Meet Rémi Camus
Rémi CAMUS, adventurer, explorer, trainer in survival techniques and speaker for 13 years, shares some of his secrets and his vision of the world.
Discover the values that motivate him and that he supports.
How did you discover this passion for sports?
I had another life before, in the restaurant business, a life of excess of all kinds and I found myself in a very bad situation at the age of 21. I was two steps away from falling to the ground under the influence of drugs. And I thought to myself, it would be a shame to stop my life at 21 and that there were probably other things to do. So I decided to go to New Zealand.
I started to enjoy sports at that time, because when I was a kid, I used to do a little bit but I spent more time in the forest making tree houses than playing sports with my friends. I'm lucky to have a genetic heritage from my father's side that helped me a lot.
I started by running 3-4-5 km for fun and then I started daily. The addiction I had before became the addiction to sports. My first addiction was food but it's a shame to focus on that. And since I had become addicted to sports, it allows you to eat a lot because you are exercising. Two addictions instead of one, that's really cool
How did you become a "professional"?
You don't go to school to become an adventurer-explorer, there are no diplomas like a doctor. In exploration there is no such thing. I became a professional in my discipline when I started to have some visibility and people trusted you. That it became logical to say: Rémi Camus is an adventurer and explorer. It is very complicated to position yourself sometimes because you have the imposter syndrome of saying to yourself that the fight I am leading makes sense, am I recognized by my fathers? Now I manage to live from it and I know that what I practice is a professional discipline because I have set up a whole ecosystem around me that makes it professional.
Your sporting achievements are impressive, what is the motivation that pushes you to continue?
There are several things, I really like sporting challenges, finding myself in shitty situations, but a little, to feel alive.
It's something that makes me vibrate and it allows me to take stock of myself when I do my adventures alone without anyone, even if the Calvi Monaco will be accompanied, they won't be allowed to talk to me.
It allows me to take stock of myself and that's what makes me feel good to be able to set up a project from A to Z, from the paper to the restitution, and then there are the different messages.
The environmental part touches me a lot because we live on a beautiful and fragile planet. It deserves more attention from people, multinationals and politicians. They should stop looking at their own little navels and look elsewhere. That's important. There is also a message about human values.
These are human adventures. We do things. I have coaches, a marketing and com part, partners, it's a whole. It is not I did something in skiing, something in cycling, something in swimming. We did it because if they are not there, we can't do it. We have to put the church back in the middle of the village and thank everyone because it's thanks to everyone that we do great things. What also drives me is the message I give to the children about self-confidence, setting up projects and above all, I am not useless, I am capable of doing many things.
To each his own Everest. You don't need to do the biggest project in the world to live something intensely. I think it is important today to show, especially with social networks, that we are capable of doing many things. You have to show the failures and the successes.
It's a whole, that's what motivates me.
What triggered you to put your performance at the service of the protection of the planet?
It was during my first adventure in Australia. It was not focused on the environment but mainly on the encounters. When I say meeting, it has a double meaning: meeting others, aborigines (their way of life, etc.) but also meeting Rémi. I needed to know who I was, to be alone in the middle of nowhere to take stock of myself.
And then there was another interest of this adventure it was to speak about Lowe's syndrome, a genetic disease that affects boys, we have a hundred cases of little boy affected in France and I am the sponsor of the association since 2019.
It is during the crossing that I became aware of water, not pollution but in its entirety. We know that the human being is composed of 60-70% of water, that all beings on earth, fauna, flora, animals, ... need water. Water is the basis of life.
I realized that after 4 days without drinking it became more than vital and we don't care about anything around us, the only thing we want is to drink. That's what made me think about the environment. And I wanted to understand more about water once I had finished Australia. So I went down the Mekong River and that's when I became aware of all the environmental problems linked to waste, because the Mekong River is a real garbage can, because people don't have the same means as we do and we end up with a lot of garbage in the river... To end up in the seas and oceans. That's how it really started
You are in contact with nature on a daily basis, how does it impact your vision of life?
Every day I go out to do my workouts. Whether it's sports at the gym, in my freezer, or swimming in the river, ... I need to get out, to get out. If I don't have these outdoor sports sessions, if I can't get out, walk around, get some fresh air, it's not right.
I also need to do my survival courses to share, to meet people, to pass on what I have learned during these years. But I also need to go to this nature to clear my head.
I love these weekends of cohesion and sharing with all the trainees because we are in the forest, we are well. Because it feels good.
I think that more people are needed, I don't encourage people to come to my place to do survival courses (hahahah) but I encourage people to go in the nature and to cut their cell phone. To go for a walk along rivers, in forests, in the mountains while being safe of course to really clear their head. It is extremely important especially in our current way of life where we always ask you more and more, or we overwork you. We have a big problem at the moment which is burnout, an important stress linked to work.
I'm lucky enough to have a job that I love, that I love, that's cool and there are a lot of people who have a job that doesn't suit them and that they don't like. So I think that to cut from time to time, to go in the nature, to recharge their batteries, it would be good for them, really.
Is your desire to share still intact?
Unchanged or still the same? In any case, I always take as much pleasure to go and meet children in schools, to talk about my vision of the world (on an environmental and ecological point of view through adventures) or on the notion of surpassing oneself, to go out of one's comfort zone, to trust oneself, etc.
It is always a real pleasure to do it. I always have this flame inside me because I have other projects behind me. If I had stayed at one adventure, in 2000, I would still be talking about the same thing in 2023, I think the flame would be extinguished because you would have the impression of repeating and it is not interesting anymore.
We need all these challenges, to get out of our comfort zone, to try new projects because that's what drives us, otherwise we find ourselves at 40 years old, putting our resignation on our boss's desk, ending our relationship with our wife or husband and we decide to take a trip and drop everything. I think it's the routine that kills us.
You just have to find the right balance between the routine which is deadly as well as the extreme. I think there is a middle ground that can be perfect by living challenging, intense, borderline safe things for some, for me it's not because safety is very important since I'm a dad but you can find the in-between so that it's just as exciting to be able to spend the rest of your life on this good old earth.
