nickfryy/InstagramAnything is possible, guys. Unicorns, fruit on pizza, double backflips. You may not think it but these things do exist and now we have video evidence of at least one of them.
That’s thanks to Nick Fry. No, he’s not a pizza chef, he’s an acrobatic dude who’s taught himself to pull off a double backflip.
And before you think ‘yeah that’s nothing I did one of them on a bouncy castle at my cousin’s party last year’, I’ll have to stop you there. Nick this did from standing on the ground. While bare-chested. So you can keep your bouncy castle to yourself, mate.
Check it out:
World's First Flat Ground Backflip
The world's FIRST standing double backflip on flat ground ??
Posted by UNILAD on Thursday, 23 August 2018
Pretty incredible, right? But Nick didn’t just wake up and know he could do this, he’s had to practice like a normal human being. A quick flick through his Instagram will show you that.
If, like me, you’re not very good at just doing things and can’t get through your day without help from WikiHow giving you instructions on something, here’s some of their advice on how to do backflip.
1. Undertake preliminary activities. For example, take your shirt off, find a patch of grass, stretch out those hammies.
2. Ready your body and mind. Mentality is as important as physicality here. It’s backflip, not backflippant.
3. Use the right surface. Anything but a bouncy castle, you wimp.
4. Find a spotter. Gotta have someone watching. If no one sees you do it then can you say you really did it? If a tree falls etc…Oh, and safety.
They then say some stuff about the whole jumping, tucking, landing thing, but I imagine most people’s bodies do that naturally when they are leaping through the air. A bit like cats always landing on their feet and toast always landing butter side down.
WikiHow doesn’t mention it, but I feel it’s safe to assume that when it comes to having things in your pockets or strapped to your body, less is more when performing a backflip.
One guy, an FBI agent nonetheless, didn’t get that message though, and recently thought it’d be great to pull off a flip with a loaded gun on his person.
While showing off some fairly average dance moves at a party, the agent went for it. However, he obviously has never used WikiHow (the downfall of the FBI, clearly), as he performed the flip with blatant disregard for steps one, two and three. As for step four, it was less a spotter and more a victim of an accidental shooting, but you can’t say no one saw it.
The accident occurred at the Mile High spirits distillery and tasting bar in Denver. As the dancing guy flipped, his gun also went flying. Then, upon retrieving his weapon, the pistol went off, shooting a bystander in the leg.
Check it out:
This @FBI agent was dancing at a Denver bar on Saturday night. Did a back flip, gun falls. He picks it up and a round is fired, hitting a man (he’ll be ok.) @DenverPolice investigating. #9News pic.twitter.com/MwV1WpNzAQ
— Ryan Haarer (@RyanHaarer) June 3, 2018
Luckily, the victim did not suffer any life-threatening injuries. The agent, on the other hand, suffered severe embarrassment and has since been banished from the backflipping community.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.