Mercenary Tricking

What started as a discussion of why many trickers tend to be cut from the same cloth in regards to demeanor ended up going down a rabbit hole touching on coaching as well as trickng’s gender gap.

Let’s examine three classes of athlete demeanor from most risk tolerant to most risk averse:

• The Daredevil – Risk Taker
• The Methodical – Risk Neutral
• The Meticulous – Risk Averse

The Daredevil is by definition a risk taker. They will be confident in trying something when they feel prepared enough to not die.

The Methodical, as risk neutral, feels confident when they feel they are at or near the coordination and physical requirements for a skill or combo.

The Meticulous is risk averse. They need to be over-prepared in coordination and physicality long before making the leap into new territory.

The Daredevil advances past fear-based skills the quickest, allowing early gains but tends to accumulate more technical roadblocks and injuries. The Meticulous athlete takes the longest to get over fear-based skills but that usually leads them to over prepare in the technical drills making it easy once they do overcome their mental barriers. The Methodical athlete is somewhere in the middle, allowing them to progress the most evenly.

On High-Performance Coaching

High-performance coaching with progressions, drills, and spotting keep the Daredevil, the Methodical, and the Meticulous moving forward at a near even rate in extreme sports. This is evident in gymnastics where there’s a pretty even spread.  The progressions, drills, and spotting help the Daredevil move past technical roadblocks and reduce their chance of hurting themselves. Progressions, drills, and spotting help the Methodical and the Meticulous overcome mental barriers as well as help them strive for technical mastery.  Each demeanor has weaknesses that can be mitigated with the right tool-set.

High performance coaching for tricking is unheard of and I’m not entirely convinced it will ever really be a thing.  At best you can provide the right conditions for talent to flourish with a gardener mentality.  As such, the Daredevil in a safe-ish environment (pits, tramps, air floor, etc) will have a huge advantage in the early to mid-stages of tricking.

The Risk Demeanor Spectrum

Most self-taught trickers fall somewhere between true daredevil and the meticulous side of methodical. If you ever wondered why it’s generally pretty easy to relate to most trickers, part of the reason may be that you share a similar demeanor, with the majority being on the daredevil side of methodical.

Why are there so many daredevils in tricking?

Demeanor does not dictate talent. A risk-tolerant demeanor merely allows talent to present itself early. 

The majority of mid-tier, self-taught trickers that get past the first wall of tricking are closer to the risk-taker end of the spectrum. The Daredevil gets a boost through the gate, within days overcoming tricking’s first steep learning curve (fear), arriving at the fun and cool phase.  Some might call that talent. The Methodical can get there after a handful of YouTube or KTL tutorials after a couple weeks. By the time the Methodical trickers get around to the fun, positive, self-propagating stage of tricking, the Daredevils have already moved on to two or three new things. It can be a bit of a bummer. The dedicated Meticulous tricker is much further behind still. They can break through the first wall with either coaching and spotting through drills or through tremendous dedication within a couple months. This is just to get to the fun part. 

This early success for the risk-tolerant becomes a positive-feedback loop where Tricking is saturated with a lot of successful Daredevil trickers skipping as many steps as they can and only going back to drills when they absolutely need to before moving back along.

On the Daredevil side of Methodical

True daredevils are actually pretty rare in tricking’s top ranks. These people straddle the lines between confident and stupid—and they’re proud of it. Although these guys have the same early benefits mentioned earlier, they also tend to get seriously injured relatively early on or get bored after getting a couple tricks really quickly. Instead most trickers who make it to mid-tier or above are on the daredevil side of methodical.

These guys do need a bit more than the minimal progressions toward big skills but when they’re most of the way there, they can fully commit. With tricking’s self-learning paradigm, trickers on the daredevil side of methodical have the ability to push through mental barriers while being smart enough to work up to risky skills. This puts them on a slightly slower path in the beginning but has decent career longevity.

Does demeanor account for gender representation?

No, not entirely. But I do think it plays a role. There are a lot fewer girls that can be classified as daredevils proportionally. There will always be exceptions, but as a rule of thumb, most boys need to be reigned in and most girls need to be pushed a bit more. Again, with decent coaching and equal talent, each demeanor should progress evenly. Without coaching through progressions and team-support, athletes with daredevil qualities will take an early lead, leaving the others unlikely to continue, feeling like they lack “talent”.

Knowledge is Power: Application of Demeanor

Nothing is ever black and white but hopefully this classification can be useful for trickers and instructors to avoid the pitfalls of comparison when it comes to what can and should work for an athlete.

The Meticulous

You’re going to have to be patient. Improve your physicality as much as you can. It is crucial to not have any strength or mobility barriers as you approach a mental barrier as you will spend a lot of time getting over fear.
You want to be one or two steps ahead on tramp or pit before you reach the floor. Definitely seek out coaches, classes, or teammates to keep your drills in order. It’s possible to get by with lots of dedication and tutorials, but it’s also easy to get stuck at a mental barrier without some assurance that you are more than ready. Do not measure yourself by the progress rate of others—you’re going to be on the slow burner so make sure that once you feel mentally ready for something you’re already prepared for the next.

The Daredevil

SLOW DOWN, COWBOY. We get it, all you need to do is screech FULL SEND, but try to limit the volume of crashing as much as you can. Push the limits somewhere safe and preserve your body. Get as much control as you can on tramps or another surface. Drill basic progressions every session. It doesn’t take much. Literally give yourself a number and maximize some quality. 10 cart fulls for maximum height, 6 c9s with the nastiest round, etc. You’ll be surprised how much of a difference in control you’ll have after drilling. Oh and at some point you’ll realize that being stupidly inflexible offers no advantage. We’ve all been there 🙂

The Methodical

Your limitations are less pronounced so try to keep things moving evenly. Study up on tutorials or give KTL a try. You should be able to get just as much information as you need. Beyond that, talk to as many successful trickers as you can to get their take on future roadblocks. Take care of your strength and mobility before it becomes limiting and make an effort to keep ahead on the scarier skills into the pit or on air track/tramp. Keep your foundation strong by drilling often. Your mantra should be consistency is key. Pick just a few things at a time and go after it!