Swinging through the jungle topless and climbing trees up to 60 metres (196 feet) high in a matter of seconds, barefoot.
It’s all in a day’s work for Leopald Hurbin, an outdoor athlete who has been dubbed a true Tarzan.
The 30-year-old Frenchman, also known as Leo Urban, is a practitioner of ‘primary parkour’, which involves running, jumping and swinging through forests in an incredibly acrobatic manner, as shown on his Instagram account.
The videos of daring, seemingly death-defying stunts he has posted have earned him his @leo.urban has almost two million followers.
Leo grew up in the mountains of Andorra and has been practicing parkour and climbing for almost 20 years, traveling around the world to climb trees using only his hands and feet. He spends most of his time surrounded by nature, traveling around the world and climbing trees wearing only a pair of pants or shorts.
Leo Urban is a practitioner of “primary parkour”, which involves running, jumping and swinging through forests in incredibly acrobatic ways. He is pictured atop a 40-metre-high pine tree in the Bialowieza Forest in Poland.
Leo grew up in the mountains of Andorra and has been practicing parkour and climbing for almost 20 years. In the photo above, Leo climbs a 60-meter-high tree in Sumatra, Indonesia.
Leo, who has also earned the nickname ‘humanzee’, spoke to MailOnline Travel about his ‘primitive’ pursuits, revealing his favourite climbing spots, why monkeys inspire him to go barefoot and a very scary moment falling out of a tree in Indonesia.
Leo started practicing parkour and climbing in 2007 as a way to “reconnect” with his confidence and “try something freely” with his friends. He climbs in both urban and natural environments, and his highest free climb was the 209-meter Montparnasse Tower, a skyscraper in Paris.
Although he is an expert climber in both environments, Leo prefers to climb trees, which he refers to as “nature’s skyscrapers.”
He said: “The sensations, from flies and mosquitoes biting you to direct contact with matter, are much more powerful when walking and climbing following animal tracks. It’s more exciting than buildings or rocks.”
And he always climbs barefoot because that way he has a “better grip.” “Monkeys don’t have shoes, so the idea is to use your feet as if they were hands,” he explained.
Leo’s training times “vary wildly,” depending on where he is in the world, and can range from two to nine hours. “There’s no routine,” he said. “Just like animals don’t have one.”
Leo started practicing parkour and climbing in 2007 as a way to “reconnect” with his confidence and “try something freely” with his friends. Pictured above, he is seen in the Sumatran rainforest.
Leo always climbs barefoot because it gives him a “better grip.” He explained: “Monkeys don’t have shoes, so the idea is to use your feet as hands.”
“One day a cheetah can go hunting and come back empty-handed, and the next day it brings back three kills. It’s the same. It’s all a matter of intuition and feeling.”
Leo said he incorporates fear into his training. While he admits he often feels fear, he said this helps him “progress” and connect with his “primitive, animal, adrenaline-fueled side.”
Explaining how he feels before a climb, Leo said: “It’s always a state of stress, uncertainty and fear. You ask yourself a lot of questions. Are you going to die, is it worth it, etc.
‘And then, during the ascent, all these doubts and fears fade away to give way to action and concentration.
“When you achieve it, you feel like you’re reborn again. It’s an indescribable feeling that stays with you forever.”
Leo has explored every corner of the planet, from Indonesian islands to European forests and African deserts, and his most “extraordinary” climb was in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador.
Leo’s training times “vary wildly” depending on where he is in the world, and can range from two to nine hours. Leo is pictured above in a forest in Andorra
Leo said he incorporates fear into his training. While he admits he often feels fear, he said this helps him “progress.” Leo is pictured above in Sumatra
Leo said he “rarely” suffers injuries that prevent him from training, and that his last major injury was more than 10 years ago. Leo is pictured above while swinging in the Bialowieza Forest in Poland
Of all the places he has visited, he said Sumatra, a large island in Indonesia, is his favorite place to climb because of the “gigantic” trees, the network of vines and the opportunity to jump.
One of his “craziest experiences” was living with the Mentawi tribe on Siberut Island. Describing his experience, Leo said: “I got to see real men and women from the jungle. It was fascinating to watch them hunt and climb trees.
“It is a source of inspiration for me as important as observing large animals.”
Despite climbing daily, Leo said he “rarely” suffers injuries that prevent him from training, with his last major injury being more than 10 years ago.
However, he nearly had an accident in Sumatra when he jumped from a tree between 25 and 30 metres high to a branch a little lower down.
Explaining how he feels before a climb, Leo said: “It’s always a state of stress, uncertainty and fear.” Pictured above he is in a pine forest in Andorra
Leo said: “What I like most about climbing is the freedom.” He said that climbing “makes you stronger both physically and mentally.” Pictured above he is in Andorra
“I fell a few metres before grabbing onto the tree below with one hand, which was quite spectacular. It was quite violent and it was my biggest scare,” he explained.
While the reaction to Leo’s escalation was mixed, he said the practice has “numerous” advantages.
“What I like most about climbing is the freedom. The ability to go further each time and overcome my own limits,” he says.
Above all, he says, climbing offers the opportunity to “break free” and “reconnect with the primal self.” “It makes you stronger both physically and mentally,” he says.
To see more of Leo, follow him on Instagram here and TikTok in www.tiktok.com/@leo.urban.primal. Or visit their website here.
