Parkour Kie Willis

KIE WILLIS♥

In February I stopped by for a training session with Kie in London and ended up snaping pictures of the most crazy jump I’ve ever witnessed:

Kie doing the massive Kong-Precision at Imax for his new video, which got released yesterday and is being shared like weed at a SnoopDog concert.

Before I had to leave I made sure to sit down and ask Kie some questions and this is how we ended up having this Interview:

What are you working on right now?

I’m working on a new video, a bit like the “Letters from the Sky” one. I just wanna try to do the best things I can and trying to push my style of Freerunning.

Trying to be stronger and better.

Farang: Here’s the finished new video

What does the process of making a video look like for you? Who shoots, edits and so on?

I kind of direct everything, so I’ll choose the angles of the camera and stuff, how I want it to move and then whoever is around that day shoots it. I have ideas of what moves I what to film that day and if I feel it I do it, if not then I just ignore it.

I find a song I like, keep it to around 3 minutes and get what I can. I always give myself a rough time period to finish filming, otherwise clips get stalled.

Right now it’s February in London and the weather is terrible, how do you deal with that?

I just train at any opportunity I have with good weather. Even when it’s cold you can get yourself warmed up and it’s not too bad. That’s the hardest bit I think, getting yourself motivated and warmed up, after that it’s alright.

The guys in Russia have it so much worse, so I’m like “Grow some fucking balls”.

Filming a new video makes you want to push your limits, how do you deal with fear?

I always break the movements down in my head and even physically, if I can.

I think the thing with confidence is, as you get better your confidence grows and you have more understanding of what you do anyway. I’m more physically aware of my body than I was last year, so I’m more capable.

I don’t overthink, I spend a lot of time thinking in the shower and breaking it down in my head, visualizing the movements, and they become so real that in the end it becomes easy to make my body actually do it.

How do you develop your jumping power and precision?

Precision is just something that I quite enjoyed – like rail things – so I got better at that, because I was doing it a lot.

Jumping power as well, when I moved to Cambridge Phil was doing a lot of running jumps. And I was hardly doing them back then, except maybe a few roof gaps here and there.

I started doing some, found out I had a decent power and then built up as I got more confident

I think the trick with a running jump is your confidence, because you need to run really fast and also get the technique right on the take-off, knowing when to bend your knees, when to point your feet, getting into the right air-position, opening out to like “air-break” and things like that.

That definitely makes a big difference.

What shoes are you wearing right now?

They’re girls Asics, I don’t know what they’re called actually and I found only one pair of them online – oh fuck, they’re almost broken as well – and those looked alright so I bought them. I didn’t really care that they were girls shoes either. They’re the right size so I said fuck it.

What do you look for in a shoe?

Comfortable and quite rigid, like when the sole is a little bit dense, but still soft. They absorb impact, but not to the point where I don’t feel it.

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