When passers-by watch Corey Diamond and Travis Ford doing martial arts “tricking,” they don’t know what they’re seeing.

But they usually like it.

At a recent demonstration at Coolidge Park, for example, the duo’s kicks, twists and spins drew a crowd of cheering children.

“They did cool backflips, and I like the tricks and kicks — I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Evan Houston, a 9-year-old Lakeside Academy student who saw the show.

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students, Mr. Diamond and Mr. Ford, both 20, believe they may be the only dedicated practitioners of the sport.

Video of martial arts tricking is spreading across the Internet. Every day, more followers visit Web sites such as www.club540.com and www.youtube.com to pick up new ideas and share their own videos with others.

Practitioners combine tae kwon do and capoeira with gymnastics, parkour and even figure skating in original ways, Mr. Ford said.

The art of the sport is in the “chaining” of a variety of moves in original patterns, with, hopefully, a cool, personal style.

“It’s a glorified martial arts version of breakdancing,” Mr. Diamond said.

Tricking is usually done barefoot, on a random public patch of grass. Coolidge Park and the UTC campus are favorite spots. Classic beginning tricks include the “540,” a tae kwon do series of spinning kicks that results in turning 540 degrees.

Others are a backflip and aerial handspring (from gymnastics) and butterfly kick (from tae kwon do). More advanced moves include a butterfly twist from wushu, a full-contact Chinese martial art; and corkscrew from capoeira, a Brazilian form of martial art, game and dance.

Mr. Diamond admits to studying figure skaters on television, at least occasionally, to get more momentum in his spin.

“If I want to spin faster, I have to bring my arms in and bring my legs close together, like a figure skater,” Mr. Diamond said.

Both Mr. Diamond and Mr. Ford keep spiral notebooks with lists of moves, patterns and combinations to try, along with diagrams and notes.

Most of the training takes place, though, over the Internet.

“The way it works is somebody will make a new move, and somebody will put out a tutorial on how to do it. They’ll say ‘once you get here, focus on tucking to do the flip,’ ” Mr. Diamond said.

Folks with martial arts, gymnastics or wrestling training seem to have a head start.

“People with no background find it difficult,” Mr. Ford said.

Besides tossing videos on the Internet, martial arts tricking contests take place internationally, nationally and regionally. The closest competitions for Chattanoogans take place yearly in Alpharetta, Ga., and Atlanta.

Mr. Diamond began tricking about a year ago. He’d studied martial arts in high school, then stopped to focus on his undergraduate business studies. About a year ago, he began training at Greg Roy’s Tae Kwon Do in East Brainerd.

After wrestling in middle and high school at Boyd-Buchanan School, Mr. Ford two years ago took up mixed martial arts, a full combat fighting sport, at Blalock’s International Martial Arts and Boxing Academy in East Brainerd.

Both say tricking is good for beating the stress of studying, and also for impressing girls.

Being a club of two sometimes feels lonely, but also cool.

“We’ll be walking around and talking about “double-leg betweens” and “540s,” and no one knows what we’re talking about — we have our own little code,” Mr. Diamond said.

Success arrives slowly.

“I remember seeing the videos and saying ‘I’ll never be able to do that,’” Mr. Diamond said. “Now I’m lookin’ at videos and I’m just tickled with myself. And I’m getting pretty recognized. (At a competition) in West Palm (Beach, Fla.), I told some people from London my screen name, and they said ‘oh, you’re awesome.’ It’s really crazy.”

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