Erwan Le Corre

"I meet men all the time who can bench 400 pounds but can't climb up through a window to pull someone from a burning building. I know guys who can run marathons but can't sprint to anyone's rescue unless they put their shoes on first. Lots of swimmers do laps every day but can't dive deep enough to save a friend, or know how to carry him over rocks and out of the surf."

"Oxygen is an accident. Breath is intentional."

"Do we function in sets of ten in the wilderness? How do we know how long we will have to do something?"

"Adaptability is the holy grail of MovNat. This is what we have done throughout human history. But we have lost touch with the world that created us."

"We're all zoo humans to some extent, even me."

"Your body will never be more connected to your mind than when something is at stake. That's how you measure the value of a movement: by its consequences. Climb a tree, throw a rock, balance on the edge of a cliff-- you lose focus for a fraction of a second, you're screwed. It takes a very affluent and indulged culture to convince itself that standing around in weird poses is exercise."

""How would you train a panther to be fit? Not on a treadmill."

"A tiger is a powerful, graceful animal simply by doing what a tiger does. This practical, real world approach is what we have lost, and what natural movement can restore."

"It was all practical stuff. Why? Because that's the way you train soldiers: practical stuff. Soldiers don't freaking need to do a flag, you don't need to do handstands. You need to run and sprint and vault over obstacles. They need to balance on stuff, and they need to climb to crawl to lift and carry, throw and catch. They need to do all these things. They need to fight, to swim."

"You never see your dog running nonstop around and around in a circle for an hour. If he did, you'd think there was something wrong with him. Instead, he'll chase something, roll around, sprint, rest, mix things up. Animal play has a purpose, and it's not hard to surmise that human play should as well."

"You need to have a mind-body-nature connection."

"Natural Movement is the universal workout the world has forgotten."

"If you want to become a force of nature, you need to interact with the forces of nature."

"You can never master the context where you physically and mentally operate; you can only learn to master how you will operate through it."

"No jump is good if the landing is bad."

"When he was a teenager, Le Corre excelled in sports such as karate, but none of it felt quite right. He became cross when he didn’t win. This all changed when, at the age of 19, he joined a group practising a form of street running called Combat Vital. Under cover of darkness they would scale the bridges of Paris, swim in the Seine, run barefoot through the streets and jump over the rooftops like cats."

"We run as Erwan instructed. Or at least try. We're supposed to run elegantly, like an animal. Keep the muscles relaxed, lean forward, and let gravity pull you ahead. Don't stomp-- take short steps and land lightly on your toes. Don't pump your arms, just let them dangle naturally by your side."

"Le Corre taught us to expend as little energy as possible while completing a challenge. That meant learning how to move efficiently."

"Everybody says, 'I'm in shape, or I'm out of shape,' " he tells his students..."Everybody's in shape. You've been shaped," he says, curving his back to model the slumpy posture of the average office worker. "That's your shape."