While David Belle is unquestionably known as the original innovator and spiritual figurehead
of parkour, the discipline’s origins can be traced directly back to his father, Raymond,
and his time as a child in Vietnam.
Though details surrounding Raymond’s early life are rather hazy, it’s generally accepted
that he was separated from his parents during the First Indochina War and taken in by the
French military in the city of Da Lat as an orphan at just age 7 in 1946.
According to later interviews with his son, Raymond was routinely abused as a child, which
motivated him to become as physically fit and strong as possible so that he could protect
himself and escape danger if it ever presented itself.
While being raised in the Da Lat French military orphanage, Raymond underwent basic military
training and education, the former of which he excelled at.
As it turns out, Raymond would regularly sneak out at night and secretly use the obstacle
course, repeatedly performing the same actions again and again until he’d boiled them down
to their most efficient and basic forms.
To test himself, Raymond would also devise his own obstacle courses consisting of objects
in the natural environment and attempt to move across them in the quickest manner possible.
Because he wasn’t really supposed to be doing this and faced harsh punishment if he
was ever caught, Raymond attempted to train in silence, spending countless hours practising
how to land without making a sound.
Along with learning to be silent, Raymond would throw himself from increasingly dizzying
heights to learn to land without hurting himself.
After the culmination of the Indochina war in 1954, Raymond was granted French citizenship
and taken back to France where he stayed in military education right up until just before
his 19th birthday in 1958.
After graduating, he decided to put his athletic skills to good use and become a member of
the Paris military fire-fighting regiment (known in France as the sapeurs-pompiers).
georgeIt was during his training with the Paris fire service that Raymond is said to
have encountered the teachings of one Georges Hébert, a famed physical education expert
who also happened to be the original inventor of the military obstacle courses Raymond had
used to hone his body and skills in his youth.
Raymond became fascinated with Hébert’s so-called “méthode naturelle” (French
for Natural Method) of training.
In a nutshell, the “natural method” consisted of a series of 10 basic exercises that Hébert
believed were essential to good, all round physical fitness.
These exercises included running, climbing, walking, both on two feet and on all fours,
swimming, throwing, lifting, self-defence, jumping, and balancing.
Hébert was supposedly inspired to create this more natural approach to physical fitness
during his time as a naval officer in the early 20th century, during which he often
encountered indigenous peoples whose physical fitness and ability to move across uneven,
sometimes dangerous terrain in a seemingly natural and fluid way made him believe that
an organic approach to fitness was superior to the more regimented one favoured at the
time.
Hébert’s favourite motto, “Être fort pour être utile” which roughly translates
to “be strong to be useful”, is also said to have deeply resonated with Raymond.
During his fire-fighter training, Raymond established himself as one of the most capable
recruits by smashing virtually every record they had for the obstacle course and then
doubling down by winning several fire-fighting competitions, particularly being adept at
rope climbing.
After training, Belle’s superior athleticism swiftly saw him become a legend in the fire-fighting
community, with Belle often being called on to take on the most dangerous missions the
service faced.
Perhaps Belle’s most famous exploit, at least as far as the general public is concerned,
is when he hung from a helicopter in order to grab a Vietnamese flag that had been attached
to the top of a flagpole about 300 feet up on the top of Notre Dame in Paris the day
before (noted as being the first helicopter mission ever undertaken by the service).
Raymond would also astound his peers by scaling buildings in seconds without a ladder by climbing
up the drain pipe and walking naturally along small ledges, dozens of feet in the air without
assistance.
However, it’s the stuff Raymond did behind the scenes that really made him famous amongst
fire-fighters.
You see, due to his almost unique ability to traverse the environment using what could
be viewed as a rudimentary form of parkour, Raymond was often tasked with training new
recruits and even members of the military in how to move more efficiently through an
urban environment.
During one such training exercise, it’s said that Raymond spoke to a number of new
recruits about how not fearing heights was essential to being a good fire-fighter, before
running at full sprint to a nearby window and doing a front-flip out of it in full fire-fighting
uniform.
Stories like these were passed on to Raymond’s son David, who was so inspired by his father’s
almost superhuman exploits that he began to emulate them, eventually resulting in him
developing parkour- a more flexible version of the “méthode naturelle” system of
training Raymond believed in that stressed efficiency of movement over natural obstacles.
Raymond’s teaching lives on not only through his son David, but through the French fire
fighting service of which his other son is a member.
To this day, the sapeurs-pompiers hone their skills by engaging in competitions between
one another to scale obstacles, climb ladders and carry weights over uneven ground.
They’ve also been known to train in parkour from time to time with David.
The word “Parkour” is taken from the French word for the classic obstacle course designed
by Georges Hébert for the military, “parcours du combattant” on which David Belle’s
father trained in his youth.
It’s noted by David Belle that the word parkour was first coined by a close friend
called, Hubert Kounde.