Nico Vanhole’s “Eleven Plus One”
Nico Vanhole’s newest video project “Eleven Plus One” presents a straightforward thesis: what would it look like to focus in on creating technically dense lengthy parkour lines? In this interview Egg @klickstein chats with Nico @nicovanhole about the project, mental fortitude, and longevity.
Egg: What led you to the concept for this video?
Nico: I remember. biking around Brighton last summer, and at the time I was making a lot of combos. In my training I was mostly focused on making interesting lines. Last year that was the thing I found the most fun in; making longer lines. It was around then, while biking in Brighton I thought that focusing on these longer lines might be a cool idea for a project. In my mind at the time it would just be 10 lines. Easy concept, nothing more, nothing less. I decided to go for it the next summer. But then 10 lines became 11 lines, plus a small extra thing.
Egg: The plus one being, yeah, the only single challenge. For me at the screening, when the that clip came up, my first thought was “oh its gonna be the drop pre” but then I saw the chalk marks on the lower ledge and I was like “no wayyyy”. Such an absurd drop cat. What led to you wanting to add that into this line based project?
Nico: I think I started talking about the idea with Matt at home, because Matt lives at my place now. We we’re talking about the concept of just doing lines. And he said “Yeah, but I think it would be nice to maybe add some small funky moves that you wouldn’t add in a line”. And I was like, “Yeah, but it’s not really the concept.” Back then I was also getting into drop cats a little bit. Then I talked to Camilla and Cedric, a local guy, about it. And they were also like, “maybe some drop cats”. Then I think I got the idea of just adding one, only one. I was joking about this one, talking over if it would even be possible. It’s not only like the size, but also like the second wall is just 20 centimeters above my head, so you don’t have that much space to slow down and not touch the floor.
At the beginning, we saw it as just a joke, and thought it was not going to happen. But then I was like, maybe that could be a good ending clip for the project. It played in my mind, for a long time, and I started doing drop cats everywhere I could, just to prepare for that one. And then I think it was like the last week that we knew we had amazing weather in Belgium, right before classes start again and life will be getting busy. So I had it set in my mind, “okay this week I want to do the cat leap”. I went, I think, three times. Once I couldn’t commit, once it started raining, and then the third time I got it done. I liked the fact that I filmed everything else already, all the lines were done. I knew that this drop cat would be the last thing in the edit as well. It took me quite a while to commit. In the end, the distance to the floor was not the biggest problem. It was enough room to slow down and get the cat leap done. It felt really, really good.
I thought it would be a nice surprise, because people would see a lot of lines, so you get the concept of lines, but then with a small surprise at the end.
Egg: I think it definitely worked. What was the time frame that you were working on this? I know some of these clips are from your time in Boston, some looked like they were at home.
Nico: The first clips I made for this project were in Boston. I was there around the 15th of June. The last clips were shot in the first weeks of September, so I worked on this for most of the summer. Sometimes I went training with an idea for a line, and then I couldn’t get the line, or it was not nice enough. But I tried to train or find spots with this concept in my mind.
Egg: Were there any clips in here where you had been thinking through the spot or the line prior to filming?
Nico: yeah, I think quite a lot of the lines I thought about before going to the spot. There were a few spots like the one in London, the triangle estate. That one, I had only one thing in mind, to do something with the pipes I didn’t really know what I wanted to get. That one was very early in the morning, because my parents came down to visit, and I was supposed to meet them at the train station. I only had like one hour to figure out the line and actually get it done. I think that was the most stressful line because I couldn’t get the connections right and I couldn’t figure it out. I got a text from parents they we’re about to arrive in London in 15 minutes. And I was like “fuck,I need to get it done now.” But it was also maybe one of the lines I’m the most happy with. I think most of the time I already knew, what I wanted to do. Except in Boston because I had never trained those spots before, so those lines I came up with when I saw the spot.
Egg: Something I found kind of interesting is that a lot of the movement felt like it would have taken a lot of time to piece together, but the choice to wear the same shirt, it made it feel like a lot of these could be from the same session. Although I am assuming very few of them are.
Nico: There’s a few. I think two of the Boston ones were on the same day, and I did the descent line the same day as the cat leap. I think all the others lines were were at different times.
The thing with the shirt was because one of the other title ideas I had was “shirts and shorts”. But right before the screening David texted me and said we had to have a title in an hour. I talked it over with Matt talked over wether it should be eleven plus one, or shirts shorts, and I went with eleven plus one.
Egg: I’d love to get into a bit of your process for line building. I’m particularly interested in hearing about this because your style of movement is pretty specific to your skill set. When it comes to specific techniques and ideas, are you often thinking of some of these tricks, like in the gym or just while sitting at home thinking, or whether a lot of these ideas are really just based on the spot, and come to you in the moment?
Nico: most of the time it’s about like the interesting things within spots, the small details. And then I have ideas around that. When I know the spot and I know I want to do something nice with that interesting part, I then start building the line around it.
Egg: One move that really stuck out to me was the toe shoot 180 tac 180 to cat. Was that line built around that idea?
Nico: With that one I actually did the same line with just a normal toe shoot to cat and I was happy with it. When we went to the next spot, then I started thinking about upgrading to this 180 tac. I had been doing that one before, but on a corner. Then I was thinking I could do it on the same bar, instead of doing 90 degrees into a wall. A few days later, I went back to try the same line, but with the different last move. I was really happy that one worked, because it was a strange one to figure it out.
I usually don’t like try a lot of new moves in the gym. Usually, when I train in the gym, it’s the most boring repetitive training. Just repeating jumps and dynos. I think it’s mainly seeing interesting parts of a spot that makes me excited to try new things.
Egg: With that in mind, were a lot of these clips built or choreographed over multiple sessions?Particularly some of the really long ones, I would imagine fleshing out an entire line as well as executing it would be a lot for one session. How many times you had to go back for some of these things, even just to finish planning the line?
Nico: Yeah, there were a few ones like that. There’s one at the church spot that’s in my hometown. I think I went back like three or four times, always adjusting stuff where I just couldn’t do the whole line. Some sessions where the whole line was going well, and then I always fucked up the end over and over again. Then when I went back, and I could get the last part consistent, I fucked up the first part over and over again, and I got so frustrated. And then I went back a third time and then it worked. I was still not 100% happy, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. That one I did maybe 50 or 60 times, and that was the only thing I did during that session. Also when I went the first time, I already figured out the whole line from previous sessions. So I start with previous sessions, just like playing around with stuff, and then I figured out the line, and then it still took me three whole sessions to get the whole line. That was the most frustrating one, I think.
Egg: It’s definitely pretty evident to me that some of these would take an immense amount of attempts. I’m particularly interested in the time spent to craft and work through some of these lines before you’re even able to start attempting it. Keeping in mind what you said earlier about a lot of these trick ideas only coming to you at the spot, there must also be time spent learning the technique for a given move. It seems like it must be quite the process just to just to get the plan before you’re even ready to start trying.
Nico: Yeah, sometimes it was. Some of the lines in Boston, they went really easy. It was more of a mental barrier, and if I broke through that the rest of the line went okay. But then some of the lines, I kept fucking up some connections. Sometimes the whole line goes well, and then the easiest part, I’d fuck it up.
But it was okay, because I had this line project idea in my mind. Sometimes I maybe would’ve given up if it was not for this project where I really wanted to focus on good connections.
Egg: Do you feel like working on this project made it easier to remain a little more calm and get frustrated less easily because you were really pushing for that focus on the line length and complexity? Where maybe in a normal training session you would have just cut the line down to get it done more easily?
Nico: Yeah, maybe it maybe did. Maybe also because I was just very motivated. Knowing what I wanted to work on, and having a certain goal in mind. I think also patience, because I was working towards this project with something very specific in mind.
Egg: I think frustration is an interesting thing that most athletes deal with. It’s a pretty specific type of frustration with long lines. Like with these moments we’re touching on where everything’s going well, and then you fuck up the easy part. I think there’s also this thing when you’ve successfully done each piece of it, and it feels like it should be over. It should be done, because the “hard” part of committing to each piece is out of the way. But really you’re not there yet. I feel like some of the satisfaction for lines like these must really come from the whole composition feeling the way you want it to. I’m curious whether there’s some of these clips where you did successfully do the whole line, but wanted to try again because some piece of the connection just didn’t feel quite right.
Nico: Yeah, that happened quite a lot sometimes. Where I was happy with the whole line, or the moves felt really good, but then small steps felt stuttering, or the rhythm didn’t felt right, or it didn’t feel as soft as I wanted. So there were definitely some lines where I pushed to do it a little better. But then also some lines were I kept trying but an earlier attempt ended up being my favorite.
The line with two big pipes, I liked another version better, camera wise. The sun came through, and it was nicer. I tried it again and again and again, and I couldn’t get it anymore. I think it was 35 degrees Celsius that day, and it was becoming dangerous. So I was like, “Okay it’s almost perfect, but I’m happy.”
I think it’s a lot of the time with those things, where you’re like “ahhh, I have a better one, but it’s not filmed perfectly.” But then when you look back at it maybe a day or two later, you’re like, “Okay, I was maybe too harsh on myself. Actually, they are quite nice.”
Egg: I definitely relate to that. Where in the heat of the moment, feeling a little unsatisfied still. And then returning to the clip, and really liking it. I feel like, for me at least, it’s because in the heat of the moment, you feel like the window of opportunity is still there, and it feels like you want to be confident that you’re done in order to close that window. But I’ve been trying to remind myself that the window is never really closed. You can always. come back.
Nico: Yeah, and I think I also was more harsh on the lines that I shot in Leuven than the ones that I shot abroad. Like I’m not gonna fly back to America just to finish one line thatI maybe could have done better. So I think it’s also just good to be to be happy with the stuff you’ve done.
Egg: Obviously the goal was to focus on lines, but I’m curious if there are any smaller moves or techniques in this video that you’re most proud of.
Nico: Another thing I was really proud of was the toe hang to kong pre out. It was a consequential one, and I had only started playing with it maybe a month before. It felt like something I really wanted to push a little bit more. It was a very scary one. I really took my time to prep it, and then it felt okay. I like how when you see me get into the position, you can probably guess what is about to happen, but its still quite dirty. I think it’s also because it just felt like an amazing day of training. There were so many people that day, the whole vibe was amazing. Its not just the move, but the whole day felt amazing.
Egg: Josi is such a fun spot.
Nico: Such a good spot. Most of the Boston spots I only went to for one day, and some of them are in my top five spots that I’ve trained at. All the spots in Boston are really stable too. You don’t have sketchy walls. Some very unusual, but very stable spots.
Egg: Going back to specific techniques and line composition, I’m curious about how you create a line this long that still feels balanced. Something I’ve noticed in my own training when I try and construct longer lines is that it often feels like there’s one focal point, one move that’s maybe more interesting or harder than the rest, and the other parts just start to feel like filler or fluff. I felt like a lot of what you did here was really balanced, where one tiny part of the line didn’t overshadowed the rest. I’m curious how much you think about that while building your lines.
Nico: That’s also a really good question, this feels like a therapeutic session. I think one of the things that I allowed myself from the start was to not only make the longest lines. Some of the lines were shorter than others. Maybe at the start I felt like certain lines felt maybe too short. But then I felt like I didn’t want to define a long line. If it’s only four moves, it’s only four moves. I don’t have to start adding even more just to make it a long line. For those longer lines, if it’s doable and it stays interesting for me, and I don’t have to run too much in between, or I don’t have to use too many unnecessary movements, than it’s okay. I was not too harsh on the fact that they all had to be like 20 seconds. If I had one idea, then I really tried to come up with multiple harder moves, so it didn’t feel like part of it was the main focus.
Egg: Kind of related to that. I’m interested in whether focusing on long lines like this felt like a way to boost your mental game. If you are placing multiple difficult or scary things into a single sequence, and doing it again and again, whether you kind of build up a bit of a tolerance to some of these things that were at first a lot more mental.
Nico: Yeah, I feel like a lot of things that I found scary in the lines were at the end of the line. Like the descent one was quite easy for the most part, but then I had to end with the swing splat dive kong that was by far the scariest part. I had done all the things separately, and once I was trying the whole line, by the time I get to the dive kong I just felt like I had to push through. In some ways it gets easier to commit to at the end of a long line because you feel like you just can’t fuck up the line. I think that’s what a lot of the lines, went like. Like the tic tac line, where I ended with 180 to a bar. The 180 was also the scariest part by far. I think that with that one, it was like, not only the mental part, but also the physical, because I felt so tired by that point in line. And I don’t think you can see it in the video, but the wall is like a sloped wall. In previous sessions I peeled off, and then you’re in not the best position to land a bar high up. So with that one, I was just pinching for my life. Yeah, like I said, I think it’s just the magic of doing the whole line solid up until that part. When you’ve got that far with good connections you just need to push through. I think it definitely helped, help with with the mental part, because it makes you commit quicker.
Egg: I only have one question left, and I just wanted to touch a little bit on longevity. I know that generally speaking, you’re not very old, but in parkour, I think once you’re past 30, it’s something people think about. I think you’re someone who continues to really push themselves and I don’t see you slowing down anytime soon. What is your perspective on longevity in parkour and how you maintain your progression when you’re not a reckless 20 year old anymore?
Nico: A few years ago, it was the first time in my life that I had some issues with motivation. I wasn’t as motivated as before to go and train. And then I went on a trip to Prague, and I broke, a small part of my hand on the trip. The doctor told me not to use my hand for two months. When I came back from the hospital, I was really frustrated. Like, fuck, no training for two months. And then quite fast, I switched my frustration into, “okay, maybe I should try something that I usually don’t do”. And I start running a lot. During that period I ran three times a week, and it felt amazing. And then after those two months, I remember having one session, and I had all my motivation back.Usually when I have an injury, I still try to find some ways to train parkour. But with this one I properly took off two months from parkour and coming back I found so much motivation again, and I found so much joy in moving again. And now I still try to take some breaks during the year where I don’t train as much parkour. Just maybe for a month. I’ll I climb more, and I’ll skate a little bit, and I do just do different stuff, and it keeps my motivation up. It also feels better for the body to mix things up. In the summer, I tried to train maybe three or four times parkour and then go out for a run once. It’s great for the body to not have the same impact all over and over and over again. So I think a variety in movement is a good one. I also try to stretch a lot, and I try to do some some conditioning.
Egg: That’s all very insightful. Variety is definitely key from my perspective. Thanks for making the time to chat!
Endless movement to study and be inspired by in this one. Such a cool concept for a video too, the energy in the theatre when it screened was so electric