How naturally athletic do you have to be, on a scale of 1 to 10, just to do a backflip?

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

the problem with backflips is the fear that if you fail to rotate completely and land on your head, you could be killed. And that fear is correct and may directly cause you to hesitate and rotate incompletely! So if you have the slightest fear of a backflip it is dangerous.

You can also fail to rotate even if you are not afraid of that, so a backflip is truly a lose-lose situation engaged in by utter fools. Don't envy them.

Not sure but I think if you landed just wrong enough you could be decapitated. Imagine that.

It's serious stuff:

https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/15422514/two-olympian-jamie-nieto-paralyzed-mishap

Apparently, Nieto, the high jumper who severed his spinal cord in a freak accident and was told he would never be able to walk again, after getting spinal disks fused together, has struggled and progressed as an inspiration to many in the years since.

He progressed very slowly, and was able to walk the few steps down the aisle to the altar to marry his wife a few years ago, who is an olympic hurdler of Jamaican dissent named Shevon Nieto.

After the accident, she subsequently gave up her Olympic aspirations in order to care for him.

Since then, he continued to improve and reportedly can walk with the aid of a four-prong cane as recently as 2019.

Recently, he looked on from a wheel chair as his wife sang a tribute to their devotion to each other on America’s Got Talent, and the judges gave her a standing ovation,, voting unanimously for her to progress on to the next round.

In high school, I had a gymnast friend of mine teach me to do a standing back tuck over the course of an afternoon. I could already do one on a trampoline so we started of a backyard deck to grass (8inch drop maybe?) with him spotting me. Then just on grass with him spotting me. Then to the park to do it going up hill with minor spot.

I was a varsity soccer player at the time and he was pretty confident I could learn it when I told him I wanted to. So, I think you have to be in pretty decent physical shape to learn it.

bartholomew_maxwell wrote:

Talking about the basic backflip where part of your body is always touching the ground.

Please can you elaborate for us? Thank you. Do you mean a backwards roll where you curl into a little ball, roll backwards, like a somersault in reverse? Do you mean a backwards walkover when you arch your back, you drop backwards, become an upside down U, then you flick your legs up to complete the circuit, one after the other. Or do you mean a backflip where you jump into the air backwards, land on your hands, then flip yourself back around?

I remember watching Willis on Different Strokes doing a backflip once. I was very impressed.