Greetings, Footbag Land.
So, you may have noticed a severe lack of posts in the last month. This is due to back injury... It shouldn't be a surprise to any of you that my back has given me issues in footbag, and after some analysis, I decided to finally take a committed break, and recovery. In 2009, my back got injured for the first time, however in two months I was back at full strength.. However, my left clipper took a shit around this time. I thought they were unrelated. In 2011 worlds, finally my back gave out again, and, then I noticed my left clipper *REALLY* took a shit. This was no longer coincidence. I fought, trained, and sometimes played through it, but noticed the better my left clipper got, in confidence and form, the worse my back felt. This cycle went over and over, and finally, about a month ago, I decided enough was enough. I had played over a third of my career with back injury, or a shitty clipper because of tiny back muscles. I decided it wasn't worth hiding from, it wasn't worth feeling pain when sneezing, and if I had to quit footbag ultimately, my 50 year old self would thank me for stopping.
So, I decided to take two months off, and then hopefully have a healed back. The idea being, to fully let it heal, and then with confidence play again. I took 2 weeks off, then went to Montreal for the canadian championships. I played with Aleksi for 20 minutes, and my back just felt horrible, and then I felt like I may have actually injured it again. Everything hurt, for 1 week after. Then for another 2 weeks, I did zero footbag, paired with yoga, strength training, and lots of water. My back "pain" went completely away, and then I mimed some clippers. Clippers still hurt. I decided to take another week or two off. Then, nothing hurt anymore.
So, meet two days ago. Physiotherapy often is a bit painful, due to weak muscles and what not regenerating, sort everything...Etc.. So far as I know, the key to good physiotherapy, is when you increase the physical demand at a rate that your body can keep up with, rather than just, randomly doing really hard stuff, and having no chance of your body catching up...
So, I decided to make a bit of a footbag program. The idea is one, that, sparked some interest on facebook. I'll first outline the general philosophy.
(*NOTE*) Any player beyond 2 years, should consider this [or a modified version] in their game, in my opinion. As of 2+ years, commonly you have learned some 5 adds, and have pushed your game far beyond your appropriate technical limit. This happens to basically every player I have ever seen.
So, I am going to redo my basics, all the way up. I'm, in theory, going to redo every session I ever did, except maybe way faster, because I already have technical ability. However, as I am doing this as a bit of physiotherapy, it will involve a lot of basics for basic strength training. IN my year of injury, I've allowed my body to do many "cheats" in order to get the same tricks done. I'm positive this has allowed certain muscles to go out of balance, from side to side, and this is why my clipper feels like a child.. And when I force it to be a man, the muscles around it cry, and my back hurts. So, with this mentality, I should rebuild all those small muscles, and make certain to NOT go above my level, too soon. This has the added benefit, of rebuilding my basics too, with the mind of someone who has learned advanced footbag. If you had the mind you have now, to learn clipper again, wouldn't you rock? The first time you do anything you suck, so, why not redo your first time doing footbag?
First, I'm doing kicks. I never did kicks, as I learned alone, and big kids in big videos don't do kicks. It is hard to understand as a beginning, how kicks are important, because you ultimately don't do them. I can tell you, as a learning tool, they are extremely useful. As the muscles needed for kicking are arguably less refined, and big, than for stalling, you can learn all the bothsidedness mental games, you can learn how to analyze your game, and many fundamental things without the physical aspect hindering you. So, kids, learn your kicks. It teaches a lot about discipline, and your own body, which can help you excel in later parts of your game... Without the hell of having muscles for stalling, confusing you...
My first day back, I did 5 sets of 100 consecutive inside kicks. As you now know, my kicks were never that great. The get into doing this many kicks, first I got many ~20-30 ish rounds. This was a clear sign I sucked at life. So, I applied my "how can I do so many 5 dexes" brainpower to kicks, and almost instantly I got 3 100x's in a row. Bang.
My second day back, I did the same 5 sets x 100. However, I think I screwed up twice. The sign of good footbag progression, is consistency of course, however, something that goes along with that, is consistency the *first* time you try something. Obviously you have to warm up in footbag, but something like kicks which in essence is warmup, doing it right from the very first kick is a good sign of mental progression.
I then did 500 insides, the same way. I don't know if I ever did more than 50 inside stalls in a row. As it turns out, from the kicks only, I noticed the muscles in my left foot hurting a little bit. When I graduated to inside stalls, I Really noticed that my left foot inside muscles were aching a bit more. Oh good, I found the first hole in my game. This would have never been apparent, had I not done consecutives over 50, let alone 100. Now, a few unanswered questions about why I sucked come to light, and I know how to fix them once I get back into doing stuff like far swirling sets, or quasi set.
This third day, I did 500 kicks.. But in two sets of 250, with only one mistake, because a walker-by asked if I could kick my testicles like that. I don't feel too bad about this, because, just, wow humanity. Either way, that was easy, and I could feel certain hip muscles that weren't used to all the kicking. I'm glad these muscles are getting into action. I then did the inside stalls, and I did 250x2 again. I assumed this wouldn't have any differing effect on muscle building than 5x100. I then made sure to not do anything else, despite how easy the session was. I made it my goal to NOT make the bag spin when setting from my left foot. I noticed the bag rotated about 5 times before hitting my other stall,versus about 1 on my good side. I figured, while, the bag trajectory was about the same, this spinning couldn't be good. Milan's sets don't spin, so neither should mind. Except, Milan is megatron, and, does backside gauntlets without spinning. My inside stalls shouldn't be dying baby slugs. No sir. It took a while of simply doing ss ->hand catch inside stalls, to figure out how to not spin it at all. I figure, if I get this into muscle memory, it will only help my clipper not spin at all, and ultimately give my bag control for clipper sets. My plan is to concentrate on getting sets of 25 b2b inside stalls without any spin. Ideally, I'll be able to get 100 tomorrow, chunked into 25's. My end of week goal, is 100 in a row without spins. I need my muscle memory to not have Alzheimer's.
Now, the "from now on" picture.
So, my plan is to keep doing this training program for a week.. Simply get my body and back muscles used to doing this large repetition. The next week, I plan on doing atw's, some rakes, as well as continuing on with the inside kicks and stalls. The idea being, to NOT let them go, so I maintain those muscles, until I am well healed.
Once I am done a month of small progression like this, with REALLY working the most basic of basics, I'll see how my back is. I also plan on doing 3x the flipside tricks related to clipper as with my strong side clipper, and especially starting and ending each session with lots of one sided flip clipper work. My back muscles on that side really need an overhaul, and my mental game on that side does as well. I feel for the mental, starting and ending on that side is crucial. I obviously don't want to overwork that side, with too much flipside.. But less than 20 minute session,s well, I can deal with it I'm sure.
I also want to, within the month, do lots of toe tiltless. I don't feel like my toe game suffers in ANY way, but, once I redo tiltless into the 100's, I can imagine I'll find a hole or two. Also, I want to build my endurance as well, in the most practical way possible. Instead of killing myself to get routines, ideally, beginning footbag with this mentality again should make routines just normal, and not.. Special. If I start doing routines in say, 2 weeks, with ONLY my training repertoire of tricks, I should have many advantages. One advantage, is that since I'm not fooling mself trying hard tricks, I may have the advantage of understanding the music... And really getting timing and choreography as something important. And if I do routines with this low level, and build up, I should have the most sustainable routine shred battery available. If, say in 4 months when I'm done relearning basic footbag, I keep doing REALLY basic routines, I should be able to just toy with them like a preschooler. It will keep my basics in check, and all the necessary habits and muscles as well.
Assuming this method doesn't overdo my back, I really onl expect to be WAY better than I was before. Ideally, I'll look like I transformed my game, and I hope it is obvious. Like, Felix did from 2003-2004. It'd be cool to walk up to Milan, and have a similar string length as he does, and I'm sure my creativity is up to par.
Here is to not sucking.
Nuclear Badger, both sides. What a hard flipside trick. Or was it? Nope. Mhmm. Saucy.
