Trick Classification: Under The What!?

How many pogo tricks can you name? Today there are so many tricks and variations that it’s hard to keep up. AllPogo has created the largest and still growing trick database with videos and explanations, all to help share the knowledge, which has been no easy task. It wasn’t always this difficult though, it used to only take 3 letters. DUZ.

Before the explosion of YouTube, a handful pogoers were creating their own tricks and names and sharing on “The Forums”. Uploading a decent quality video to the Internet was quite the task back then. You had to have your own server or know someone that could host the video for you. Not to mention there were no high quality affordable digital cameras, everything that was recorded back then was on tape and had to be manually captured onto the computer. This made sharing raw videos or practice sessions super rare. To be able to discuss trick progressions and ideas the first trick classification was created – “The DUZ system”. Throughout this article I have included some gifs from 2004, in their original quality, which was one way we were able to share short clips of tricks.

The idea was simple: Three letters would determine the numbers of hands and feet on the pogo. Dave Armstrong devised this system. Here is how I remember the system working.

D – “Double” for Two

U – “Un” for one

Z – “Zero” for none

Now that the three letters are defined, we used these for tricks by combing two of them, DD, DU, DZ, UU, UZ, and so on. The fist letter correlated to how many hands were on the pogo stick: D – Both hands, U – 1 hand, – Z no hands. The second correlated to feet in the same manor. From this, and the “type of trick,” all the tricks we were doing could be named and shared easily. Someone could post on “The Forums” about doing a DU peg stall, a UZ 360 bar spin, DD Peg tap, and everyone that knew the system could picture the trick instantly. Xpogo also created the first attempt of a complete trick list called the Trick Box

This system of classification started to change with the invention of a few tricks combined with high performance pogo sticks hitting the market.

Joe Verzal, a legend and one of the first huge innovations, started sharing tricks that didn’t fit into this system. Tricks like the leapfrog didn’t initially break the system, but it found a flaw. How do you describe the pogo going between your legs landing in reverse? Luckily everyone knows the childhood game leapfrog so this wasn’t much of an issue, but it did still lead to some confusion. When the idea was shared without a video, Joe called it the leap frog, but didn’t mention about handing off the pogo with one hand to another. The first few people trying this were literally jumping off the pogo, letting go with both hands, and trying to land back on in reverse grabbing with both hands at once… Someone needs to do this today… Nothing Leapfrog!

This trend continued as Joe, being ahead of his time, perpetuated this flaw. He shared more tricks like the Under the Leg Bar Spin (ULBS), which was mind blowing, and a weird hand set up 360 bar spin going out side of the legs then back through the middle…. Under the…. WHAT WAS THAT!? It was wizardry. It didn’t make sense. It was years before a 2^nd person landed this trick. The trick was finally named the V-Wrap, short for the Verzal –wrap.

With the explosion of big air, more and more of these tricks started being created. The DUZ system slowly died as big air took off.