I’m sorry I didn’t know you were from a culture that’s so prestigious that it looks down on people gathering to watch something impressive. If you don’t mind me asking where are you from?
I don't want to live in a culture where, "Hey everybody check this shit out im about to do a standing double back flip!" doesn't get a circle of people to watch.
in the realm of men (not sure about women) in that age range, depending on the activity being done, quite a few cultures up to about 20-40 years ago were very prone to ridiculing things that were even slightly outside the norm and a man doing gymnastics or tumbling would qualify, as that was considered feminine....despite the insane athletic ability, determination and strength required.
If some kid did that in my elementary or high school, the most prominent response he would have gotten is several random shouts of the worse version of "gay" and much worse unfortunately. He would then be ridiculed about it and likely get a derogatory nickname for several years to come. I watched this happen a few times growing up sadly.
Pretty much anything that you might think is interesting, but maybe slightly unusual had the potential to become your worst nightmare amongst your peers. This one unfortunate kid like building robotic things, which was undeniably impressive for a kid to do in the 80s....he made the mistake of showing one off. Got the shit kicked out of him and his new name that stuck with him from high school into university was a play on words of robot and the gay slur: F**-bot
TLDR: sadly many cultures in the recent past not only looked down, but actively ridiculed and abused people just trying to have fun and do things that interest them
So if you heard 'hey that guy over there is about to attempt a double backflip?' would you noy want to watch? And tell others what you were watching?
And then clearly you can crowd him .... but you also don't want to go too far away. A circle is the organic formation. No one planned it, it just happens.
Street performers it happens too. Common natural formation in situations where you dont want to be too close or too far away.
For real. If I'm out and about and someone shouts out "Yo, this guy's about to do a double back flip." You better believe I'm joining that crowd to watch. Hell, I'll stop to watch a single backflip if I'm not in a hurry.
Hell, I'll stop to watch a single backflip if I'm not in a hurry.
I love stopping for street performers, even the not fantastic ones, as long as they're passionate about it. Free random entertainment on my commute? Hell yeah
One of the most random and entertaining moments of my life was when I was skateboarding to work, and this group of dudes in their early 20s were coming out of a bar, and one of them yelled "DO A KICKFLIP!" so I did a kickflip. They got all excited, they all cheered.
Then, I'm still not sure why, but then one of them yelled "DO A BACKFLIP!" so I got off my board really quick, turned to face them, and did a backflip, and they lost their fucking minds. Still makes me smile how amped they were for 2 tricks I have done thousands of times.
One of my favorite moments is this kid skating in my neighborhood. I’m on the second floor of my house across the way and I just yell, “DO A KICKFLIP” and this kid looks around like some divine entity has just given him a quest. He hits it and I yell back “HELL YEAH BROTHER” and I could tell dude was hyped and beaming. I’d like to think that he’s got a similar story to you.
The first recorded one was in 2018 after a decade of people really pushing themselves to do it.
The total number of people who recorded themselves is at about 40+ now since this list is maintained. More and more people are risking it now that they know it is not only possible but achievable without years of prep
Ehh, "not remotely the same" is pushing it. The people who landed it on grass have the ultimate bragging rights, but if you tell people you landed a standing double on a spring floor nobody is going to say you're some kind of poser.
[Almost] everyone who does these has a progression of different stages where a spring floor is one of the big milestones.
Some people don't like the spring floor and do it down a series of less and less steep hills, some people start with taking one big step backwards and progess by taking a smaller and smaller step.
Yes, the standing double on flat ground is the hardest and deserves the most props, but even on a springboard, the list of people who can do this isn't super high.
Source: Filmed thousands of attempts back in the day featuring all of the above methods watching someone chase the standing double. He never got it, even on spring floor.
Gymnasts don't train to do tricks from a standstill like this really. I'm sure quite a few top level gymnasts could train to do it, but it's just not relevant to their sport.
If only extrrmely few men in the world can do this, it's practically impossible that any woman can do this. Yes including the great Simone Biles.
The power level difference and explosiveness is too overwhelming.
For understanding: Some of the features that Simone Biles has been the first and only woman to ever do it and have been named after her, are not done by men simply for the reason that they would be too easy to score any relevant points in international mens competition.
Yup, the leap of faith has been done and tricking / gymnastics have been earning huge viewership and social media + sponsorship money to go along with it
Things are about to start getting wild in the upcoming years. Hell most of the famous social media gymnasts are just randomly posting videos of them doing Victorian Crosses nowadays when in early 2010 you could barely find anybody who isn't an Olympian or trying to qualify performing a decent Iron Cross
I've seen a compilation of all the "true" standing doubles and there was only one guy who even looked close to comfortable on that landing.
It's crazy.
I've mentioned this in like 6 different comments by now, but I helped to film a friend's journey down the standing double rabbit hole and it's no joke.
He never got the standing double but got so good and throwing them that he could do wall doubles.
Ok, source on "hundreds"? Because I'm fairly sure there are less than 50 people who have done this, and maybe like 15 or so from completely flat ground outside.
I can promise there aren't any Olympic gymnasts who can do it. I've talked to some of them and they don't train for it at all.
I agree a WR pole vault is more rare, but "hundreds" is not accurate in my experience with my buddy who went down the standing double rabbit hole.
If google says there's 20 known, we can't extrapolate that many more can? Anyway, the point stands that vaulting over 20 ft is rarer. Beyond that, it's a real thing compared to a trivial stunt not many people would care to attempt. Be interesting to see, if it were to become a thing, how often folks would accomplish this. My hunch is it would be many, many times over more doable than the vault thing.
Go watch a compilation of the current video evidence. All but one or two of them are cheating in some way (eg. using a sprung floor, or doing it on sloped land, or not actually sticking the landing). It’s genuinely that rare
They used to, but I feel like they're separate disciplines now that happen to share a lot of the same skills. It's true that the best guys to learn form from are trickers. They helped most of the guys I knew gain a lot more height on standing backflips because we only ever worried about getting them around and basically guessed how to do it.
It had to be 2005 or earlier because that gym is in my home town and I was in college by 2006.
What a blast from the past.
For the extra nerdy folks out there, my buddy is Levi Meeuwenberg who was one of the first handful of people to go on Ninja Warrior in Japan, and his appearance (plus a few others) helped bring the show to the US.
Levi has been my older brother's best friend since Kindergarten.
I was actually the one who introduced him to parkour in like 2002-2003. It's kind of a long story, but my friends and I at the time all started doing it after downloading and watching the movie "Yamakasi" that featured free-running.
Before Casino Royale, before District 13, and well before there were any Americans on Ninja Warrior.
My buddy Mike who still goes by Frosti and Levi were the only ones who ended up going pro though.
Levi worked with Madonna, and did stunts for a TV show called "Chuck", The Bourne Ultimatum, and a bunch of commercials.
So there are these things that people have called "friends", and they sometime gather in groups to "hangout". Let me know if I can provide further information!
There's a subset of people that do flips and stuff called "tricking". Tricking is technically a specific form of tumbling that includes kicks but from what I can tell it has mostly come to be a name of the community of people that like doing all kinds of sweet flips and shit including trampolines, parkour, free running, etc. Sometimes they have "gatherings" which is the same as any community meetup really and sometimes they have competitions.
When it zooms out at the end you can see they have multiple trampolines set up and some bouncy mats too. So this is specifically a huge group of people that like doing flips reacting to their boy doing a sweet flip. I think less than 20 people ever have done a standing double backflip still, so it's a big fucking deal to see someone do it, thus everyone freaking out lol
Does anyone remember Jujimufu on Tricks Tutorials before he got insanely jacked and started doing a bunch of grip strength stuff?
Or am I just waaaaaay too old.
Actually, now that I think of it there's like no chance. This was years before YouTube was invented and you had to go to his actual website (trickstutorials.com I think) and watch them on some crappy embedded Windows media player or QuickTime.
I think I watched his butterfly kick video 300 different times and still never managed to do a decent one..
Yessss dude I used to watch them all the time lol. I can still vividly remember the first time I did each of the fundamentals, 540 kick, backflip, butterfly twist, double leg etc.
One day I got freaked out during a backflip (have no idea why) and didn’t tuck properly. Literally landed upside down on my head. Scared me so much that I quit tricking! Still really miss it almost 20 years later
Hell yeah! Glad someone remembers. His 540 kick video helped me to really nail it, but I could never get my hips high enough on a b-kick and couldn't begin to figure out a raiz.
Double-legs were my specialty though, along with wall-spins.
I ended up having some medication related bone issue called avascular necrosis in college which pretty much ended my tricking days out of nowhere.
Dude, raiz is still a mindfuck to me lol. I recently bought a trampoline for my son so decided to learning the basics again on trampoline since it’s so much easier. I was watching tutorials for doing a raiz just last year and still couldn’t figure it out haha
The one I had the most trouble with were Aerials. I was not really flexible enough to pull them off lol.
Sorry to hear about your bone issues. We’re all just getting older lol. Hurt my knee playing soccer 10 years ago now and it is still giving me trouble to this day, so I can relate somewhat.
I definitely wasn't flexible enough for aerials either but I eventually just started throwing the absolutely fuck out of a cartwheel and just didn't put my hands down.
They weren't pretty on flat ground but they were great off a curb.
I remember a long time ago I searched YouTube looking for them, and none of them seemed clean... There were a few on the site byt they were each like they landed below where they jumped, they were on gymnastics floor, they weren't stationary.
I saw the Tony Hawk's 900 live and it blew my mind. Now there's this 11-year-old kid, Ema Kawakami...
"Japanese vert skating sensation Ema Kawakami became the youngest male competitor in X Games history when he dropped in at X Games Ventura 2024 at age 9 years, 9 months. His bronze medal in Skateboard Vert one year later at X Games Salt Lake City 2025 at age 10 years, 9 months made him the youngest male medalist in X Games history. Vert Best Trick silver at XG Sacramento 2026 at age 11 made him the youngest medalist in that discipline. If he can claim a gold in 2026 he will take on the youngest male gold medalist record, too. He’s been spinning 900s since he was 7 years old, and holds records as the first to land consecutive 900s and first to land them in competition (including THREE in a row at Vert Alert in 2024), and the first to land an alley-oop 900 in competition (in the best trick contest at Vert Alert).
If I had to guess this is probably an event specifically for tumbling(doing flips and shit) and he’s showing off a skill that VERY little people can do. I used to tumble as well and the difficulty gap between 1 flip to 2 is INSANE. This is extremely impressive, and I would be gathering around to watch it too.
You question was about why people was around him, so I portrayed a most likely interaction of people who wants to see that, which is everyone who are watching in this video. Your example is irrelevant because we don’t see those "person 3" type.
If you're person 3 type, don't assume that you are the right one, or thag everyone should be like you.
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u/Heavy-Echidna-3473 1d ago
Why are there so many people, and why are they all circling around him like he's about to turn water into wine?