I've always had a tendency to overthink things. My dad was an draftsman/engineer, and I grew up watching him think to solve mechanical problems. I learned to think my way through things. My dad wasn't an athlete, and I wound up sucking at every sport (except dodgeball) as a kid, and into my teen years. When I got into BMX, I finally found something I liked doing enough, and was driven enough, to get halfway good at. But I still would overthink every trick I tried to learn. A big part of my personal learning process and progression in riding was learning to stop thinking intellectually, and learn to let my body awareness and subconscious take over.
One place where my overthinking did come in handy was writing about riding. It was during my short stint as a magazine guy at Wizard Publications, riding at The Spot in Redondo Beach every night, that I classified the various levels of learning a trick. Today's BMX is largely a world of video-based riding, where landing a crazy trick, or combo once, and getting that make on video, is much different than competition based riding. Yes, there are also competition based riders, but the pros there are a tiny minority or total riders these days. I thought it would be interesting to write my 5 classifications down, and put them back out into the BMX/bike world, and see what people thought. So here we go.
Category 1- You land trick or move for the first time. After a period of trying, maybe a couple of hours, maybe ten years, you land a trick, new to you, for the first time. This does one major thing, you now know it's possible for you to do it. You may not land it again for several days, or even months. You may not land it again, ever. But you did it, and if there's video or reliable witnesses, you can prove you did it.
Here's the controversial part about Category 1. If a rider lands a huge, scary, gnarly trick or line for a video part, they're still only at Category 1, if they only do it that one time. No matter how hard or gnarly the situation is, it's still Category 1.
Category 1 Plus- Originality- When you land a completely new trick for the first time. By landing it, you prove to yourself, and to everyone (if caught on video or seen live) that it CAN be done. That's the creative side of progression, the originality part. In today's world, this almost never happens anymore. Yes, I know, us first generation freestylers had that era. Most basic tricks have been invented, and as good as today's riders are, the focus is on taking "standard" tricks, and doing them bigger, or on different terrain. That's another form of progression, but even if you a tailwhip across a 13 story roof gap, it's still a tailwhip. The gnarliness has progressed, but it's not a new trick. I think there are still entirely new things to be invented. Bike flips in the air and the end over end bike flip things are an example of entirely new things in the last decade or so.
Category 2- You learn to do a trick most of the time. If you try a trick 10 times in a row, and pull it at least six, you can do the trick. You can't do it every time, you may miss it in a contest, a demo, or the first three times while shooting video. But you can do it most of the time.
Category 3- You can do a trick nearly every time. You've got it "dialed" as we said in the 1980's. If you tried the trick, move, or line 100 times in a row, one right after another, you'd land the trick, without touching down, at least 95 times. You may miss it once in a great while. But you've got it, it's solidly in your trick bag now. You'd pull it out in a game of BIKE (we played "FREESTYLE" BITD), to give someone a letter.
Category 4- You OWN a trick. You can land it 100 times out of 100. You STOMP it almost every time you do it. It's just a matter of how much style you put into it at this point. It's like walking, you don't even have to think about it, it's just there when you need it.
Category 5- You can land the trick solid in a contest or high pressure situation. You've got one shot, all or nothing, and you land it solid. You've got the trick dialed, maybe you own it. But even in a high pressure situation, you STILL land it. that's Category 5.
The double backflip on a BMX bike is a really crazy trick, even today. But that trick is over 20 years old. It's the trick that incredible rider Stephen Murray was doing when he crashed and got paralyzed from the neck down. It's a high conseqence trick. And he did that trick on a regular basis before that.
Jay Miron first landed a double backflip on Canadian TV in 1997. Dave Mirra landed one at a CFB contest in early 2000, I believe, and then at the 2000 X-Games. That's where most people thought the double back was invented, because that was where it first got worldwide media coverage. But no one had that trick consistently. No one wanted to do it on a regular basis for years after that. Yet, before Mirra, Miron, Cory Nastazio (trying it here in early 2000), or anyone tried it and landed it consistently, there was a guy who quietly took that trick to Category 3, maybe even 4.
No hype, no fanfare, no widespread video parts. Koji Kraft, the guy in the red and white shirt in the photo above, was that guy. This clip, from about 2009, is the best I could find on YouTube. This is from 6-8 years after I saw him land two or three doubles in person. (Yes, I got video of one or two of them, that was in the video footage I lost in 2008.)
The first time I saw anyone land a double backflip, in person, was Koji in Huntington Beach, in (I think) 2001. There was a big box jump with an extended kicker, the perfect set-up. I saw Koji do 2 or 3 of them that day, all in between the main demos and competitions. He was practicing a trick that scared the crap out of the very best jumpers in the world at the time. My point here is that no matter how crazy a trick is or how burly street line seems, it will, most of the time, be makeable on a regular basis at some point. Not always. 900's on vert are 30 years old, and no one has them on lock, as far as I know. But most tricks, no matter how burly, someone will have dialed later one.
With this idea in mind, do you know what I think would be a really interesting idea? Have a BMX (or MTB) video contest, kinda like X-Games Real BMX or Real Street, but give the team six hours to shoot the footage, and one day to edit a clip, say 90 seconds, or maybe even 3 minutes, if you want to make it real interesting. You know what that would do? I'm pretty sure a whole new group of riders (and video people) would rise to the top. As much as I think Dakota Roche's latest edit is just pain insane, I wouldn't pick him if I was the video guy in this type of competition. I'd pick Koji, or Bill Nitschke, or Rick Moliterno. Anyhow, this is just and idea I'm tossing out there...
Back in our competition-based days in the early years of "BMX freestyle," as we called it then, this was where we wanted to be. Getting sponsored, doing a photo shoot (when actual film was involved), or putting on demos, people wanted to see what we could actually do consistently. Most people now don't realize, BMX freestyle didn't begin as a sport. It began as demos, and then trick shows. Riding skateparks was recreation before that. There were no competitions for several years, and there were no videos for years.
People outside your immediate group only knew you could do a trick if you could land it the one time they saw you ride in a contest. When you went to a magazine photo shoot back then, the photographer would have you do the trick 3 or 4 times, before they bothered to snap the first photo. Film cost money, and there was no need to waste money if you sucked. Then, once they did start taking photos, they'd shoot a whole roll of film of that one trick. A roll of film had 36 photos, and you could usually squeeze one or two more on it. It was, "That was great... now do 36 more."
Imagine any top video rider today, and saying, "OK, let me see you pull this crazy move 4 times before I turn the video camera on. When you do that, then I will shoot video of you doing it 37 MORE times. That was STANDARD back in the 1980's. Yes, tricks are bigger and burlier now, there's more danger of life threatening injury much of the time, but most of today's riders can't to 90% of the tricks done back then, let alone to that level. Most freestyle tricks are long forgotten.
So that's it, that was my 5 categories of tricks I developed, and wrote about (in the AFA Newsletter, American Freestyle, I believe), back in 1986, and 1987. If any of you have thoughts or comments, let them fly my way on Facebook or wherever.
-Steve Emig: The White Bear
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