Previously thought to be impossible, Luca Chiarvesio recently landed the world’s first 4-rev trick. We were able to catch up with the Italian lowers specialist to discuss his training leading up to the trick as well as the impact it will have in freestyle.
It’s 2018 and the possibilities and ideas of what you can do with a football show no signs of slowing down whatsoever. Passionate and dedicated individuals are constantly building upon already existing ideas to come up with something new and innovative, which is just one reason why this sport is so beautiful.
Where hardcore lowers are concerned, the limits have grown to an almost peak rate, where improving upon the current foundation and landing new tricks takes us into insane levels of difficulty, where the number of attempts (and probably risk of injury) are at a sky high.
There was a point where to go around a football three times after a single touch and retain control was absolutely unheard of — until Palle blew peoples’ minds with the first-ever PATW, your conventional Triple Around The World all done with the same foot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz7vUyGLkFY
Over time, the notion of 3-revs has become very popular and now there are a lot of kids out there making them look easy. But a hot topic of interest to freestylers and lovers of lowers has always been the concept of a 4-revolution trick — would this even be humanly possible?
This week, that very question has been answered, as Italian Luca Chiarvesio cemented himself into freestyle history. Just like Neil Armstrong stepping foot on the moon (if that ever did actually happen), Luca went where no other person had gone before and landed the very first ever 4-rev trick. Take a look:
There have been both dubious and respectable attempts at 4-revs before, but this one ticks all the criteria that skeptics might point out to deter from its credibility. Shoes? Size 5 ball? Clean revs? Ball in front of body the whole time? It has it all.
Luca unveiled this to the world in one of the most admirable ways possible, attaching it as the final clip at the end of his new video “3REVER” in which he showed us all the different 3-rev variations he had done in his seven years of freestyle. There were 200 in total! The speed, power, technique is all of the highest caliber from someone who has always been hugely respected in the freestyle community, especially in the lowers department.
We got a chance to speak exclusively with the 22-year-old after his groundbreaking achievement.
Urban Pitch: When did you first get the idea to make this video? It’s a unique concept that nobody else has done before.
Luca Chiarvesio: When the first PATW was done in 2006, it was considered to be the hardest trick of all time. As the time passed, we realized that after all that was just a mental barrier, that it wasn’t as hard as it seemed. One day KSKRITA uploaded a video of M3MO doing like 30 3-rev tricks in one training and I got an idea there. Most freestylers were showing limits and little variety in the 3-rev area, so I wanted to change this, as 3-revs had always been the part of freestyle that fascinated me the most.
After staying in Mexico I realized that M3MO had more 3-rev tricks than me, therefore even if I made a video with 100 3-revs I knew someone would have been able to beat that. I needed to do more, so I thought maybe 150 will do. I did not even have the time to think about 150 that I was already at 160+, so the next round number had to be it.
Besides the last trick obviously, are there any others in the video that really stood out for you or maybe even shocked you at all when you got them?
Absolutely. Lots of the tricks in the last part of the video (the awkward ones) mean a lot to me. They’re not like the easy ones, where you get close and the attempt after you can land them. They’re the most frustrating yet rewarding tricks in freestyle, one single slight change in the technique can make you feel either very far or very close. You need to be that accurate. If I had to choose three, apart from the last one, in order of importance they’d be:
1. SZATW OUT
2. HJLATW
3. LUCA MOTION
It’s funny because you are actually a very chilled individual and not one for getting hyped with celebration when you land something insane. So how would you best try to describe what was going through your head when you landed that?
I actually got it with a Monta ball first. I was happy about it but not too much — something was not right in my mind. Maybe it was how I executed the trick, or the fact it was with a smaller ball — but I knew that was not what I exactly wanted. I took the size 5 and tried again and again.
When I felt the foot properly under the ball and I kept control on it, I probably just thought, “No way, this is it!” It actually took some time to realize it was not a casual ground attempt, or an unclean one. It was real!
Tell us a little bit about the approach and process that you went through to focus on getting that last trick.
I saw an attempt of this first from Ochio (Japan) and then from Emil (Poland). Emil was a lot closer, truly showing that the trick was possible to do cleanly in this way.
But I did not start to train it immediately after that. I kept thinking to myself it would be too hard for me. I thought it would require being able to do SZATW NG with my weak foot really well to start, and I had only done it with my strong foot before.
I switched it up and had a couple days of trying to do this trick ending with my weak foot instead, but it was too slow and I was almost losing hope. It was only once I had a session focusing on Dany ATW (Weak Foot) that I was sure I should do this trick as I planned and start it with my weak foot. Watching back the slow motion of Dany ATW I could in my mind replace the last HTW out with ALATW in. But still it made me wonder how Emil got so close…
At first I was thinking about the trick like a SZATW (ng) + one extra rev, but every time the third rev was straight like a regular SZATW. Instead, I discovered it should have started like the second rev of HTLATW. This is how I got closer and closer to the right technique. You also have to go for the highest possible LATW in the beginning without losing speed. Quite scary to do with weak foot!
There’s an onus on you to tell us how we should be calling the last trick. HLATW out – ALATW in NT seems a bit long!
I would love to name this trick, but I’m not sure it would be the right thing to do. There are two technical names for it, and they are LHTLATW (Lemmens Homie Touzani Lemmens ATW) and SZLATW (Szymo Lemmens ATW). I believe the latter sounds a lot better and quite bad ass as well, so we should keep that. I used all the names I can give after my own name also.
You wrote, “To be continued,” at the end of the video, so what’s next then?
That is both a message to myself and to other freestylers. To myself, it means that no matter what I’ve done in freestyle, I will always have a chance to surprise myself one more time, and the feeling is indescribable.
To others, it means that what you have seen is not the limit of lowers, but it’s rather the beginning of a new chapter, that together we can all write.
—
All we can say is grazie Luca for enabling us to witness an unbelievable milestone in the sport and for his consistent hard work in pushing limits! To see more madness from him, make sure you follow him on Instagram.
