My first set of nunchucks I got when I was three years old. They were plastic orange Ninja Turtle chuks from Toys R’ Us. At that time I was doing busted up cartwheels and rolls on my front lawn and got my nunchucks stuck in a tree. I actually have this on video but don’t expect to see it on YouTube.

Since then they have been my favorite weapon. Something about the speed and whip of the chain kept me practicing all these years. This is me 21 years later!

Check out this mashup video by Yannick Schroeder

Matt Emig & Nikkie Stanley Skillz 2012

Ocean States this Year was AWESOME!   Everyone did a great job competing and it looks like everyone is upping their game.

All of the competition keeps getting better and better.  Cut it out!!!  Just kidding. Its really cool to see the sport keep evolving because of all your hard work and dedication to the Martial Arts.  The Hyper Games Trick battles were crazy and it was fun being a part of all that. The younger guys really stepped it up like Adian & Dallas you guys were awesome and fun to watch!!

Keep up all the great training everyone catch you at the next event !!

-Tyler Weaver Jr.

Hyper Pro Spotlight

Tyler Weaver, started his martial arts training as soon as he was walking. Tyler is one of the world’s top leading youth martial artists. He began competing an amateur league when he was 7 and by 9 he was ready for the Elite divisions. In 1997, he won his first ISKA World Title and has earned 3 more since then. From there his success and extreme talent has landed him prime-time television exposure including, Disney, the premier episode of The Megan Mullally Show, and The OPRAH Winfrey Show. When Tyler is not training or filming, he is traveling world-wide for performances, seminars, and teaching locally at his karate school.

Check out Tyler Teaching his signature Kama Thumbspin

Hyper Pro Matt Emig dropped his New Chux Sampler over the weekend.

Follow Matt on Facebook & Twitter
Facebook MATT EMIG
Twitter @matthewemig

Check out this sick new video about Martial Arts Tricking! Shout out to Devin Sheehan & Travis Wong who produced it & all of the people from around the world in video.

Tricking is a high energy sport which consists of kicking, flipping, twisting, landing consecutive tricks on one leg, or trying to perform combinations of tricks based upon individual choice, difficulty, or style. It draws upon elements of capoeira, tae kwon do, karate, wushu, gymnastics, and breakdancing. This is Martial Arts Tricking.

Tricking can be seen in music videos from Chris Brown to Miley Cyrus, movies from Never Say Never to Tron, and live stage shows from So You Think You Can Dance to the Academy Awards. Tricking is making its rise in the entertainment industry, gathering practitioners around the world from beaches to gyms, and in the extreme sports world as its own culture that has evolved over the past 20 years.

Some unused clips Dustin Shepard filmed for Matt Emig’s Reelex video. Also a few clips he filmed with Jeremy Marinas messing around last year.  New gym sampler with harder tricks coming soon… (we hope)

Hi Everyone!

Hope everyone is doing well. I have been training hard and experimenting with new tricks and combos. I like this time of year because I can spend more time trying out new tricks and combos. They don’t always work out but the process is fun and can lead to some new and interesting ways to combine your tricks.

2011 was a good year. I started off the beginning of the year with a broken bone in my foot but once I fully healed things got better.  Some of my big tricking highlights for 2011 were my double corks, cheat 9 hyper hooks, C1080′s, and being able to do my fulls now on both sides. Here is a small sampler I put together of some of my 2011 tricks. I hope you enjoy it!! Till next time, keep training hard core!!!

Hyper Athlete & World Champion Carson Crawford just dropped his new sampler yesterday. Carson is one of the coolest kids we have gotten a chance to work with. He has some pretty mean & clean combos here, plus killer weapons skills. Be on the look out for Carson in 2012!

Shout out to Stephen Renney & Elevate Creations for putting together another great sampler.

[Guest Blog Post by Jacob Wolfman]

Filmed by a community from around the world on a single day, Life In A Day Of A Tricker is a social networking collaboration about martial arts tricking.

This project simply could not have happened without you! There was no way I could fit everyone’s footage into the final cut, however I did watch every video submission and I was overjoyed listening to the stories you shared. Thank you very much! This project was very difficult to piece together, but I hope you still find the stories in this video just as inspiring as I did. As Joseph Bein puts it, “[tricking] has brought me together with undoubtedly the most amazing people in the world”. Couldn’t have said it better myself Joseph.

Trick on my friends!

Jacob Wolfman
Facebook Flippin  The Script
Youtube Channel

This Pumpkin is crazy cool!

Carved by Bonnie and Miranda Raitt at Gold Medal Martial Arts

We ran across this crazy & creative pumpkin carving! We’ve seen Ray Villafane’s stuff before but this punch one is awesome!

VIA BBC ICECREAM
Don’t forget we are looking for your Hyper or Martial Arts themed pumpkin carvings this week. Make sure to post them on the Hyper Facebook Page and we’ll pick the best one for this year’s featured winner!

Last year Scott Zsadanyi sent in this one!

Travel to Huntington Beach and Los Angeles with the Hyper Pros for a weekend of tricking in the streets, shooting training videos, training and having fun.

Get behind the scenes of the shoot to look at why we created Hyper and how we want to help martial arts become the biggest youth sport in the world.

Hyper’s mission is to recognize the incredible athletes that train in the Martial Arts, compete and do tricks. We respect tradition and embrace the people who are constantly evolving and innovating. Check it out on Hyper TV

Over the past weekend, Kalman Csoka gave the last performance of his NASKA career at the 2011 Diamond Nationals. He did his double sword form blindfolded!! He nearly got straight 10’s with only one 9.99. I’ve enjoyed competing against Kalman over the past few years. He has truly innovated and pushed the limits of our sport and has pushed me. As a friend, teammate and competitor I am going to truly miss him. A lot of people don’t remember but Kalman suffered a knee injury a couple of years before I broke my knee.  He gave me hope, encouragement and motivation.  I have tremendous respect for Kalman and he is a great friend!

Matt Emig

[Guest Blog Post by Jacob Wolfman]

Hello planet trick!

I’m really excited to share with you a new project I’ve been working on for the past several weeks. This is a short film based off the popular documentary directed by Kevin Macdonald, “Life In A Day”. Using social media, I asked trickers around the globe to film themselves tricking on the single day of September 3, 2011. On one day, the community turned on their cameras and shared their stories about why they trick and what it means to them. I’ve just begun the editing process, but I’ve set myself a deadline to have the project ready to go on December 3, 2011 on my Youtube channel, ‘Flippin The Script!’. I restricted the footage to a single day because having all the footage in one day represents the unity within the global tricking community. Trickers are without question the most awesome, passionate, epic, boundary-pushing group of super heroes on the planet.

Follow along on Facebook and Youtube to stay updated about the progress of this film.

Trick on my friends.

Jacob Wolfman (‘OldSkoolKarate’)

youtube.com/flippinthescript

facebook.com/flippinthescript

I recently got the opportunity to travel to Japan to shoot a commercial for JVC. It was my first time there and I was super excited! It was amazing how similar Japan was to the US you can still find McDonalds and all the same stuff there that you can find in the states! HA! Their technology is super cool, all of their cell phones work as credit cards in the train station and even some convenience stores. They just slide and go! So cool!

Shooting of the commercial was long, about 13-14 hours on set but it was so much fun and the cast and crew were great! The day started off kind of hard because everyone spoke japanese and of course I don’t. Luckily my translator helped to keep me in the loop with everything on set. The hardest part was probably tricking on concrete after a 12 hour day of standing around and filming. Cutting the apples, rose, and grapefruit was also quite difficult with my sword. When the object is flying at you, you have to have precise timing to make the cut. But I was up for the challenge and would not have wanted it any other way. The final edit of the commercial turned out to be amazing!

Check out more photos and slow motion shots from the JVC Shoot

Throughout the summer we have seen Hyper fans from around the world posting sticker and shirt sighting photos over on our Facebook Page. From California to New York and from Switzerland to Kosovo.

Check out some of the photos here in the Sightings Album.

We’re always looking for the best photos to feature!
So snap some pics and let us know where you are from!

Tricking is a beautiful sport but unlike most other sports it has no season, no real winners or losers. It is really an art as much as it is a sport. It is about the evolution of the tricker, the journey itself, the expression of emotions that can be felt when we trick or watch someone else trick. We see this all the time at any gathering, no matter how competitive the battle, we are one community, supporting, cheering, celebrating, inspiring, encouraging…

Tricking should not be judged. It would be like trying to judge art or music, we just know when it moves us. Trickers should not be split into groups or classes. We are ONE and It doesn’t matter who you are, where you are from, or which gender you are… If you are a tricker then you just get all this. It is the essence of our community, part of the beauty of being a tricker.

I feel very lucky to have discovered this sport. I was born into acrobatics, starting structured gymnastics at a very early age. But there was something missing. I loved the freedom that came from flying through the air but gymnastics is governed by nothing but rules and judges. Tricking offered another avenue that allowed me to still do all that but without all those restrictions. It allowed me to express myself in whatever way I chose at that moment. I got to make tricking my own – no rules, no limits. Nobody was there telling me what to do or how to do it. It also meant I would need to learn on my own.

But I never really was alone in that regard because of all the great trickers that laid the groundwork before me. Anis Cheurfa, Danny Graham, Jeremy Marinas, Sesshomaru… just to name a few. I never realized how accepting and willing even the top names in this sport would be to help each other, offer advice, teach, inspire and help spread this sport. There is no other sport where you can say that. I have tremendous respect for all these trickers. Everyone who has helped me along the way to where I am today. It inspires me to do the same and I will. Just another reason why tricking is so awesome and why I love being a tricker!

Tricking is not something I do. Tricking has done something to me. It is the very fabric of what I am and who I will always be.

Hi Everyone,

It has been several months since I have posted anything to the blog.  I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of setting goals and following through with them.

I set a goal in 2010 of landing a double cork.  I had my single cork down really well and was able to do boxcutters, double fulls out of a cartwheel and double fulls out of a round-off.  It was time to push my abilities and apply my double twists to my corkscrew.  My very first weekend I attempted double cork I landed 3 but they were terrible and were probably cheated in some way.  I didn’t film them since I didn’t expect to land them at all.  Unfortunately After that initial weekend I was no longer able to land them anymore.  I added them to my list of tricks to practice and I kept trying to improve them each and every time.  Pretty soon I was able to land them fully rotated and then fully rotated and on my feet.  By late 2010 I had landed it but not without briefly putting one hand down.

It would have been easy to stop there or back off but I didn’t.  In December of 2010 I technically landed my first double cork but again my hand only barely missed touching the floor and it was off balance.  I wanted to land it completely solid and I really wanted to land it with others at a large gathering.

In January 2011 I had a setback due to a fractured foot.  I didn’t know it was fractured at first but knew something was wrong with it. After getting my walking boot off I just taped it up and continued to compete and trick but I was not able to really practice my double cork until a couple months later.

Finally at Loopkicks Camp 2011 it all came together and I landed what I considered a clean double cork.  The feeling after months and months of practice is indescribable!!  The icing on the cake was doing it in front of my friends and some of the most respected trickers in the world. (Check out the Video Here)

Sometimes when a goal takes a long time to accomplish it is difficult to see the daily progress.  We have to break our goals down into smaller goals and take each step as a victory on our way to our ultimate goal.  This is not an easy thing to always do but sometimes it is the only way.  Keep dreaming and pushing your abilities and setting your goals and whatever you do… “NEVER GIVE UP!”