Inka Cagnasso spends her life in the air. Sometimes she has a parachute, sometimes she doesn’t. We talk Bodyflying, the awesome power of wind tunnels and the beauty of flight. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Places You Don’t Want to Be Stranded.

Inka Cagnasso: 01:31ish

Pointless: 27:51

Top 5: 47:26

https://www.instagram.com/inkacagnasso (Inka Cagnasso Instagram)

Interview with Bodyflier Inka Cagnasso

Nick VinZant 0:11

Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode, body flying, and getting stranded,

Inka Cagnasso 0:22

sometimes in the middle of flight, I kind of catch myself thinking like, This is so insane that this is actually possible that I can just be airborne here and, and fly, which is something that so many people dream off. I've been knocked out once in freefall. But I kind of I was like space off for a moment, I remember opening my eyes realizing that no one's there. And I just like, I wish that I could still get the experience that I could walk into a wind tunnel and see someone fly for the first time without understanding that at all, because he must be insane to watch.

Nick VinZant 0:53

I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, leave a review, we really appreciate it really helps us out. So our first guest spends her life flying. Sometimes she has a parachute. Sometimes she doesn't. This is body flyer. Inka can Jaso real quick, when we talk about body flying, that can be done both jumping out of an airplane and in a wind tunnel. And during this conversation we kind of switch back and forth between those. So I just wanted to clarify real quick what is body flying

Inka Cagnasso 1:31

buddy flying the term good refer to a few different things. But basically you're maneuvering and airflow or freefall with your buddy. Like you end up moving from place to another or doing moves like flips or, or something like this. Wow, did

Nick VinZant 1:47

you get into it?

Inka Cagnasso 1:48

I started skydiving first. I really liked it. But it wasn't really like I didn't fall in love with it until I went for the wind tunnel which is like a something that we use as a tool for skydivers really often to improve your freefall skills. And I'm a dancer from my background. And when I got into the winter, I was like alright, this suddenly makes sense. Like this is kind of like a new type of a dance studio dance floor like, whereas before I could do a few scabs a day, get a few minutes of freefall, maybe learn a little bit of something new. Suddenly good actually start training and improving my freefall skills and the body flying skills. So I've never skydive because I'm an adrenaline junkie, I've skydive because I was intrigued by the fact that I can use my body and challenge my body in such a new different way. It's funny, because I've flown for a long time. And I obviously it's kind of like, almost everyday life thing for me now. But sometimes in the middle of flight, I kind of catch myself thinking like, This is so insane that this is actually possible that I can just be airborne here in this in this weird little tunnel. And, and fly, which is something that so many people dream off. I think my favorite part of it is that it gives me this insane feeling of presence. And then you very rarely get to do something where you're so I mean, I guess watersports, but like that you're so connected to an element. And through that, so connected to body,

Nick VinZant 3:23

when you're doing it, what's the difference versus doing it in the tunnel versus kind of doing it outside,

Inka Cagnasso 3:28

we always move towards where we heavy add like it's all about center of gravity and where we shift our weight. But now, it is two completely different sports. Because in one of them, I jump out of an airplane and the risks are different. And I do need to take other things into consideration than just how my body is connected to the airflow. And then in the wind tunnel, it's so much more about just there. And the technical performance side of things. Because I don't have to worry about my parachute. I don't have to worry about the other fliers in freefall. I don't have to think of this kind of stuff. And and also the risks are so different.

Nick VinZant 4:10

Is it one of those situations, and I'll use an example that I'm familiar with. Right? Like I used to do a lot of rock climbing and rock climbing in the gym is fun. It's safer. It's great practice, but like the real thing is outside. Is it the same kind of thing like the people who are in the sport, do they feel the same way?

Inka Cagnasso 4:32

Some people do. But again, it depends on what you're interested in. Because now if you're adrenaline driven when you're skydiving and looking for that adventurous side of it, you're most likely going to prefer skydiving over WinToFlash for me, because I'm so driven by the athletic side of it, I can actually push myself more in the winter. So for me like it's that's why I'm born went on girl that I am a skydiver. I do both. I love both. But I would say I end up doing more complicated things in terms of body flying, when I'm in the window,

Nick VinZant 5:13

what makes you good at it right? Is it the body awareness? Is it just pure strength, like what makes you good at it?

Inka Cagnasso 5:21

There is definitely some presets, like my dancing background really helped me to move towards what I do nowadays, mainly, which is called freestyle. If you watch a freestyle fly, it looks kind of like dance, dancing, acrobatic moves. But I don't think I've done a lot of sports in my life. And I've never really been the most talented person. But when I was really into something, I always been the most like the hardest worker, right? So because I loved it so much, when I started playing in a tunnel, like I've really put all my energy and time and effort into it. And I did a lot of work outside of the tunnel, not just the flying time itself to get better. And I watched a lot of videos, and I was living and breathing in the things to do outside, like, for my discipline, you need to be strong, and you need to be flexible, and you need to have strength within the flexibility. And now when we get into the airflow, and there's all these different directions and dimensions that we haven't tried before, all of that becomes a lot more complicated, because this

Nick VinZant 6:30

is a safe idea. Like is it safe, safe? Like, should we be doing this

Inka Cagnasso 6:36

in the tunnel, or in this game?

Nick VinZant 6:39

The tunnel seems perfectly safe, right? So I would guess of the sky.

Inka Cagnasso 6:43

You can get hurt in a tunnel too. But it's mainly like you're gonna hit the walls of the net. And it's kind of synchronous stuff. If you're training something like trampolines, or like sometimes you just gonna Yeah, but that's about it. In the sky, we can build a lot more speed. And often, I feel like if you're not a skydiver, you're going to be concerned about like, well is the pass you can open. Like, that's what you're going to be worried about. What I would be worried about when I fly with other people is gliding to with the other people. Because we move fast, right? And if we have opposite forces, you can actually hit each other in freefall with like, a lot of power. And it is not a moment when you want to get hurt or unconscious or something like that. So yeah, there's a lot of accidents that do happen during the freefall time and you need to not only be capable of, you know, flying the things you want to fly, but there's also a bunch of rules about like, how can you how are you allowed to approach formation? How do we break off from the formation at the end of the skydive before we pull to just make it safer?

Nick VinZant 7:47

Have you had any close calls?

Inka Cagnasso 7:49

I've been knocked out once in freefall, which Yeah, this was a long time ago. And there was just a miscommunication. So again, like you usually plan the jump beforehand, you know, where you supposed to be going, what you're doing, who are you looking at? Where are the other people in that formation in relation to you? And yet, something just kind of happened? Mid jump, and it was this huge Norwegian dude who flew into me and kicked me in the head. I had Sonny's on under my helmet. The helmet has like a visor but the visor basically slammed the the Sonny's and the Sonny's broke. So I was pretty lucky that I didn't hurt my my iron. Yeah, where's but I kind of I was like space off for a moment. I remember opening my eyes realizing that no one's there. And I just like, went and pulled my parachute and then figured out what had happened. But I've definitely seen a lot of stuff. And it is risky. And you should never forget. That is. I am. I've been jumping for a long time. But I would consider myself a pretty conservative skydiver because the way I see it is that if I'm doubting if I should go for the next jump, whether it feels like too crazy of a plan for the skydive or the weather conditions are tricky, or I'm tired, and I don't feel like focus no matter what the reason is why I'm doubting myself. I already know that I shouldn't go good. And the worst case scenario is like I'm going to lose that one skydive if I don't go and jump. But if I do go worst case scenario is that it could be my last skydive. And if I already knew that there was a reason why I shouldn't go and jump in. It's really dumb to just not respect the dangers of it. That's how I see it.

Nick VinZant 9:38

Obviously, like, I'm not entrenched in the sport, I only, you know, see the negative headlines every time. Something happens to a skydiver. Are people pushing it too much? Or do we just hear kind of about the incidents that happen? Occasionally.

Inka Cagnasso 9:57

You just hear about the incidents because as a sport It's not really like a large audience sport. So people, you would never see headlines that have anything to do with anything else than accidents. It's probably more dangerous for you to drive to work than it is for me to skydive,

Nick VinZant 10:14

now is his body flying completely different than Wingsuit Flying,

Inka Cagnasso 10:19

I don't base jump, which is when you're jumping off an object, right? However, you can fly wingsuits out of the plane too. Because often people mix like BASE jumping and wings to fly, they're not one thing, there's, you know, when your wingsuit and you're wearing this suit, that adds a lot of surface area to your wing to your body. And then now, that's what you controlling. So obviously has a lot to do with body control, because it's still your body that's moving the fabric, but it's also like the pressure of the air with the fabric that you need to take into consideration. It definitely helps if you have good foundation and just flying your body before you put a wingsuit on, it can get a little bit sketchy if you don't know how you're doing.

Nick VinZant 11:11

That's seems like something that you would want to double check on, you know, you see the YouTube videos and things like that. And the thing that I always wonder about it is, is it an inherently dangerous thing? Or are people making it dangerous, by like pushing that edge and I'm going to go as close to the ground or as close to the rocker body fly as far as I possibly can

Inka Cagnasso 11:31

see, because that's like now we can talk about two kinds of accidents is like is the accidents that are actually an accident, right? So something that happened that just it was just bad luck, which you know, that can happen in any that's the car crashes too. But then it's like if you if you get wasted and you jump in your car and you start driving like you're pushing your limits now like you're pushing your your luck with that. So it would be the same with flying. A lot of accidents happen, because we need more, we want to go a little bit further, we want to try new things. However, most people that do that kind of stuff that I know, those people are willing to take the risk. So they understand the situation, they know that they're going a little bit too far. And they can have that conversation before they jump off a cliff that this, this might be it. There's a big chance that this can go wrong. I know that I have zero margin of error, and they're fine with that. Again, I think that's when you're way more adrenaline driven. So that's not that's not my cup of tea. I think it's insane what people can do when it gets to that side of the sport, but it's different things that drives me or interests me

Nick VinZant 12:55

is the wind tunnel aspect of it is that relatively new.

Inka Cagnasso 12:58

I've been flying for 10 years now. And within that time, like there was like only a handful of tunnels around the world and now there's one in every city. So it's definitely getting bigger and bigger. There's more and more skydivers of flying and wind tunnels. There's a lot more non skydivers fly in the wind tunnels. And this has been a huge change because before like when I started like the only people that would put their money into flying or skydivers that just wanted to become better skydivers. And now there's like a whole generation of kids, for example, that they don't even necessarily ever want to skydive.

Nick VinZant 13:36

So how fast is the wind going?

Inka Cagnasso 13:38

Ah, I can go to like I'm in kilometres 300 ks an hour?

Nick VinZant 13:45

Depends 100 sec. 150 160. Something like that a little bit less? Maybe?

Inka Cagnasso 13:50

No, I think a little bit more. But yeah, it is more. Yeah, you're right, you're right. Basically, you can adjust the wind speed.

Nick VinZant 13:57

Have you ever just cranked it all the way up to see what's going to happen? Yep,

Inka Cagnasso 14:00

yep. Most of the tunnels don't really like they don't have the kind of power that it would be impossible to fly in it. But yeah, for sure if you're going to jump in now with no experience and we talked tarp it out like I don't know if you're gonna come out alive like the wind. The power of the wind is crazy. Like you would not assume it because like when you watch experience fly or fly, you don't really you just don't see it and we were tight outfits. So there's no movement of material or anything like that. So you just it looks like I said it looks like floating. But then I don't know if I would jump into the airflow in a baggy t shirt. You would go like Oh, wow, like that's that's crazy how much the wind is actually throwing me at the t shirt.

Nick VinZant 14:49

Can I could I be seven foot 350 and be an excel at this sport or do I have to be like five 400 pounds.

Inka Cagnasso 14:57

So you can learn do all the same stuff, even if you're a bigger person. But for some things, like you're gonna move faster in the airflow when you're a little bit lighter, right? Because it's just, it can just, it's kind of like if you have an engine in a car, and then depending on how was the car weighs, right? Exactly. So if it's a lighter car, you can drive faster with the same engine.

Nick VinZant 15:26

Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions?

Inka Cagnasso 15:30

I hope so.

Nick VinZant 15:32

I don't know if this applies necessarily. But how far can you go?

Inka Cagnasso 15:36

But it obviously depends on a Oh, hi, do I exit from a plane? Because then I have like, the more time I have the further I can travel. But you can get a pretty good glide ratio out of it. Like, like I said, you're looking down, you're looking at a map, and you can see yourself clearly moving for, for a few miles. That's a wingsuit. You can move a lot.

Nick VinZant 16:00

Yeah, I would imagine like how high are you usually jumping from?

Inka Cagnasso 16:05

Like 13,013, five,

Nick VinZant 16:08

Wow, you really could go could you go higher is that just but that's just generally like, that's where you're gonna do it from.

Inka Cagnasso 16:13

So from 15, we still jump without additional oxygen. If you go higher than that, or if you spend a long time around that altitude, like you need to have oxygen in the plane. So the highest jumps that we do, and like learning environments in normal jumping would be 18,000 feet. And then for like that, and bit of the plane ride be regrade some oxygen

Nick VinZant 16:42

hardest move to do.

Inka Cagnasso 16:46

So there is my nemesis move is something that's a very typical move. In the Freestyle World. It's a flip twist, which you would see on trampolines or any diving really. But when it starts getting into multiple rotations, all of that, it's just something that I've had a hard time with. And in the tunnel we spoke of, it's not really that dangerous, but it is scary, because it's a small closed space, and the walls are really close. And then sometimes in these kind of moves, like the flip twist, like you can create a drive into any direction. And you just need to hope that either you're gonna be able to stop it, or the instructor who's taking care of your safety, they're standing at the door, it's gonna be able to stop it before you smash the wall.

Nick VinZant 17:38

Because you're gonna catch it, it's gonna shoot you one way or another. Yeah. And then like for

Inka Cagnasso 17:41

your own orientation, and knowing where you're at, they can be very confusing when you start adding rotations.

Nick VinZant 17:49

Two part question, I guess, is it a growing sport? And do you think it could ever become mainstream.

Inka Cagnasso 17:57

Um, it is a growing sport, it definitely is like both like within the sport we're growing. But also, I think that external interest towards our sport is growing. So within the time that I've been in the sport, like, it was kind of, we didn't, you didn't get asked to perform to all these like, like, I don't know, live events, or movies, or music videos, or commercials or whatever it was, as much as that happens now, when that kind of interest is there. However, I get a lot of contacts from all these kind of projects, and a very teeny tiny bit of that ends up actually happening. And it's usually due to the limitations, like it's hard to make it available for big audiences. Because it is not something that you can there is these winter laws that you can move around, but they're open air and they're a little bit like smaller and less powerful. So that's a huge, huge thing of it. And before that problem is solved, I cannot really see the sport growing, because you need the big audiences to be able to grow a sport.

Nick VinZant 19:13

Yeah, that is kind of limiting. Right. It's not like you can

Inka Cagnasso 19:17

Yeah, and that was kind of the main problem that I ended up facing. When I get asked it was like, Hey, we have this event like could you please come up before I'm here? And then they like bring your tunnel? Like it's not really something I can just like, like playing Wait me. It is a huge construction. It will take a few years to put one together.

Nick VinZant 19:37

It's yeah, isn't it a race isn't always amazing to me the things that people think before they actually like think about something like what do you mean, just bring the big fan, bring the big fan roll out there?

Inka Cagnasso 19:48

Well, my favorite actually has been a situation where I was asked to come and perform in a TV show in Georgia, the country Georgia. Yeah, yeah.

Nick VinZant 19:59

And today Gotta say it like, it's just Georgia. Like, no,

Inka Cagnasso 20:02

it was so funny as we're having a long conversation about, like the details of it and like, When am I gonna come? What am I going to perform? And they had seen my videos. And then at the end of it, I'm like, Well, what can a wind tunnel? Do you guys have there? And they're like, why is that? I'm like, I cannot actually fly like, I do need a little bit of help for that part. So yeah, that was the end of that.

Nick VinZant 20:29

I can just imagine like you emailing them or telling them that and then the person you are corresponding with then like telling their boss and the whole room of them being confused. Like why? Talking about? Yeah, what is she? What does she mean? She needs a wind tunnel? Should you have won America's Got Talent?

Inka Cagnasso 20:54

Question I think if I should have wanted, I probably would have, right?

Nick VinZant 20:59

What a great diplomatic answer.

Inka Cagnasso 21:03

I never, I never really went there for for me, it was just a great opportunity to be able to bring my sport out there. So I didn't have any form of expectation that it would get somewhere. And that's what

Nick VinZant 21:18

I'll tell you this when somebody suggested this topic to us. And then I looked you up and I saw that video was like, Holy crap. That's really, that's impressive.

Inka Cagnasso 21:29

Right? It's pretty surreal when you see it, like, especially if you don't know anything about the sport. If you've never like flown a tunnel, or you, SK sun or you've never skydived or didn't know that there's freefall, you know that we do something in freefall and skydiving because often we just see the canopies. And then I wish that I could still get the experience that I could walk into wind tunnel and see someone fly for the first time without understanding that at all, because it must be insane to watch.

Nick VinZant 21:57

Best skydiving or body flying seen in a movie or TV show?

Inka Cagnasso 22:02

Oh, no. I have to I don't I'm not gonna name any because I, in general, they're really painful to watch. Most of them are just not realistic. Like, there's more and more movies that they're actually using proper, like stunt fliers and it's done actually skydiving and not like, I don't know. But that freefall part takes way too long. And there's all these they have weird equipment on and and talking to each other in freefall and things like that I like that's just that's not true, it doesn't happen like that. You watch the landings, and it's all like fake. So a lot of that is kind of painful to watch,

Nick VinZant 22:45

you're not talking about Point Break, or you better not be bad mouthing the show.

Inka Cagnasso 22:51

But something that's really cool about windtunnel flying actually, and this is what I've done a little bit is that you don't have to use it for filming a skydive scene. So what I've actually done is like motion capture, but for fighting scenes, because you can do so many crazy things in the airflow that are really hard to actually shoot with, like traditional stump means. Because like, I remember the first time that I was working for mocha project, and they asked me like, can you do two flips in a row. And like what I can do, I can do 200 If you want me to, like, I can just keep going. I could walk on the walls like I can, all those things where you seen the movies, when people I like running on the wall or running up the wall and throwing flips out of it. Like for me that's like, super easy, and effortless to do. And then if you think of the setup that you would have to have to film it with normal stuff mean so I, I hope fingers crossed, because I love working like this, that there's gonna be more of this kind of use for flying in movies.

Nick VinZant 23:56

Best piece of body flying lingo, do you think that anyone will ever be able to jump out of a plane? And just land on the ground?

Inka Cagnasso 24:03

Depends on what you jump out of the plane with, like, without, without a parachute, but still. Yes, someone will do it eventually with like, a wingsuit or something like this. I mean, you've seen the the jet man stuff, for example. And they're able to take off all of that, but even with wingsuits like people are able to basically like because we never go up in freefall. Right? Right. If we could go up that means that we could land without a parachute. But even with some of the wingsuits like people are able to basically slow down their flow rate so much that they they're going to zero. So yeah, it will happen. It's just a matter of time and someone deciding to make the commitments.

Nick VinZant 24:54

What Yes, that's the hard part. Right? Yeah. What's what's kind of like what's the reason that people Can't do it right now they're falling too fat, like you can't slow down enough before hitting the ground.

Inka Cagnasso 25:06

Yeah, exactly that would be the issue

Nick VinZant 25:10

is that the downward trajectory, or the outward trajectory.

Inka Cagnasso 25:17

Because what we actually do under canopy is that we do something and we call it like a turning the canopy for the landing. So we do it turn. And we pick up a little bit more speed from that turn because we start diving, like what our canopy and then at the bottom of that turn, we basically start translating that dive into forward speed. And this is a very comfortable way of landing. Like, this is what we actually trying to do. So instead of like us moving down and landing from that downward energy, we're trying to move forward. So yeah, it's definitely the going down bid that needs to be controlled.

Nick VinZant 25:57

That's one of those things, it doesn't seem like you're getting a second chance, right? Like, what's the future of it?

Inka Cagnasso 26:02

You know, within the sport, there's a lot of talk about, we tried to get to the Olympics and all of this, and there's like big dreams, I'm sure it's gonna happen at some point that are not sure that's going to happen. At some point, I'm sure that we're gonna grow. But I think there's a lot of steps to take before something like this. It is a small sport. But I think we have a good community win competitions, and all of that that might be interesting to the bigger audience in the future. But I think the future is in all of these things that I've been talking about, like kinda everything that has entertainment value, I think that's going to be like flying is going to be more attractive to the bigger audience as a form of entertainment, that is as a competition. Because it's confusing to watch right now. Like, if you go and like you don't know what you're looking at, you're watching the competition. Yeah, like, oh, well, they're flying, but like, you cannot really grasp a lot of it. But you don't need to know how to dance to be able to appreciate a dance performance, or you don't need to be able to sing to be able to, you know, listen to that and and enjoy it, then hopefully through that, then slowly, the interests of the sport side of flying is going to grow as well.