Georges Hébert


Georges Hébert was a pioneering physical educator in the French military who developed a system of physical education and training known as "la méthode naturelle" or hebertism, which combined the training of a wide variety of physical capacities with the training of courage and ethics.

Early life

Hébert was born in Paris. While an officer in the French Navy prior to the First World War, he was stationed in the town of St. Pierre, on the island of Martinique in the Caribbean Sea. In 1902 the town fell victim to a catastrophic volcanic eruption.
Hébert was the first officier to land in the city. He coordinated the escape and rescue of some seven hundred people from this disaster. This experience had a profound effect on him, and reinforced his belief that athletic skill must be combined with courage and altruism. He eventually developed this ethos into his personal motto, "Être fort pour être utile".
Hébert travelled extensively throughout the world and was impressed by the physical development and movement skills of indigenous peoples in Africa and elsewhere, writing:
"Their bodies were splendid, flexible, nimble, skillful, enduring, resistant and yet they had no other tutor in gymnastics but their lives in nature."

Hébertism

Hébertism as we know it today is the fruit of a life time work. There are significant differences between Hébert's early books and the later volumes.
His later ideas best represent the complete evolution of his thought.

Predecessors

In addition to his observations of the natural movements of indigenous people, Hébert's method synthesized various influences, including but not limited to:
Most of the philosophy of Hébertisme can be found in the first seven chapters of Volume 1 of "La Méthode Naturelle." It can be summarized by the "3–10–15" approach to fitness:

3 main components for training

Physical training: Heart, lungs and muscles, but also speed, dexterity, endurance, resistance, and balance.
Mental training: energy, willpower, courage, coolness, firmness
Ethical behavior: friendship, collective work, altruism

10 families of practical exercise

  1. walking
  2. running
  3. quadrudepy
  4. climbing
  5. jumping
  6. balance
  7. lifting and carrying
  8. throwing
  9. defence
  10. swimming

    15 principles for training

  11. Continuity of work and exercises.
  12. Alternating opposite efforts: fast/slow, intense/relaxed...
  13. Progression of the intensity of efforts during the training.
  14. Initial warmup before training and final cool-down after training
  15. Individualization of efforts – i.e.m adaptating the difficulty to each one's level
  16. Working with flexibility, relaxing inactive muscles relax your mind
  17. Proper posture and sufficient breathing
  18. Complete freedom of motion even in group work – avoiding collective or synchronized movements
  19. Cultivation of speed and skill.
  20. Correction of individual weaknesses
  21. Taking advantage of open air and sun, obtaining the hardening benefits of the elements.
  22. Allowing the group to express joy and happiness
  23. Cultivation the qualities of action – i.e., courage, willpower, cool headedness, firmness – by the execution of difficult exercises for example while seeking to control the fear of falling, of jumping, of rising, of plunging, of walking on an unstable surface, etc.
  24. Cultivation of altruistic behaviour – i.e., altruism, collective work, mutual aid.
  25. Cultivation of self-improvement via healthy competition.
Hébert wrote:

Legacy and influence

Georges Hébert's teaching continued to expand between and during the two World Wars, becoming the standard system of French military physical education.
He was also an early advocate of the benefits of exercise for women. In his work Muscle and Plastic Beauty, which appeared in 1921, Hébert criticized not only the fashion of corsetry but also the physical inactivity imposed upon women by contemporary European society. By following the natural method of synthesized physical, energetic and moral development, he wrote, women could develop self-confidence, willpower and athletic ability just as well as their male counterparts.
Hébert wrote:
A session is composed of exercises belonging to the ten fundamental groups: walking, running, jumping, quadrupedal movement, climbing, equilibrium, throwing, lifting, defending and swimming.
A training session consists, then, of exercises in an outdoor environment, perhaps a few hundred meters to several kilometers, during which, one walks, one runs, one jumps, one progresses quadrupedally, one climbs, one walks in unstable balance, one raises and one carries, one throws, one fights and one swims.
This course can be carried out in two ways:
  1. the natural or spontaneous way; i.e., on an unspecified route through the countryside.
  2. within an especially designed environment.
All of the exercises can be carried out while progressing through this environment. A session can last from 20 to 60 minutes.
Thus, Hébert was among the earliest proponents of le parcours, or obstacle course, form of physical training, which is now standard in the military and has led to the development of civilian fitness trails and confidence courses. In fact, woodland challenge courses comprising balance beams, ladders, rope swings and so-on are often still described as "Hébertism" or "Hébertisme" courses both in Europe and in North America. It may even be possible to trace modern adventure playground equipment back to Hébert's original designs in the early 1900s.
As a former sailor, Hébert may have patterned some of his "stations" on the obstacles that are found on the deck of a ship; he was also a strong proponent of "natural" or spontaneous training in non-designed environments.
The year 1955 marked the 50th birthday of the Natural Method, and Hébert was named Commander of the Legion of Honor by the French government in recognition of his many services to his country. In 1957, Hébert furthered the admiration of his peers by relearning how to walk, speak and write. He died on August 2 of that year in Tourgéville, Calvados, France.
There are still schools and gymnasia throughout Europe that are promoting the Natural Method of physical training, some maintaining their own elaborate "parcours" in natural surroundings.
Most recently, Hébert's teachings have been an important influence on the emergence of parkour as a training discipline in its own right. Also, in the first decade of the 21st century, the French American physical education instructor Erwan Le Corre took inspiration from Hébert's "méthode naturelle" and has expanded on the training to form a system of natural movement which he has named "MovNat".

Publications