Breaker Logan Edra purses an Olympic dream forged from struggle

Logan Edra was trying not to overthink it.
She’d just arrived in an industrial corner of Miami to a barely visible studio, tucked among wrecked cars waiting for repair, a paint store and a pet shop, where a sign read, “Breakin MIA.”
It was July, and Edra had recently secured a spot on the four-person U.S. Breaking team– the athletic art form sometimes called breakdancing –  just weeks ahead of its Olympic debut. 
It would be one of breaking’s biggest global moments since its creation on the streets of New York more than five decades ago. The athletes don’t call themselves dancers – they’re b-boys and b-girls – and for Edra, who goes by the b-girl name Logistx, the pressure was on. 
The soft-spoken 21-year-old, wearing a Red Bull sponsor shirt, plopped onto a sofa near wall posters that read “hustle” and ‘success.” Just beyond was the mirror-lined dance studio where Edra drilled her gravity-defying backspins, go-downs, top-rock steps and freezes.
 She was working out, holding practice “battles” and studying opponents’ moves.
“It’s a big stage,” she said. “It is intimidating.”
But she also had another top priority: Avoiding the crushing competitive pressures that, as a teenager, very nearly broke her. 
Since learning to break in grade school, the U.S. team’s youngest member has navigated both high-flying success and personal struggles on her road to the Olympics. Along the way, she’s become a voice for mental health amid growing awareness of the pressures of high-stakes competitions including Olympic sports.
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Edra, who can be quietly contemplative amid the swagger of breaking, said her path to Paris ran directly through this Hialeah studio, whose supportive community brought her new confidence, style and healing since moving here during the pandemic. 
But with the world watching, she knew she’d soon have to pull off perfect technique and original creativity to best global b-girls. Overthink it? Miss a risky move? Plan things out too much, or too little? You could be toast.
As she pondered her quest to win a medal, she looked down at a one-word tattoo on her right wrist.
It read: Breathe. 
The story of Edra’s breaking career begins with her father. 
She was 7 years old and living in Chula Vista, California, when her father, Herren Edra, told her he was taking her to an art class, she told USA TODAY. It wasn’t true. 
Instead, she was delivered to a class for hip-hop dance. Edra, whose grandparents moved to the U.S. from the Philippines, didn’t want to do it. But she went on to learn to break and love its physicality, energy and connection to hip-hop culture.
At home, her father played hip-hop classics from groups such as A Tribe Called Quest. She came to love the breaks from James Brown and the Wu-Tang Clan. And she was inspired by early breakers such as Richard “Crazy Legs” Colon.
“I think my dad just thought it was cool. He did it when he was younger. Breaking was big in the 80s,” she said, growing from its birth in 1970s New York and gaining popularity when portrayed in the 1980s in movies such as “Breakin’.” (While the term breakdancing was coined by the media, many practitioners prefer the term “breaking.”)
Edra was taught by the breaker Valerie Acosta, known as Val Pal. At home, Edra’s parents hung mirrors on a bedroom’s purple walls to create a home studio to practice dance and breaking, according to a Red Bull biography. She took gymnastics for strength. 
Pressed on by her father, who gave her the name Logistx because she was a methodical planner, Edra joined Acosta’s breaking crew called Underground Flow at age 10 and began competing.
“My dad would always tell me, ‘Do you want to be good, or do you want to be great?’ And that was a seed that was planted at a very young age,” she said. 
Years later she saw parallels when she watched the movie King Richard, in which Will Smith plays the hard-driving father of tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams. Edra recalled her father saw it and told her to watch it. She cried, she said. It hit close to home.
In California, she would go head-to-head in breaking battles with opponents, ringed by crowds of breakers called ciphers, spinning and dancing in baggy pants on whatever surface was available. Rowdy crowds were part of the energy. 
Back then, she said, there were far fewer b-girls than b-boys. It could be intimidating, and at times, exclusionary. 
“But the anger made me get a chip on my shoulder where I wanted to prove something to people,” she said.
To help focus on a dancing and breaking career, Edra switched to homeschooling in 7th grade. She stayed with her father when her mother moved to Florida. And she was winning competitions and getting dancing opportunities including a TV dance competition
But quietly, the internal pressure was starting to build. She said she was also dealing with trauma she experienced during her childhood. It all began to take a toll on her mental health in the form of anxiety and depression.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself, and felt like expectations were burdening me,” she wrote in a 2021 op-ed in USA TODAY.
In 2018, about a week before the Silverback Open in Philadelphia, a major breaking competition for which she’d been training hard, she reached a nadir, she said. She tried to take her own life, she said.
She doesn’t talk about what happened, but she decided to compete anyway – only for the joy of breaking, without any pressure on herself to win. 
But she won. 
“That was a big moment for me, she said. “After Silverback, I got recognized by more of the global scene. And my name got more known.”
She went on to earn a coveted Red Bull sponsorship. At age 16, she was interviewed on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. She competed in 2019 BC One World Finals and would go on to get a role in the film, “Full Out 2: You Got This!,” which features breaking. 
But behind the scenes, she said she still struggled with the pressures and at one point considered quitting.
Then the pandemic hit, providing a respite. She moved to South Florida to live with her mother.  She went to therapy to help heal childhood traumas, she said. And she found a new community around a local breaking school, Breakin’ MIA, including Yonell Damata, who goes by the breaking name “Nelzwon.”
The message there: “‘Yo, we got you,’” Damata said. “The support is strong.”
He said Edra, who also works with brands including Nike, stands out in part because of her fluid style that mixes dance and breaking power moves.
“A lot of breakers struggle with being composed and relaxed. If you can be composed, listen to the music, and be dynamic, that brings a powerful balance. A lot of people look the same. Because they only know breaking. She knows so many other dance styles,” he said, critical at a time when breakers now bring in influences including martial arts such as Capoeira.
But he said winning also requires another skill that is tough to master: “It’s not just your skill, it’s your mind. Are you at peace under all this pressure?”
In recent years, Edra has shared her past mental health struggles on social media and in interviews. She said she helped others, but it also helped herself. Realizing she wasn’t alone “helped liberate me,” she said. 
During the 2020 Olympics, she watched gymnast Simone Biles step down from competition to aid her team’s chances and focus on her mental health. 
That same year, an HBO documentary “The Weight of Gold” highlighted the mental health struggles faced by Olympic athletes, including from fear of failure and struggles to adjust after years-long pursuit of a medal. Several former Olympians said they considered suicide.
In 2021, Edra became the youngest woman at the time to have won the prestigious 2021 Red Bull BC One title, according to Vanity Fair. But by then, she was already eyeing another goal after the Olympics announced breaking would be part of the summer games in Paris. 
With only two women to be on the team, she had to rack up points in qualifiers. In Budapest this summer, she needed to reach the top-16 round to qualify. And she did.
“Did I make it to Paris?” she asked afterward. The answer was yes.
“I just started crying,” she said. “It just hit me like, oh man, it’s real. It’s actually real that I reached this milestone.” 
She called her mother, who “cried for like a whole day.”
Her father texted. He was proud. 
Two days before she was set to compete in Paris, she got her first visit to the venue where she’ll battle on Friday, a circle stage meant to harken back to a cipher. 
She was thrilled to learn it was sold out.
Edra was recovering from an apparent cold and a cough she developed after the rainy opening ceremonies. She had to isolate for a time. But she stayed focused.
“Luckily, the dance keeps me sane, the training keeps me sane, and the focus for this goal keeps me centered and grounded,” she said.
The B-girls round-robin with 16 competitors and subsequent knock-out battles will start on Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern and include teammate Sunny Choi. The men’s battles, featuring U.S. breakers Jeffrey Louis andVictor Montalvo, will take place the following day.
Edra has sets of moves that she has created to use, but still plans to freestyle to incorporate elements of whatever song the DJ chooses – which no one knows ahead of time. 
Competitions will be scored by a panel of judges on five criteria: Technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality and originality. They’ll look at the skill, precision, creativity, variety of their moves and well they match moves to music. 
Raphael Xavier, a professional breaker and professor of hip-hop dance at Princeton University who is not judging, said he looks for “a total package. Unpredictability in style and execution. Clean transitions and fresh ideas. And how one maintains composure throughout the whole competition.”
Ronnie Abaldonado, 42, a breaker known as “B-Boy Ronnie who will be announcing the break dancing for NBC, said subjectivity is inherently present in judging what is an athletic artform. That’s much more complicated than determining who crosses a finish line first. 
Some predict the performances may be light on the kinds of aggressive “burns” thrown by opponents he recalls from the early days, part of the increasing professionalization of breaking that some critics have decried.
Yet as Edra prepared ahead of Friday — training to songs such as “World’s Famous” by Malcolm McLaren — she knows that whatever the outcome, breaking’s Olympic presence will expand the reach and cachet of the artform she loves. How long she’ll do it isn’t clear, she said. She has considered going to college to become a sports psychologist to help others. 
Back in Miami, Edra’s fellow breakers will be gathering to watch. Her father and mother will both be in Paris. She’s glad for their presence.
“Over time, I realized, wow, I was pushed really hard as a kid. And I can be angry about it. Or I can actually use that, because it’s so ingrained. I’m wired to be disciplined,” she said. “So I can use it to my advantage.”
And while she can’t ignore the pressure and stress, there will always be the reminder on her wrist.
Breathe. 
Suicide Lifeline: If you or someone you know may be struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call theU.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 any time, day or night, orchat online.
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