracers featured include David, Sisco, Thomas, and Rudy.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7073889372917204940&q=David+Belle+Italy&ei=_78KSOz1IpSC4AKAjpW4BA&hl=en

This film from David Belle showcases footage from David’s world tour stop in Madagascar. David uses a head camera during some of his movements so you get to see Parkour from his point of view. Also worth noting is the fact that this video is the only one I have ever seen that features David wearing shorts.

Discover the world from the eyes of a global Tracer…

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5409483595288978920&q=David+Belle+Madagascar&total=5&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0&hl=en