Georges Hébert (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ ebɛʁ]; 27 April 1875 – 2 August 1957) was a pioneering physical educator in the French military who developed a system of physical education and training known as "la méthode naturelle" ("Natural Method") and a more wide training program known as Hebertism (built on his name).

Hébert was born in Paris in 1875, which in historic terms was five years after the traumatic Franco-Prussian War and with the ferment of the start of the French Third Republic.

[18] From 1904 to 1912, Hébert "test-piloted" his training system on one thousand Marine fusiliers at the French military school in Lorient (École du Bataillon de Lorient), with a turnover of half the population of soldiers every six months, and in 1908 he also tested his method with 800 adolescents from 14 to 17 years old at a school, and then with about twenty instructors and fifty girls in 1913 at the "College d'athlètes" (his new training facility).

In the purely physical sense, the Natural Method promotes the qualities of organic resistance, muscularity and speed, towards being able to walk, run, jump, move on all fours, to climb, to keep balance, to throw, lift, defend yourself and to swim.

The true Natural Method, in its broadest sense, must be considered as the result of these three particular forces; it is a physical, virile and moral synthesis.

Hébert's full "holistic" teaching approach consisted of six modules: (1) intensive use of the Natural Method (NM) physical exercises, (2) daily manual crafts, (3) mental and moral culture ("psychic gymnastics"), (4) intellectual culture (e.g. history of philosophy and sciences), (5) esthetic culture (e.g. the arts, "Atlantean studies" [connected with the teachings of Paul Le Cour (1871-1954)],[33] dance, rhythmic movement [where music follows movement rather than controls movement]), and (6) naturist modalities such as nutrition, hydrotherapy, and heliotherapy.

Hébert said that "it is the philosophy that must emerge from this natural method to encourage the individual to put at the service of others what he can derive from his physical and virile training.

"[35] Hébert was wounded in November, 1914[36] when he went into combat with a company of fusilier marines at the Battle of Diksmuide[37] in Belgium during the First World War.

"[40] In 1918 Hébert founded the "Palestra" which was a physical education training center for women and children near Deauville, on the coast in northern France, where Yvonne became a director.

[45] Georges Hébert's teaching continued to expand between and during the two World Wars, becoming the standard system of French military physical education.

In his work Muscle and Plastic Beauty, which appeared in 1921, Hébert criticized not only the fashion of wearing corsets but also the physical inactivity imposed upon women by contemporary European society.

Hébert wrote:[47]A (Natural Method) session is composed of exercises belonging to the ten fundamental groups: walking, running, jumping, quadrupedal movement, climbing, equilibrium (balancing), throwing, lifting, defending and swimming.

[48] 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.

Hébert denounced the harms of modern sport due to its promoting specialization of movement, its "showmanship," and money (instead of altruism).

[51] In the mid-1930s he gradually withdrew himself from a wider involvement in society and in 1938 he broke with the so-called Hebertist movement (as exemplified by the "Groupement hébertiste") rather than be tied to a specific organization.

[52][53] The "Palestra," which was Hébert's training center for women and children, near Deauville, France was destroyed by bombardment during World War 2.

[54] The year 1955 marked the fiftieth anniversary 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.

[55] One researcher into the life and work of Hébert described him as being a "singular personality...at once brilliant, inventive, pugnacious, intransigent and dogmatic.

Hébert expected that how well a person could perform a movement would improve as a result of an increased training volume (doing more of that activity) and consequently technical instruction was made secondary.

But in light of current training methods, "the process of learning and improvement must be based on optimum technique right from the start.