Important and inspirational things to think about by Hebertiste
Strong means complete, able to run, jump, climb, lift heavy objects, swim, fight (self-defense), to be fast, agile, endurant, brave etc...both physically and mentally strong. Useful is about helping others.
Parkour is simply a modern and mainly urban declination of this discipline and philosophy.
Don't limit your practice to only its visual aspect, and don't limit your philosophy to what only suits you.
It's no about fun, parkour is so much more than that.
If you don't get it, you're lightyears away from understanding its true essence.
In Hebert's view, it is important to be complete and useful. All your training must aim to that, complete training, useful training. It means it must help you face every situation of daily life, but also to cope with dangerous or emergency ones. You're not going to train because it's good for your back, or for your shape, or to loose weight, or to impress others, or because it's only fun or because it's the new underground craze, or because you can make a video, and so on...no. You train always for a useful purpose, obviously to become or stay healthy, but also to educate yourself, your body, your mind. To get a real life.
This is the reason why he was so interested in education versus sports. Sports to him was show-business, competition, elitism and specialization, all bad things to him.
You might be a champion, for instance a great swimmer. But what if you cannot run ? You can be a very powerful man, but what if you too cannot run well, or swim, or climb ? You could be a great fighter, but what if you suffer of vertigo and would drown in a river ? The answer to this issue is that it is much more important and useful to be "average" in everything than to be excellent in one or two areas but poorly skilled in all the other kind of abilities that make a man complete.
My concept is that there is more obstacles to cross than what we think.
For instance, I always recall that distance is the first obstacle of all. A "flat" one, though running up and down hills is not quite "flat". If you have to run for 2 hours, or even more, or 50 kms or more, you should be able to do it.
In many emergency cases, distance will be the most prioritary or difficult obstacle to clear. Long distance running skill is important, definitely.
Water is one of them, a liquid obstacle. What indeed if there's water across you way ? What if you must swim underwater a 50 m long distance ? Isn't that an obstacle that require only your human abilities to go from A to B sh*t ? Think of A to B when it's time to save your own life...
What if you simply fall into the water ? SWIM.
Same with air. Air, lack of oxygen, toxic smokes in a corridor or tunnel to cross can be an obstacle. If you must run that 100 m long tunnel without breathing or you'll die, better is to be trained for it.
Same with shoes. What if you were to loose your shoes ? Can you still run ? What if the ground is frozen, or very hot ? Or full of sharp stones ?
If parkour to you is only reproducing specific moves you've seen on vids, you're totally missing the point, because you're just limiting your practice to what you think it is. But parkour is not only the moves you can put a name on, guys wake up !
You must make sure what you train for is going to potentially save your life or other's when needed, so train your body and mind for it, and don't limit that training to what you only know. It is all about adaptation to about any situation. You must think of circumstances that were not expected.