Lisa Schneider

Interview by Joel for
issue #4, 2023

What type of movement do you enjoy the most? Why, and does it change?

“Movement that feels good. Movement that just happens naturally and where you don’t have to put a lot of force into it. Where you kind of just follow where your body goes. I do think it changes overtime, but I think it changes depending on who I train with and where I am. I noticed my style changed a lot last year in the uk. There I would do more parkour heavy movement, while in Germany I move more creatively.

What is your cause, or drive, for training?

Because it makes me feel really good. Yeah I think that’s the only reason. There’s no other reason than that I feel really good when I do it and it makes me happy.

Tell us about the process of filming “ALL OVER THE PLACE”. Was it a planned project where you were consciously saving up clips with an image in mind, or did you just have a bunch of saved clips at the end of the year?

Well it started in the year 2021 when I had the idea of saving clips whenever I traveled. So last year I went to the U.K I started saving but did not end up with enough clips by the time I got home. I thought I’ll just save clips and see what happens. If I did something that took a longer time or that I was really happy with, I’d save it. But there was no idea behind it. I did really enjoy that sort of process, however I want to make more videos with an idea behind them in the future. For “ALL OVER THE PLACE” I think I started saving after I left Sweden in February. Although by the end of the year I wasn’t happy with some of the clips I got at the start of the year, which was quite annoying. I think the earliest clip in the video is from March or April.

Do you have any projects or plans going on right now? Or are you just going with the flow and seeing where things end up?

There is a project that I am working on, but I don’t want to talk about it. It’s a video type project but there are more people than me involved and we haven’t discussed if we are going to announce what we’re doing yet. I’m also currently working on my bachelor thesis which is a bit time consuming. When I’m done with that I want to get on making a solo project where I have an idea behind it. Although I haven’t thought of it yet.

Do you have any outside influences in your movement?

Possibly mostly from dancing and hip hop because of my sister who’s a dancer. I think that that influences the music I listen to, which in turn influences the way I train. I’ve been watching a lot of snowboarding videos recently, but they mostly affect the way I want to make videos, not the way I train. I think it’s quite subconscious really. Like I’ll watch a dancing video, and I’ll remember something, but it’s not like I actively try to remember that move and implement it into my training. I think it just kind of sticks with me.

Well, do you actively think about your style when you make a run? Or do you just naturally go with the flow and it ends up looking like it looks?

When it comes to movement, if it feels good I usually think it looks good. I don’t really go with “does it look good on camera?” but more, “ does it feel good?” For example, in “ALL OVER THE PLACE” I do this one step-pre to reverse-vault and it was the best feeling line I did all of last year. It’s not a clip where I’m like “ah this looks very sick”, I just remember how good it felt. I also care about what I wear. If I wear something I’m not 100% happy with I usually hate the clips, which is annoying.

Let’s touch on that. How is the affiliated brands’ situation with you? Are you on Puma now?

Yeah not really. I’m definitely not on Puma, I just get clothes and shoes. I don’t have any affiliate brands or anything. But they’ll send me stuff which is both cool and lame at the same time. Obviously it’s cool to get free stuff, especially the shoes since I love training in them and I go through a lot of them, which means I save some money. On the other hand I wear them a lot and give them a lot of free advertisement, so in the long run it would be nice to be paid for it. Although, I think it’s really really hard to get a proper paying sponsorship, at least from what I’ve heard. If you look at how many athletes actually have those sorts of deals, it’s a very small amount.

What’s your general future ideas in parkour? Anything in particular you want to work towards? A jump, a move, a project, a video, etc?

I just enjoy training so much at the moment and I want to see how long I can do that for. Making a living with parkour would be the dream. If that happens I will be really happy.

My dream move right now is frisbee, front swing raiz, to swingthrough cork. That’d be an absolute dream. I want to make videos and do things that will help the female community ,or things that will generally get more women into parkour.

I have not fully figured out how to do that yet, but some other female athlete’s and I just did a project in Belgium (Ladies in Leuven) which felt like a great start. I want to try and somehow make women in parkour more visible. Although, I think just by training that automatically happens anyway. Creating projects obviously helps a lot, and I want to create more projects like that. I also want to get into the editing and videography side of the sport, however I need a camera and a laptop for that. I don’t want to do competitions anymore. I thought about it at the beginning of the year and I sort of decided not to. I don’t really enjoy them so I don’t really want to, you know? For Art of Motion (2022) I just wanted to see if I could get in. The competition itself was more of a show than a competition. It was both a good thing and a bad thing I think. For those who really want to compete it probably was not great. But for me, it took a lot of pressure off. I don’t really like competing but I do like the aspect of trying something you’re not fully comfortable with, like in skill comps. I really enjoy those. Women’s competitions are great as well since it brings so many female athletes together and you figure out stuff together, which is a great feeling. The main reason I competed so much in 2022 was just to show up. Because there are not that many females competing and if some comp organizer makes a women’s division it’s kind of shit if no women show up.

Why do you think you don’t like competing?

I think it comes from my gymnastic trampoline background. I used to enjoy competitions when I was very little. But ever since I was 10 I’ve sort of hated them.”

Can we actually touch on that? You came from a gymnastic background?

Yeah I started gymnastics when I was six years old and started doing it competitively when I was seven, up until I was twelve. After that I quit and started to do track and field for two years, until I got bored of it. Then I started trampolining for three years, until I was 17 when I found and started training parkour.

Would you say gymnastics and trampolining has helped your parkour a lot?

It helped in the sense that I already knew how to move my body. But I only knew how to move my body in specific ways. For example, I find it very hard to sideflip since I’m used to only doing front flips and backflips. I have the same problem with corks and every off axis flip. Training outside was also really hard to start with. Suddenly everything was solid concrete and I was used to soft surroundings and building things up from the ground. I mean, I definitely think gymnasts have a physical advantage coming into parkour. However, I found it really hard to come up with my own stuff since from when I was seven years old until I was seventeen I always had a coach telling me exactly what to do. So when I started doing parkour I was just lost. I had no idea how to build lines, how to do anything really. That was probably the biggest challenge for me.”