# Sports/athletics with twists and flips **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [February 10, 2014, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-athletics-with-twists-and-flips/680931 "2014-02-10T00:01:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-athletics-with-twists-and-flips/680931/1 "2014-02-10T00:01:57Z")
A variety of different sports and athletic pursuits involve people spinning/twisting/flipping in the air. Off the top of my head: -gymnastics -diving -figure skating -trapeze -freestyle ski jumping -various skateboarding disciplines (such as halfpipe) -various rollerblade disciplines -various snowboarding disciplines (at least including halfpipe and slopestyle) -trampoline I’m sure I’m missing one or two. Does anyone know in which context the most spins/flips/twists happen? To the extent that I watch any of these events, it seems like a lot of them cap out somewhere slightly more than three spins/flips. In figure skating, a triple is a very good jump, a quad is rare, I’ve never heard of a quint. In various of the “extreme” sports, you hear a lot about 720s or even 1080s (1080 being 3 full rotations), and sometimes 1260, but again, things seem to max out between 3 and 4 spins. Of course some of them mix in rotations around more than one axis… ---
**Author:** ![buddha\_david](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee7513/32.png) [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-athletics-with-twists-and-flips/680931/2 "2014-02-10T00:30:38Z")
BMX freestyle Judo & other martial arts Pro Wrestling UFC ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-athletics-with-twists-and-flips/680931/3 "2014-02-10T02:14:36Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Does anyone know in which context the most spins/flips/twists happen? Free fall parachuting. ---
**Author:** ![Wallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/dc4da7/32.png) [@Wallaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallaby)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-athletics-with-twists-and-flips/680931/4 "2014-02-10T03:34:31Z")
As an interesting sidenote, one sport in which flips are banned is Long Jump. When you take off from the board in a long jump, your natural body action is to rotate forward. As a result, several techniques have been developed to prevent over-rotation - hitch-kicks (the ‘running in mid-air’ some jumpers use) and the ‘hang’ variations. Some athletes (certainly in the 70s but some probably tried it earlier) decided to just ‘go with the flow’ - and complete a full forward flip in mid-air before landing. Some studies have suggested that if world-class athletes adopted this, it would almost certainly result in a longer jump than is produced with the anti-rotation techniques. So why is it banned? Well, if long jump consisted of running at your top speed and forward flipping into a sandpit off one foot, and EVERBODY was doing it - there would quickly be several deaths and paralysis injuries, before the entire sport was banned. If you youtube, you’ll find a few examples. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-athletics-with-twists-and-flips/680931/5 "2014-02-10T03:39:49Z")
Don’t forget [baseball](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpQT_z1OoEI). No,[really](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMEr_SJLdi0)! ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-athletics-with-twists-and-flips/680931/6 "2014-02-10T16:39:42Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > Free fall parachuting. OK, that’s almost certainly true, but a bit of a cheat. Does anyone know the answer to my question? In what event if any do people do quintuple flips or spins? ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-athletics-with-twists-and-flips/680931/7 "2014-02-10T16:50:55Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > OK, that’s almost certainly true, but a bit of a cheat. > > Does anyone know the answer to my question? In what event if any do people do quintuple flips or spins? In diving, [high degrees of difficulty](http://www.fina.org/project/docs/rules/rules_dA2.pdf) have as many as 4 1/2 somersaults, or 2 1/2 somersaults combined with 3 twists. ---
**Author:** ![Kimble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kimble/32/19185_2.png) [@Kimble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimble)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2014, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sports-athletics-with-twists-and-flips/680931/8 "2014-02-11T03:58:42Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > OK, that’s almost certainly true, but a bit of a cheat. > > Does anyone know the answer to my question? In what event if any do people do quintuple flips or spins? U.S. Olympic ski halfpiper [Torin Yater-Wallace](http://xgames.espn.go.com/skiing/article/7652671/torin-yater-wallace-does-switch-1800-us-grand-prix) did a quintuple spin at the end of a slopestyle course a couple of years ago – at age 16. I couldn’t find another example of it being done, though, so that might not qualify as “people” doing 1800s.