The MovNat 5-day workshops in West Virginia are going on right now and unfortunately I could not make it out there. The workshops reminded me about a translation of Georges Hébert’s Practical Guide of Physical Education, which he wrote in 1912, done a couple years ago by Pilou and Gregg from the American Parkour community. This is not a translation of Hébert’s books, L’éducation physique virile et morale par la méthode naturelle, which he began writing in 1941. As this translation is of a work done some thirty years prior to the books it naturally (no pun intended) reflects Hébert’s earlier understanding of the material and is also considerably less deep than his books. Now with that caveat out of the way: the guide is an interesting look at the reasoning and application of the natural method to training, though it certainly cannot be used as primary source to base one’s training around. Personally between reading the requirements for MovNat expansion workshop and the swimming section (a more recently translated section) of the guide that I badly need to improve in that area.

The translation was originally posted on the main APK blog, but with permission from Pilou I have rehosted the PDF translation on this site. There are some additional materials that Gregg translated which are in this APK forum post as well.

These last couple of posts have been rather short…I have a few upcoming ones on some motor learning topics which should hopefully be more meaty.