About

"Tricking" is a sport which combines martial arts kicks and flips with various dance styles and gymnastic moves. Participants known as "trickers" or "tricksters" often post footage of themselves performing various spectacular acrobatic moves on YouTube.

History

In the late 1990s, the Chinese-American stuntman Michael Chaturantabut created the Xtreme Martial Arts practice, which combines martial arts, acrobatics and gymnastics. In the early 2000s, the sport of "tricking" arrived with Internet communities on the sites Bilang, Trickbusters and Yellwboys.^[5]

Online Presence

In 2002, the site TrickTutorials.com was launched by tricker Jon Call, who is often referred to by his online handle Jujimufu.^[6] Prior to its closure, a large collection of instructional videos were uploaded to the database. On September 28th, 2004, Urban Dictionary^[4] user cygnuz submitted an entry for "tricking," defining it as an "extreme sport" incorporating "cool, fast, beautiful flips and kicks." On February 4th, 2007, YouTuber OldsgoolBeats uploaded a tricking tutorial video for performing a "540 kick" (shown below). Within nine years, the video received upwards of 987,000 views and 1,200 comments. On October 3rd, 2009, YouTuber
Валерий Панферов uploaded gameplay footage of a tricking mod for the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (shown below). In the next six years, the video received upwards of 2.8 million views and 550 comments.

On March 5th, 2010, the My Town Adelaide YouTube channel uploaded a video featuring footage of various trickers performing moves on a beach (shown below). On December 29th, the /r/tricking^[3] subreddit was launched for discussions about the sport. On February 3rd, 2012, YouTuber towlie2110 uploaded a video featuring trickers performing moves inside a gymnasium (shown below). Over the next four years, the video garnered more than 2.2 million views and 1,100 comments .

On September 4th, 2014, the energy drink company Red Bull uploaded footage from a tricking competition to YouTube, which gained over 2.6 million views and 450 comments in the next year (shown below). As of November 2015, there are over 214,000 posts under the hashtag #tricking on Instagram.^[2]

Search Interest

External References