The Commons

Egg (@klickstein) sat down with Geo Bartolucci (@geo_brt) to discuss his 2024 video:

Egg: First off, just congratulations on the project. It was such a banger. 

Geo: Thank you. I didn’t really have a plan, but at the end the edit made it all feel better than I expected. 

Egg: Around this same time last year, you also released that video. Did you spend most of the year working on this?

Geo: Yeah, it was about the same kind of timing. A couple of weeks after that video, I went to Lisbon, and there are a few clips in the video from Lisbon. So I started saving straight away again.

Egg: How do you feel like your style has evolved this year?

Geo: I did for sure make it a point to film things better. Movement wise, I felt like I was a bit more inspired from athletes I saw, so I tried to find new movements or new types of movements, and tried to not focus the video on just big jumps and scary jumps. I think it did change. You can still see the roots I’ve grown in, but I think I did some different stuff this year.

Egg: Speaking on those roots, how long have you been training? Would you say, for most of your training you have gravitated towards more traditional styles of moving?

Geo: So I’ve been training for 11 years now, and I started in really old school parkour classes. I don’t think I was drawn to classic parkour moves and big jumps because I didn’t want to do any other stuff. I always just felt like I’ve had way more difficulty in trying flips in general. I still try them, I still train them, because I really like moving in every kind of way, but flips definitely felt really hard at times. Sometimes I would try them and be frustrated. The classical parkour movement just improved faster than the flips. So I think that’s why my movement is that way. 

Egg: With starting out in a community that was pretty focused on these classical movements do you feel like traveling and meeting more people helped you start to spend more time training flips and exploring more creative styles?

Geo: It definitely helps. In Rome we don’t have a proper parkour gym, the place I’ve been training in is basically an outdoor park. Which is kind of wild because I really love swings, but I’m not really good at them, and I think that’s influence from the parkour people that I’ve trained with. There’s one particular time I remember I was training with Jan Difortuna and he just explained to me how he did gumbis. And for that particular explanation it just clicked for me, and I was able to do it straight away. I think just training with new people that can show you the way that they do the movement can really help somethings click. So more and more people definitely helped and traveling around for sure.

Egg: Do you also think that the architecture in Rome maybe plays a part in your style? From an outsider’s perspective, it seems like naturally there are just a lot of spots that are set up for more traditional challenges.

Geo: Yes, I would say so. When I was in Boston, I felt like, everywhere there were stuff to do, but not in the classical parkour movement sense. I do think that the spots we are used to in Rome are that way, because it’s kind of like a loop. I feel like because people are used to the classical parkour movements, they look for spots in that way. We definitely do have some really nice spots for whatever movement you’re looking for. Lately, going to those spots I feel like has been more fun and refreshing than the classical parkour spots.

Egg: As your style progresses and you’re spending more time balancing between doing big jumps and expanding more into more unique movements, how do you decide what you want to work on in a given session? Do you go out feeling like its a big jump day or is it just very dependent on what spot you are at?

Geo: I feel like it’s it depends on the day. Like, right now when I go training, I just let the spot inspire me. I go to a spot and I don’t have anything in mind most of the time and I just look at the spot. I actually spend quite more time than I used to just looking at the spot and thinking of jumps. That is definitely part of training in Rome for so long. I’ve done most of the stuff that I feel comfortable with. So now I just need to think more of what I want to do. The way I go about it, is I go to a spot and I just look at the stuff. And if a big running pre is what I see then I’ll try that, otherwise I’ll just keep thinking of stuff. 

Egg: How many of the clips in the video were things you had already thought of, and how much was just as you described where you come up with the idea during the session? 

Geo: I feel like with this one, the ratio of jumps I had pre-thought of is actually pretty low. There are some where I knew I wanted to do this move, but I didn’t really have a setup yet, like the 180 push off sort of like cast pre. I knew I wanted to add that in in the video, but I didn’t really know what gap would be better. And when I was going to New York I thought maybe that would fit. Same thing with some of the flips. The number of challenges I had thought of in advance was actually pretty low. The ender was one of them. I went there two times. The first time I was like, I’m not doing this today. And then I really kept thinking about it. At some point I dreamt about the jump. I didn’t do the jump in the dream, but I dreamt about it. When we went back, the condition was much better than the first time. So I was like, “Okay, today might be today.” To go back to the question, not many. There are some challenges, but I feel like the ratio is definitely lower than last year’s video.

Egg: Something I’ve noticed in your movement, is that you seem to get particularly interested in a basic maneuver and then iterate and expand on what you can do with it. In this video the rolls and gainers really stood out to me. You take those relatively basic moves and progress them by adapting them to pretty unique spots with different challenges to work through. It’s not like all of these dive rolls and gainers are the same, they’re all quite different. Could you speak a bit about how you approach these sorts of moves and pushing them further? 

Geo: So I think feel like for each for those moves you told me about, gainers and dive rolls, I think there’s two different reasons for each, and different reasons for others as well. So like for gainers, there was a particular gainer I saw somebody do that I thought looked really sick. It was like a gainer over a gap, and It made me want to learn those. At the time I was sketched out by gainers so I trained them more and more, but I think I still am not where I want to be with them. I really want to do big gaps, but they still kind of scare me sometimes. So I’ve just tried to find some ways to make them just scary enough that I can still feel comfortable to do them, but still have some improvement in the proprioception. 

For dive rolls it’s different because I just really like the sensation of them. They’re really not hard to go for. Since they’re so easy to go into, I feel like you can do them in many different setups. They’re just pure fun. 

Egg: I think its interesting that you said your initial attraction to gainers was wanting to do gaps and that you’ve sort of settled for these different gainer challenges that offer different things to work through. To me, a lot of the gainers you’ve done in this video are way more interesting to me then a big gainer gap, like the one you do landing running down a slant wall or the one between the column. Is your main goal still to push for some gainer gap?

Geo: I feel like I’m not properly pushing into just wanting to do gaps, I just want to do more gainers. And whenever I feel like a place has a really interesting set up and I feel like I want to do it, and I think I can, I just do it. I don’t think I’m in like a grindset where I feel like I need to learn them. With time, I’ll get to them. I don’t have any rush in learning those.

Egg: That’s something I really appreciate about your movement. A lot of people I meet who have really strong fundamentals and are capable of doing really big technical gaps, they do often have that sort of grindset. It’s really refreshing to watch someone with your movement quality approaching it in this way.

Geo: Its really nice to have long term goals, but I feel like some people who fixate on the long goals just don’t enjoy training as much because they gatekeep it with needing to have that goal and needing to succeed in it. I feel like you can definitely have better sessions just taking it slow and knowing that you can reach it with time.

Egg: Something I noticed while we were both in Boston is that you are somebody who just really really loves to train. I think most people I meet like that are pretty good at not getting to fixated on goals. How often do you train?

Geo: I think I train every time I can. So right now, I’m working around 30 hours a week, so I’ve got a lot of time to train. I trained almost every day I didn’t have work. This year I was really lucky enough that I could spend time going to different cities. I feel like most of my training time was outside Rome. This year is going to be a bit more strict where I’m going to be in Rome more, and not as many people train here as used to. This year is gonna be different for sure because I think there’s gonna be a lot of days where either I train by myself or I don’t train. I really do want to try go train by myself. I think it’s something that I used to do, that I don’t do as often, and it could be beneficial. I want to work it out.

Egg: One specific clip that I wanted to talk a bit about is the dive roll to roll on the pipe in Boston. I’ve been to that spot, and it is so fucked. You just posted a roll bomb from Boston on Instagram recently, and in the caption you were talking about learning roll bombs at that spot. It got me thinking about whether you had ever done a roll to roll before, let alone as a massive dive roll on a pipe.

Geo: It’s actually something that I don’t think I’ve ever done outside of a gym. Not even to a mat or properly without touching my feet on the wall. But the dive roll was something that I saw as soon as we passed the spot. We didn’t end up training there the first day I saw it, and later I was talking with somebody at the Commons house about how to do something a little different because I had so many dive rolls for the video already. I thought maybe spicing it up would be nice, and I was thinking maybe the roll to roll could be something. 

Egg: Earlier you mentioned finding diverolls just really fun. Was it fun to do so many in order to figure out the roll to roll? 

Geo: So doing the first like five or so was really fun, except one that I kind of missed the direction because going off the slant was kind of tricky as well. Other than that it was really fun trying to understand what was after. After those, I did get what I needed to do. It was just really hard to do and I kept putting one foot down and rolling. Some of the attempts were nice enough I could still use them in a video, but I really wanted to get the whole thing proper. After a while it did start to hurt my lower back. Usually when I do dive rolls, I just go off after I touch with my upper back and my hips never really make contact. But with this I needed that extra pop to get the second roll, so I had to bump into the end of the pipe with my lower back. I kept bumping it hard so it was getting painful. Three tries before the proper make I missed the direction again, but to the other side. Luckily my lower back still hit the rail, so I got bumped into the mulch. If I hadn’t hit at all I would’ve gone into a different rail that had pointy metal bits on it so that would have been really bad. But I still took a big hit with that one and had to stop for like 10 minutes. I think after that I said I’d only try like three more times and then I managed to get it proper. It was definitely refreshing to try it. 

Egg: It’s a real standout clip in there for me. One of the other ones I wanted to talk about was your ender. Did you think at all about going for a stick? It was clearly the plan to plyo into the drop. 

Geo: I was there in July to look at it, and the things that stood out was how high it was, and that it was covered in dust and bird shit. I wasn’t going to do it that day for multiple reasons, but the reason that really stuck with me was that it was dirty on it. If I go for it and I slip out, it’s really not good. When I went back, I wanted to clean it. I thought about ways to get on top of the pole, to look at the drop, clean it, and see how the surfaces were. But there wasn’t really any way without additional climbing gear to get on it to clean it. We tried bringing two telescopic broomsticks, to reach out from the bridge but it wouldn’t reach. I thought again about getting some gear to climb it but that seemed sketchy because if I stayed on the pole for too long with those cars going by, it’s definitely possible that they’ll call somebody. I did try taking a similar height drop off to the side, and that made the plyo seem like the way to go. I didn’t want to try and stick it mainly because of the dust. Going for a stick with dust seemed more likely to go wrong, and the consequences are really high. In a much broader sense, even if it was clean, I think it’s a really hard stick because it goes down a lot. 

Egg: I think it’s way cooler to plyo.

Geo: We had this talk with Safoer and some other guys about what would look better. Because the stick would definitely be a harder and better challenge. But for how it looks, I feel like the drop is better because you can feel the air time.

Egg: Is there any significance behind the title? 

Geo: The title I had in mind for a while. I don’t remember if I there was any particular moment I thought of it, but I guess it resonated with me, because it’s been my way of trying stuff. As was mentioned earlier, I don’t really prefer any type of movement. I just gravitated towards one because I just felt I was better at it. Every time I would talk with somebody in Italy, they would say, “oh, I prefer flips because running pres are scary for me” or they would say like “oh I don’t get flips I just train parkour.” I always felt that I’ll just train whatever. I just really like moving. If you propose me a challenge, even outside of parkour, I will love to try. So that’s kind of my way of trying stuff, all of the moves, all of the above. 

Egg: I loved the the titling with the embroidery machine. Will this be like official merch for people to get their hands on? 

Geo: Yes, for sure. I think Monica wants to have a pre sale right when the video drops. It’s not going to be ready straight away, but she wants to do some some pants for people that want to get it. She’s going to add some more details that you don’t see in the video, and the title will be on the back pocket. So be on the look out for that.