Why It's Almost Impossible to Do a Quintuple Cork in Tricking | WIRED

you might think this is gymnastics or breakdancing or maybe even some form of martial arts but it's actually a sport called tricking and even if you've never heard of it there is a good chance you've seen it over the past ten years or so social video platforms like YouTube and Instagram have boosted tricking spam base while fostering a global community of trickers who are constantly one-upping each other and if there's one trick that best reflects the sports rapid evolution it's the corkscrew it's a one footed tilted back flip combined with at least one 360 degree twist even a single corkscrew is tough to pull off so tough that as recently as a few years ago a double core where the trigger rotates 720 degrees in the air was considered the physical limit of the sport but pretty soon expert triggers were landing double corks like they were nothing then came the triple corks and finally in 2016 the world's first quad core but since then only two other people have landed a quad core on camera so is four rotations the limit today we're going to look at why a quintuple cork that's five full spins combined with the Tilted backflip is almost impossible to find out what it takes I got a crash course in tricking fundamentals all in one motion exactly spoke with some of the best triggers on earth do you want to be the first person to do a Quint if I had time to light rains right yeah sure and talk with a physicist about what separates tricking from other acrobatic feats it's not that your typical gymnastics kind of movement it's not symmetric tricking has its roots in martial arts which people have obviously been practicing for thousands of years but tricking as it's known today has really only been around since the turn of the millennium competitions work like breakdance battles which means the athletes are judged not only on their ability to string together tricks but also their style there's just so many different elements that compose and make tricking what it is that's professional trigger Michael Guthrie he was the first American to land a triple course and in 2016 the first person in the world to land a quad-core a trick that is so hard to pull off he hasn't landed one sense as far as power or difficulty goes this is the pinnacle of tricking right now on the quad core even the setup is tough it requires a series of precisely timed rotations that help the athletes build the momentum they need to launch into the air and perform an off-axis backflip Plus as many twists as they can manage all in less than a second you need strength to maximize your height you need coordination to maximize the speed of your spin and depending on the setting you might also have a spring floor which buys you a few extra inches of height and then of course you have to land the thing which honestly looks pretty painful it's that back step back when you use our arm step to get a better sense of just how difficult this trick is Guthrie met me at a gym in Redwood City California to teach me some fundamentals before we started he asked me if I had ever done a back flip before like that is a reasonable starting point but no I've never done a backing up so instead Guthrie decided to start me out with something a little easier it's called the scoot the scoot itself is it's a setup for a trick it's a setup to help us get more power relax let those legs go over the head here and keep that right foot off the ground just until the end try to keep a little more control before setting it down okay so yes there you go and that left foot there you go right yep exactly now the scoop might not look that impressive especially when I do it but that's because it's more of a foundational move it teaches novice trickers the importance of being precise with the timing of their movements and it helps advance triggers build momentum for more complicated tricks the scoot is actually what Australian tricker Scott Skelton used as his set up when he performed the world's first triple cork but for the quad core Guthrie needed something more powerful what was missing for you that was separating your three or three and a half cork from a quad finding the right setup so when we were going through this episode we had that moved the scoot which is not necessarily the most powerful setup no one has ever done a quad cork from scoot so it had to be found in other words Guthrie had to find something more powerful than the scoot this search let him do a more advanced set up move called the touchdown raids here's what it looks like so what makes the touchdown raise such an outstanding setup to help answer that question we called up physicist John de Bartoli a couple of things that are at play here you exert large enough forces on your body while your feet are in contact with the ground to produce a large torque and to give you a large angular momentum and then when you're in the air you decrease your moment of inertia by a significant amount and that will further boost your rate of spin all right let's break those terms down one by one torque is just twisting force guthrie produces it when his feet and hands are in contact with the ground the more torque he applies the greater his angular momentum angular momentum depends on how fast a tricker spins and something that physicists call their moment of inertia which is related to the way they position their bodies around the axis on which they're spinning now these concepts can be tough to visualize on a trick or at least at first so let's start with a more traditional example a figure skater when he draws his arms hands feet and legs in towards his axis of rotation it decreases his moment of inertia and increases his rate of spin now let's go back to Guthrie what makes the touchdown rays so powerful is the way it allows Guthrie to first sweep his limbs far from his body and then pulled him in close right as he's launching into the air it's a little like the figure skater except sideways and without the skates plus Guthrie is actually rotating around two axes one for the off-kilter back flip here and another for the spins here and when you think of it that way tricking sounds a bit like gymnastics which it but there are some important distinctions as well what is it that differentiates a move like the corkscrew which is a pretty typical move in tricking from similar maneuvers in a discipline like gymnastics my impression seems to be that gymnastics is more about symmetry of movement tricking seems to create the illusion that the laws of physics are being bent by using things like asymmetric movement and and just really non-conventional ways of moving the body remember how the touchdown raised let's go three gather angular momentum it also allows him to start twisting before initiating the cork which means that when he does take off he's all ready spinning compare that to a similar maneuver in gymnastics the quad twist here's footage of the first one ever recorded in competition now the setup for this trick is a series of symmetrical back handsprings but here's the catch those handsprings totally linear unlike with the touchdown rays there is no rotation around the axis running through this gymnast heavy feet so he doesn't start spinning until right as he leaves the ground only once he's airborne does he really start to twist and then there's the landing gymnasts lose points if they don't stick their landing in a square stable position on both feet but triggers triggers can land any number of ways in other words there is a flexibility in tricking that allows athletes to explore more dynamic movements than you would find in a sport like gymnastics and that flexibility could be what enables a tricker to graduate from a quad cork to a Quint and that trigger might just be this guy my name is Alexander Anderson and I'm the most consistent Clarinda game remember only three people on earth have landed a quad cork on film the first was Michael Guthrie he's only landed at once the second is Japanese tricker show sate you Emoto he's landed it a few times and then there's Anderson how many quad corks have you landed I think I've landed like maybe a little over 10 or something what sets you apart why can you land it so much more consistently - twice on the way up then I used the to twist coming up and then once I reached the top I start twisting for two more coming down it happened so quickly it's hard to say whether Anderson is spinning faster jumping higher or both but either way he's pulled this off more times than anyone else on the planet do you have any goals in terms of trying to hit a Quint yeah of course I do think it is possible aim but I just don't think it's a possibility yet when do you think acquit will happen I think in between like five and like seven years maybe to be honest it might take even longer than that it took Guthrie almost eight years to graduate from the triple cork to the quad and every tricker we spoke to said that going from the quad to the Quint would be significantly harder but if someone is going to pull it off it's clear what they'll need to work on the first thing is more height which is the kind of thing an even bouncier spring floor could help with but even more important might be increasing their rate of spin there are two ways that the tricker can hopefully achieve this one by providing more torque on the body during the moment when the feet are in contact with the ground and by providing more of a dramatic larger before smaller afterwards change in moment of inertia in other words triggers are gonna need to find a way to squeeze even more power out of their setup move for something like the touchdown raise that means starting with their limbs even farther out and we're tracking them even tighter around their axis of rotation another possibility is that no matter how they move their bodies the touchdown rays just won't be powerful enough maybe like with the quad triggers training for the Quint we'll have to develop an entirely new set up move but until they do remember that what triggers like Guthrie and Anderson are doing is already almost impossible

Channel: WIRED

Views: 2,060,991

Rating: 4.9353929 out of 5

Keywords: gymnastics, parkour, sports, tricking, tricking sport, quint, quintuple cork, quint cork, tricking wired, tricking almost impossible, how to trick, tricking flips, tricking videos, michael guthrie, quintuple cork tricking, ai tricking, tricking almost, tricking tutorial, 5 spins, 5 spins in tricking, quad cork, quad cork tricking, tricking cork, tricking spin, how to tricking, wired tricking, trick, trick spin, michael guthrie tricking, cork tricking, trickers, wired

Id: n0Z_JYsuH6M

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 24 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/duballs]

I sent this to a bunch of my non tricker friends to get their thoughts.

I think it helps a lot that this was made by someone with zero acrobatic experience. Gives a good perspective for a larger audience.

[u/TotallyEpicAlphaMale]

Why it’s almost impossible to cheat 16 next? Also, I love how much tricking is growing. This is huge! And ofc it’s with the goat himself guthrie along with andersen. Shosei episode one day.

[u/DeliriousDragonborn]

Glad tricking gets some more attention

[u/flipdaddypatty]

Shosei is definitely going to be the first to land cart quint, and he's spammed quad cork a good amount of times. So my guess is that he's going to be the first to land quint cork, if it ever happens.

[u/ArtfulAusten]

This is actually a really well-done video. I’m impressed.