Breaking world champion Phil Wizard: How letting go helped him find his flow
The newly-crowned world champion has found success by letting go of expectations, including those of his parents, those of society and those he put on himself.
Breaking
Breaking, a sport that will make its debut at Paris 2024, has a new world champion - Philip Kim, AKA Phil Wizard.
After an extraordinary performance that saw him win the crown by beating 2018 Buenos Aires YOG bronze medallist Shigekix in the final of the World Breaking Championships in Republic of Korea, the B-Boy from Canada is now one of the favourites to win the sport's first-ever Olympic gold medal.
But in order to get to where he stands today, the Toronto-born dancer needed to let go of the expectations surrounding him in order to be his natural self on stage.
Letting go of the expectations of society
Born into a Korean family but brought up in Canada, Kim’s first introduction to breaking came in 2009 when he saw the local N.O.N. crew performing on the streets of Vancouver. After searching for videos on YouTube, he threw himself head-first into the sport and began emulating the moves he saw on the website.
From that time onwards, breaking became Kim’s first love, but after entering University to study Psychology, the up-and-coming B-Boy was faced with a life-changing question.
Should he conform to the expectations of his parents and society, or forge his own path in the unpredictable world of breaking?
“I was barely passing and was only there because my parents wanted me to be," Kim explained about his first semesters at Uni in an interview with RedBull.com.
"But at that time, I was starting to travel for breaking and just started getting invites.”
After weighing up the pros and cons, Kim made a decision that would alter the course of his life. He would leave University and find a way to make a living in the world of breaking.
Life wasn’t easy at first, as he bounced between months when he would earn a decent living and months when he could barely scrape by. The COVID-19 pandemic also hit him hard, as he was forced to call upon his ingenuity to keep himself afloat by giving online classes when all in-person dancing opportunities dried up.
But by letting go of the expectations of others, Kim's road to B-Boy stardom had begun.
Letting go of the expectations placed on himself
As Kim’s career began to grow, he started to become known for his unique ability to express himself on the stage. However, the pressure he put on himself often stopped him from performing to the best of his abilities.
After years of searching, he found a way to let go, to take the pressure off of himself by being his true and natural self onstage.
And it all began when he stopped looking at his move book.
“I have a move book on my phone, so I challenged myself not to look at my move book,” he said in an interview on the Stance YouTube Channel. “And so at practice, I might look at it but when I’m battling I don’t look at it anymore, because it’s just the pressure of, ‘oh, I’m thinking too much and I have to win and I have to do these moves to win.’ Instead, I’m just going to do what I usually do at practice and I’m going to let it come out naturally.”
Still, even after finding a more natural way of approaching competition, Kim would often fall back on his move book at the most important moments of competition. It was a crutch that helped remove some of the pressure he was feeling, but it also led to him falling at the final hurdle, including during the final of the 2019 BC One competition.
"I didn’t look at my moves until the finals - and that’s also a reason why I think I lost because I switched my mentality, because I was like, ‘oh, I’m in the finals, I have to win.’”
“I found the thing that works for me, which is just to focus on having fun, being grateful, and just enjoying that moment.”
Newfound freedom pays dividends with the Olympics on the horizon
In 2021, Kim faced perhaps his biggest test as he battled against B-Boy Victor in the final of the World Breaking Championships in Paris. But once again old habits died hard as he fell at the final hurdle.
It made his victory in last weekend's 2022 final even sweeter as he overcame Victor in the semis en route to a memorable win in the World Breaking Championships in Seoul.
Speaking to Olympics.com after the final, Canada’s new world champion was delighted with the progress he has made over the past year, which in many ways can be attributed to simply letting go.
“The semi-finals was probably the most special [moment],” he explained. “Because last year I lost to Victor in the finals in the same World Championships and also Victor is someone I looked up to for a really, really long time.”
And he now hopes his newfound position as a breaking world champion and one of the favourites for gold at Paris 2024 can help others to let go of the expectations people have of them and pursue a career in the sport they love.
“One of my biggest dreams is for kids to be able to see breaking and tell their parents, ‘ah, that’s what I want to do,’ and for their parents not to be like, ‘no, there’s no money in that, that’s not a good idea,’” he told us.
“I want people to be excited about breaking and more people and more kids to be involved, so I think something like the Olympics just opens that door.”