I was hanging out with some friends today, and while we were showing off our gymnastics skills, I was posed with a question: Why can some people only do backflips and some people only do front flips? I can only do a front flip. No matter how hard I try, no matter what height I flip from, I simply cannot do a backflip. This confuses me as I can easily do a front flip on a flat surface. Another dude was only able to do backflips and epically failed when attempting front flips. Why?