Quilca – Mollendo

Do you think the philosophy of Parkour can bring something positive to the young living in suburbs?

We are already starting to initiate and train youth workers dealing with young with problems to Parkour. Teenagers can understand a lot of things thanks to Parkour and it can bring them positive values. It can also help them channel their energy but it may not necessarily be enough. As long as their environment doesn’t change, they are not going to change either. And as long as the outside look on them doesn’t change, the current situation is not going to change. There’s a common expression, "young from the suburbs" (in France, suburbs of big cities are

usually underprivileged", but what does it mean exactly? To me, there’s a

kind of racism and rejection in the word suburb . When some people talk about "the youth from the suburbs", it’s another way to say "those Blacks,

those Arabs", except that it’s politically more correct. People are racist but

they hide their hatred and intolerance behind this suburb word, and it’s convenient for them. There are suburbs where there are no problems except for a few punks who do not respect anything or anyone. But most of the young people are good guys. They have their own suburban way of talking, they wear suburban clothing, but it doesn’t make them thugs. They respect others and urban structures and they help each other, no matter their ethnical background. Media and people usually mix up those young – the majority – and a small number of individuals who wants to be heard and does damages.

And things often get out of control because they have no other solution to be heard since they are non-existent in the public eye. They need to express themselves but they don’t have any way to do so. That’s why they burn cars, because that’s what is readily available and it’s going to be highly visible. Or they are going to break something because it will make noise and they will be heard. As long as there won’t be a solution to listen to them, to give them opportunities for a better world, suburbs will remain areas of trouble. Before a guy is even born into one of those dirty suburbs, you already know that he is going to rebel. When you live in a cage, when concrete buildings block the horizon, you know you can’t accept your situation. The solution would be to raze it all to the

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ground and rebuild it anew. Suburban architecture was a failure from the start. And the young are not responsible for those buildings. They just happen to live there. If architects, politicians and so-called smart people had thought about it before building those bloody concrete structures, if they had just wondered, "Would I want to live here?" , then maybe things wouldn’t be what they are today. And I’m sure that if wealthy kids were put to live in the suburbs in the same conditions – dirty hallways and elevators, stinking staircases and neighbours playing music super loud at three a.m. – I think they would also become very angry and turn into "young from the suburbs". Everybody says, "Those

young, they have to learn respect…" But did they respect us when they

built those things? Nope. How do you expect the young to respect that? The place itself doesn’t inspire respect. It feels like rabbit cages< That’s an incentive to do stupid things. If you have enough energy, you just want to destroy those cages. You don’t even think about it, it’s just an instinct. And when a young tells me he screwed up, I almost feel like telling him that he didn’t screw up, it’s the place that’s screwed up.

How does it work when a youth comes to you to learn Parkour?

The first thing is to figure out why the kid came to see me, why he wants to learn Parkour. I try to find his real motivation, what made him want to move. If he only wants to do saltos and spins, then I tell him to do gymnastics or freerun – everything but Parkour. If he wants to do videos or movies, I send him straight back home. When I teach Parkour to a young, I don’t want to know what he’s going to do with it. He can become an actor, an acrobat, any artistic job, or become a fire fighter or a rescuer, never mind. I don’t want to know. He comes to learn the basis, and that’s it. If there’s an aim behind Parkour, then it’s not good. Some guys dream of a career like mine without really knowing if it’s the right path for them or not. I had to sweat blood and tears to find out what my path was. Some even show up hoping I will help them out and pull strings for them to work in the movie industry. I always turn them down because I’m not an employment agency. The only thing I have to give is what my father gave me. People are always driven by interest: they do such and such job because it brings them so much money, they do this or that because of what it could bring them. With Parkour, you do it for

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yourself and yourself only. And you have to forget about everything that gravitates around it because that’s what destroys the spirit of it. My father would never have behaved like that. To him, being appreciated was better than a golden belt. I can’t teach Parkour to someone who wants to make a lot of dough or be better than his buddies. Parkour is about training to be better, not the best.

When I’m dealing with skilled athletes, I know from the start they will do Parkour for a couple of years and then move on to something else – skating or skiing< Parkour will be an entertainment to them but they won’t have understood the true spirit of this sport. When young trainees come to see me and give me videos telling me to check out what they are doing, I just take the tape and throw it away. What I’m interested in is what the guy’s got in his head, if he has self-confidence, if he masters the technique, if he has understood the principles of Parkour. I just can’t deal with guys who do Parkour because they saw videos on the internet and thought it was kinda cool and want to do even better. But if a youth comes to me and says he just want to train and learn to move his body in his environment, then ok, I start getting interested. The principle of Parkour is to know what you are capable of, to gain self-confidence and not to compete with others. To me, in this sport, there are only people who start from scratch, who fight and learn so much along the way, who will be able to understand every step, every link in the chain of Parkour.

Are there any physical requirements to practice Parkour?

No, except for a basic medical check-up. When a youth comes to practice, we just check his medical background – that he doesn’t have any problems with his back, vertebras, hips, heart, any broken bones and so on. Anyone can start training for Parkour. The aim of the game is that we all get to the end of a session. Not necessarily at the same time nor in the same fashion, but we all get there. When there’s a newcomer, I check his basic physical abilities, like asking him to stand on one leg or stand on a small wall. It give me an idea about his balance and how he moves. Sometimes, I even push him to see how he reacts, how he lands and what his reflexes are like. I can make a diagnosis like a doctor with a patient. Every individual has to train according to his or her own morphology. But you can’t tell in advance who’s going to be gifted or

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not. A tall guy may think it’s going to be easy because his size is going to help him reach the top of a wall more easily but a shorter guy will have to develop a true Parkour technique to reach the top of that wall. Therefore he’ll have a more efficient impulse than the guy who just raised his arms. Physique doesn’t matter in Parkour. It’s the way that really matters. I know of a very short guy who moves in Parkour in an incredible way! When he walks on the street, people stare and say, "Poor

guy!". But when they see him doing Parkour, their way of seeing him

changes drastically. And he feels good, he knows he is good at what he is doing and it shows on his face. He erased his handicap thanks to Parkour.

Do you give a lot of advice?

I give basic advice but people have to be able to develop their own technique the way I did when I started. I don’t expect them to do exactly what I’m doing. I’d rather see them move in their own way, show me

their way. It’s an exchange; I’m not here to say, "Do this or do that". Guys

shouldn’t come for me, to say that they trained with David Belle. They have to go and look for what my father gave me. When a young person asks me: "Can you show me how to do this?" I simply answer: "No, I am

going to show you how I do it. Then, you’ll have to learn with your own technique, your own way of moving, your style, your abilities and your limitations. You are going to learn to be yourself, not someone else." The only

advice I can give is train, train, and train again. And each time, go over what you’ve done before. With Parkour, I often say, "Once is never". In other words, someone can manage a jump one time but it doesn’t mean anything. It can be luck or chance. When you make a jump, you have to do it at least three times to be sure you can actually do it. It’s an unavoidable rule. It got on the nerves of some guys who came training with me but that’s the only way to improvement. Do it the hard way and stop lying to yourself. When you come for training, you have to train. Even if it means doing the same jump fifty or a hundred times. There’s no miracle: whoever is willing finds the means, the one who isn’t willing finds excuses. When a kid moans and groans and tells me he can’t do such a jump because he doesn’t have the right shoes, I tell him to give me his shoes and I do the jump. When a trainee’s got it all – the speed,

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the spring, the technique – he can do the jump. Laziness sometimes prevents the jump but most of the time it’s fear.

Talking about difficult jumps and fear of void, what kind of technique should be used to overcome that?

You can fight fear by putting yourself mentally in an emergency state, finding good reasons to do it. To motivate a guy, I can tell him that, instead of talking about that jump for an hour like he just had, if he finds himself one day with five pit bulls chasing him, he won’t think twice and will go for it.

Motivation is the key to everything in life. If I have to fight a big guy with no good reason, I won’t really be eager to go. But if my mother is being attacked right behind that guy, then yes, I will just go for it. And he can be the strongest guy in the universe, I will still kick his ass. That’s how I work. When I was training for Parkour, I came up with a million stories to surmount difficult obstacles. A fire, something about to blow up, a relative to rescue, a kid trapped somewhere< It’s as if this emergency state enables me to unlock something in my brain and all of a sudden my vision of the surrounding environment is altered. I have a more acute perception of things, I can see ways that others don’t and fear is gone. My strength is multiplied, a bit like mothers who find an incredible strength to rescue their child when there’s an emergency. They don’t think about it when they do it – they don’t ask themselves if they are going to be able to do it or if they have enough strength or if their child is going to die< Their only thought is to rescue their child. And so there’s an instant connection between their willpower, their energy and their actions. The same applies to Parkour. Training has to lead to an instinctive reaction. When a guy stops and asks too many questions about where to put his feet or hands, I’ve already been across the obstacle.

I believe a beginner won’t make big jumps right away?

Absolutely no. You don’t take someone thirty feet above the ground right away, even if he tells you he’s not afraid. I alone take the decision. I make him do a precision jump one foot off the ground and he has to

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repeat it twenty times. I am extremely cautious with chance. Everyone can score a basket or throw a knife on a target once by chance. But if the guy can do it twenty times in a row, then I know it’s for real. It should never be forgotten that Parkour offers different levels. Some are readily accessible and can make you believe you made it through, as well as a level for experts only, those who have been training the way I have for ten or twenty years. What matters the most is to do it step by step. You sure don’t start with pull-ups one hundred and fifty feet off the ground! If you fail after twelve pull-ups, you’re done with. You’re dead or in a wheelchair. There is no magic nor miracles in Parkour. You have to work and get tough. Sometimes you can find yourself in Parkour hanging with one arm so you have to train to face that but you are going to start hanging with one arm six or seven feet off the ground. And when you can hold it for three or four minutes and feel comfortable with it, you can increase the height little by little. You have to go through that with Parkour and never move on to a more difficult level before you are absolutely sure you can do again the same previous jump, the same previous movement, with a perfect mastery of all the physical elements and outside factors like wind, rain or even oil on the ground. In the end, you must be able to perceive those elements without difficulty, without pondering for hours.

Can a practitioner train on his own?

Doing Parkour alone is dangerous. I realize now it’s better to be with someone. When I was a beginner, I went with my father’s advice – I had a mental guide in a way. Practitioners have to look after each other, see if their friend has the right spring or not, if he has the stamina to do the jump. If not, he should be talked out of doing it. And it doesn’t matter if you didn’t manage a jump another friend did. It’s not a contest. Nowadays youth should be able to get over this ego problem and stop being like," I’m limping but I’ll still do it". The only thing you’ll get out of it is a cast for weeks or worse. You have to listen to your body and don’t let others influence your judgement when they push you to jump but you don’t feel like it. I saw guys who had never done Parkour before take their camera and tell kids: "Go ahead and jump, I’m filming! You’ll see,

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Parkour teaching is underdeveloped in France. Are you trying to do something about it?

It’s hard because it requires a lot of coordination with many things, many people, many public institutions, city halls, districts, volunteers and so on. It also requires training structures to teach basics and nothing is really suited for that at the moment. I personally won’t teach large groups. I’m not interested. With my brother Jean-François and other Parkour followers we try to organize things properly but it takes time and, above all, it requires money. I would like to set up a big training centre. My hope is to convince sponsors and patrons to help us because only them have the means to help and support the development of a sport like Parkour. I met some of them in the movie industry like Luc Besson who offered a piece of land on his site of Saint Denis (north of

Paris) to build up a structure dedicated to Parkour. It could be used for

national or international seminars or even for the movie industry to give stuntmen training in Parkour.

Another way to gain recognition is to prove the usefulness of Parkour. For instance, fire fighters often ask you for advice…

Absolutely. I often go to the Fire Fighters Squad of Paris to give advice to young firemen. And I was even recently asked by a SWAT team in Belgium. My wish is to see it develop especially among professions involving danger. When I go to lecture the firemen of Paris and talk about my work, I have a deep respect and I don’t show off because a young fireman may jump less far than I do but he saves lives on an almost daily basis. In general, I have far more respect for jobs saving lives than jobs where guys strut about in a suit and tie. A guy can only be so proud because his company has two hundred employees and a good turnover but the day he goes bankrupt, he’ll cry like anybody else. But a fireman who jumps to rescue a little girl caught in a fire won’t say a word and won’t get a bonus for doing his job. My experience with Parkour might enable fire fighters to be even more efficient in their job but that’s all. And I’m not bragging about it. What matters to me is to know that thanks to Parkour, one day, a fire fighter might be able to get out of a dangerous situation or catch up a ladder if he slips. One day, a

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lieutenant told me: "If Parkour can save one or two of our men, then it’s worth