Edmond Desbonnet

1868 (some sources 1867) – 28 June 1953 · Lille → La Varenne-Saint-Hilaire

Edmond Desbonnet was the great promoter of culture physique in France: a Lille-born teacher who opened schools of physical culture, founded magazines including La Culture Physique, and wrote Les Rois de la force (1911), the standard French-language history of the strongmen of his era.

Origins

French sources give his birth as 26 June 1868 in Lille, into a family of building contractors; English-language sources often give 1867. He began medical studies at Lille but did not finish them, and drew on the floor-gymnastics tradition of Hippolyte Triat. He dated his method, and the term culture physique, to 1885, and with family money opened a school of physical culture in Lille, later moving it to larger premises on the place du Théâtre before establishing himself in Paris.

The work

Desbonnet was a publisher as well as a teacher. He founded L'Athlète (1896), La Culture Physique (from 1904, published until 1967), La Boxe et les Boxeurs (1909) and La Santé par les Sports (1911), and wrote for the sports daily L'Auto from its foundation in 1900. He also organised lifting exhibitions and contests: in 1898 he brought the champion Bonnes from Paris to the Club athlétique roubaisien, an occasion he describes at length in Les Rois de la force. Schools teaching his method were opened by his pupils across France and abroad, and he was made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1932.

He was also a collector and photographer. His archive of photographs of strongmen, wrestlers and his own pupils — tens of thousands of images by French accounts — is a major visual record of the period; part of it was exhibited in Paris in 1992 and published as Accord à corps (Créaphis, 1993).

Desbonnet's exercises

Desbonnet's system aimed at health and proportion first, and strength second; his slogan was "Beauté, Santé, Force". Its main features, as described in his books and French accounts of his method, were:

• Daily, measured exercise of each muscle group in turn, done indoors in front of large mirrors so that pupils could watch their weak points.
• Progressive resistance: from 1885 he used hollow-globe dumbbells loaded with iron discs, and later adjustable barbells, as well as spring dumbbells.
• A medical-style record card for each pupil, with measurements taken before and after training.
• Breathing freely during exercise rather than holding the breath, and a distrust of competition and record-chasing for ordinary pupils.
• His later "gymnastique des organes", which presented exercise as a means of strengthening the internal organs, and gramophone records of guided lessons (1906).

Selected works

• La Force physique (Berger-Levrault, 1901) — on the methods of Attila, Sandow and Desbonnet.
• La Gymnastique des organes, with Dr Pierre Chevillet (Berger-Levrault, 1908).
• Comment on devient athlète (1909), with a preface by Pierre Loti.
• Les Rois de la lutte (1910).
• Les Rois de la force (Berger-Levrault, 1911).
• Un demi-dieu de la force, Apollon (Librairie Athlétique, 1911).

Legacy

Les Rois de la force remains the source on which English-language accounts of Apollon and much of the French and continental tradition depend; Desbonnet knew and interviewed many of the men and women he wrote about. He died at La Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, near Paris, on 28 June 1953.

Disputed and unresolved

His birth year is given as 1867 or 1868. Like every chronicler of the period, he is most reliable on lifters he saw himself and less so on figures repeated from other sources, and his books also served to promote his own schools and method.