Michael Jackson’s music was only one part of what made him the King of Pop, and it’s tough to overestimate just how much of an influence his performance routines had on pop culture.

Come on, who hasn’t tried to moonwalk out of a room after an awkward encounter?

Nobody needs an expert to explain the crotch grab / pelvic thrust duo, and by now you’ve probably done your own digging into how the moonwalk works.

That anti-gravity lean from ‘Smooth Criminal’, though – how the hell does he do that?

In what is another example of how some people have too much time on their hands, neurosurgeon Dr. Nishant Yagnick, a longtime Jackson fan, decided to do some digging.

CNN covered his findings, and at first he was stumped:

“It’s not really possible physically to do it…He was cheating gravity.”

“You can bend a maximum of 25 or 30 degrees forward before you fall on your face,” added his colleague Dr. Manjul Tripathi, another fan. “I tried to do it, and I fell.”

Fascinated by Jackson and his seemingly inhuman abilities, Yagnick and Tripathi began to investigate just how the pop legend was able to accomplish his feat. Along with another colleague, Dr. Sandeep Mohindra, they published their observations from a neurosurgeon’s point of view…in the Journal of Neurosurgery: “How did Michael Jackson challenge our understanding of spine biomechanics?”

Turns out his spine has nothing to do with it, because MJ’s team did a little patenting on the sly:

Though Jackson was in marvelous shape, even he couldn’t do the maneuver [sic] without help. So he and his team invented a special shoe that would anchor him to the floor during the tilt.

Patented on October 26, 1993, the shoes “have a specially designed heel slot which can be detachably engaged” with a “hitch” (such as a nail) projected through the stage surface “by simply sliding the shoe wearer’s foot forward, thereby engaging with the hitch member,” according to the US Patent Office description.

Siri, show me how the shoe trick worked:

Well played.

Tripathi had a good chuckle when he found out, but he also stressed that Jackon still deserves credit for pulling it off:

“Very inventive idea of him…because even with that shoe, I am not able to do 45 degrees. You need a very good core of strength, and that strength was in Michael Jackson and his Achilles tendon.”

Yagnick agreed: “Normal people, even with the shoe, probably can’t do it. It takes a lot of practice to develop the core muscles, abs and central trunk muscles to get the strength to do it.”

Maybe Michael was ripped under that shirt and jacket, but because Instagram wasn’t really all that popular when he died I guess we will never know.

I’m gonna moonwalk out of here and leave y’all with ‘Black or White’ to play me out.

[source:cnn]