If you float around this website long enough, you’re bound to see the word “tricking” somewhere. Tricking is an underground sport that mixes gymnastics, martial arts, and acrobatics. The ultimate goal is to create an aesthetic blend of flips, kicks, and twists. Here’s a video to elicit your senses:
Although I never amounted to much, I’ve been tricking since 2001. In 2011, I broke my foot in five places tricking. It was a fluke, and it ate at me emotionally. I have since recovered and have dedicated most of my time to what are known as the basic tricks: 540, 540 crescent, aerial, butterfly twist, double leg, and backflip. There are, of course, more. But those are the meat and potatoes. If you follow barbell training, “basic tricks” are the basic barbell lifts of tricking — the squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, row, and chin-up.
I rarely talk about much beyond the basic tricks, because I don’t talk about things I don’t have experience with. Tricking has grown in magnitudes beyond my comprehension, but one of the great things about the sport is that it is whatever you want it to be. And to me, it’s the basic tricks done cleanly. You can say I survived an accident once and I’m playing it safe. But the truth is that those are the moves I enjoy and are comfortable with. I also think they are the ones that everyone has a possibility to learn. That’s why I talk about them. That’s why I teach you how to do them. Don’t tell yourself you can’t. You can. Trust me.
And for the lulz, here’s me breaking my foot. Fast forward to :40
And for more lulz, here’s an earlier sampler of ours:
And here’s the last sampler I ever made (even though it’s unfinished), from 2009:
If you like tricking, check out my trick-specific website, http://www.tricktraining.net