Israel Footblog - Training program

[C-Fan]

EDIT: Fuck, top post. Roy's last post quoted below.

Osis-clipper repeat is another great drill. Thought of it when I saw the 60 contact drill.

Are you doing Worlds this year?

I have that whole time frame clear, so you're free to stay at my apartment if you'd like. In Israeli terms Jerusalem is considered far from Tel Aviv, but it's about an hour drive, so it's realistic to spend the day there and then return.

I'll watch some vasek then, even though I have no talent for learning from videos. I heard a bunch of top notch players say they do that (Vasek, Jorden, now you) and perhaps that's something serious I'm lacking.

I went to doing toe symp mirages, as it turns out that my ps mirages are not very hot either.

Highlights:
Fairy legover->double down
60 contacts of op clipper->same clipper
lots of mid-run flip paradons

Taught a coworker to do toestalls both sides, and sold him a mr. sandbag so he can play with his kid.

[PoisonTaffy]

I have a terrible flip osis so I'm working on that a lot, and Osis->clipper is one of my favorites. Any more osis drills?

I'm not going this year I'm going to take a vacation with my girlfriend and it's gonna be a bit more sandy and beachy than Warsaw.

[PoisonTaffy]

I'm trying to come up with a threshold with which I could tell when I should stop working on a new trick, and pass it into the "try to remember to hit it in casual strings" mode.

Right now I'm thinking it should be being able to somewhat consistently hit a 4 bsos contacts of the new trick (2 each side), over the course of two practice sessions.

Today I got there with symposium mirage, which means that if it wasn't just a 'click' that'll go away, next session I'll do the same and consider it 'learnt'. Then I'll get back to ps mirage. I'm also working on pdx whirl, so I feel like I'm closing in on ps whirl from all angles.

I started hitting sailing sets. I hit sailing ss mirage (dominatrix?), and I want to see if I'll be able to hit dominatrix->pixie paradon. That would be my first 3 dex->3 dex.

[boyle]

nice work on sailing sets! Something I am still yet to learn.

[PoisonTaffy]

Yeah it's such a great feeling when I imagine easily hitting some trick, and then trying it out and actually getting it. More often than that my mind goes "Hey, pixie quantum double down. Easy peasy!"

[PoisonTaffy]

I once again am in a spot where it's been so long since I played with anyone better than me that I have the illusion that I'm doing great, even though I probably am not.

I've been inspired by Danny Boyle's last post about 10 guiltless unique toes to think of such string I could do, and turns out that I'm extremely one sided in my toe game. I have a hunch that this is probably the thing I should be working on to have the most positive impact on my game, but it's hard to know where to start when the gap is so big.

Still working towards ps whirls - my pdx whirls are improving, I hit them midstring better than when I try to drill them, which suggests some mental block. I usually drop on the stall, I have no idea how to improve that. I think I'll start doing toe symp whirls next session.

Also inspired by Jay's blog to hit 100x2 inside kicks, 100x2 toe stalls and 60x2 inside stalls (after 60 inside stalls my feet cramped, apparently I apply too much tension). I tried paying attention to setting the bag without a spin & placing my feet correctly on the ground (as my feet naturally face outwards).

Yesterday we played outside. I taught atw to two guys from California that hacked very well, and we taught kicks and toe stalls to two girls from Virginia who wanted to join in. The problem with the promenade is that everyone who passes by has flip flops rather than shoes.

[Outsider]

Yesterday we played outside. I taught atw to two guys from California that hacked very well, and we taught kicks and toe stalls to two girls from Virginia who wanted to join in. The problem with the promenade is that everyone who passes by has flip flops rather than shoes.

Yeah, I hate trying to teach enthousiastic people when they're wearing really bad footwear. You've just given me an idea for a new business (probably a bad idea for a bad sort of business ) -- Laver Rentals for the poorly shod...

[C-Fan]

Dominatrix is pixie atom smasher. Sailing ss mirage is like pixie tap, and I don't think has a special name beyond that.

Pixie quantum dod is really hard to clean. But yeah, I know that feeling of thinking you can hit a trick, and then when you actually try it realizing that you aren't close to it.

As for flip toe stuff, I'm going to give the generic advice of just slowly working your way up to it. I remember when I first started learning to spin, thinking so many things were beyond my reach. Sure enough, they were at the time, but over time as you slowly get better at those weak components as you continue practicing, what was previously unachievable eventually becomes possible.

[boyle]

It is an interesting practice to get into the idea of getting ten of something you're not so good at. I guess the key for me was to get some part of it consistent (for me it was magellan>smear>plo repeat and then have the confidence that you have at least half of the idea there. I feel my game has really improved a lot just working on those concepts.

[PoisonTaffy]

I knew it, I never hit the tricks with the cool names

Thanks for all the tips! I think I'll start my warmups with flip mirages and illusions until they're less awkward. They're the basis for everything. Then I'll get comfy with quantum and atomic and i'll be in a much better shape.

[dasreen]

Stepping SS Mirage and Stepping SS Illusion are one of my favorite tricks, you should try them: They force you to learn good mirages and especially illusions without bothering about turning your hip as blur or blizzard require you to.

[PoisonTaffy]

My stepping are very rusty, but perhaps it's a good way to practice both at the same time, I'll try that next session.

I've been physically exhausted since that promenade session. I hope it's only temporary, as today's session was a real mental and physical strain.

Today I started working on flip. I hit lots of flip mirages, sets of 10. Then I did a few flip dlo, and finished with dlo->Magellan x2. Felt good. One more dlo/mirage session and i'll move to illusion/eggbeater.

Also, hit Motion. Very odd trick. I really want to see it in slow motion, as I'm not sure how much you have to clear the last dex, but didn't find any good video of it online.

I don't know if anyone's following my videos RSS (http://footbagisrael.com/videos/), but I use it often and love it. I'm glad to have written something I actually find useful.

[boyle]

I hadn't seen that Vasek in Egypt video - how cool!

[PoisonTaffy]

Honza's and Milan's sick 3 are disturbingly mind boggling. I was really inspired by Honza's alpine fusion and decided to try atomic alpine whatever, nearly kicked myself in the head. But i'll continue making it a side project.

Did lots of flip dlos today, including 4 bsos. Not yet comfortable, though, it will take more sessions.

Started working on flip quantum. It was better than I thought - I didn't expect to hit anything but I hit quantum legover and tripwalk.

Also:
dlo->ss dlo->dlo, which felt pretty good.

fairy muted ss osis->zooming nothing. Next time i'll try at least zooming butter.

[PoisonTaffy]

I've been watching a lot of Olympics, and well, it may be silly, but it really inspires me. Not only in taking myself more seriously and do more practice and less play sessions, but mostly in wanting to get footbag 'out there'. I don't really know if the Olympics is the right avenue for footbag, but there are big stages it's not on and deserve to be on. I want to be a part of an effort to make it happen. I realize that with my extremely limited spare time I should be content that I have a functioning promotional website and semi consistent practice sessions, but my heart wants more!

Israel is pretty big on niche sports, I thought it could be possible to arrange a 'fringe Olympics' for all of them together. Seeing, though, how there are only two active players in the country, Footbag couldn't even qualify for that kind of stage here. pfft. Depressing.

[boyle]

You build it, and they will come!

I think that could be a fun thing to do in a place like Israel (I'm not sure if this is how it works, but I have this feeling Israel is not welcome at the All-Arab Games or whatever similar thing they have).

I have always thought that footbag can really thrive on the edge of massive events like this. There are millions of people simply hanging around in London at the moment, same with when cities host the World Cup, etc.

Have you ever heard of the World Games - it is basically a collection of fringe sports...or a "reserve grade Olympics" - http://www.theworldgames.org

The next one is going to be in Colombia next year.

The Olympics is an interesting comparison for us footbag players, particularly from smaller countries...many of the athletes are self funded, or only get little bits and pieces of funding, they train themselves to reach a certain level. Of course this depends country by country - Australia is a small country (in terms of population), but heavily funds sports. One of the Chilean athletes made a bit of a controversy earlier in the Games, she said "my nana (housekeeper) makes more than I do".

[PoisonTaffy]

[youtube][/youtube]There's a little debate going on here right now, seeing how Israel didn't win any medals. A commentator said "if Israeli athletes would've won any medals, it would've been a cover up for the fact that the sports are completely neglected by the state."

World games looks awesome, they have many sports I've never heard. Strangely I couldn't find their criteria. That could be an attainable goal, being incorporated there.

On a side note, I just saw Scott Davidson's seamless juggling concept and I really like it. I got to remember to try it:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s-iLM4A ... page#t=65s[/youtube]

[boyle]

The next ones are in Colombia - I got in touch with the players up there and they said they had been in contact...but unfortunately footbag doens't meet the criteria (I also didn't find them).

Nothing to stop some kind of jam outside the tournament though

[PoisonTaffy]

I'm stealing your idea and planning to see if I can find tournaments to hitch a ride on for performance or outside jamming. Having to do a solid performance scares me but it'll probably be a good motivator to work on consistency just a bit longer every practice session.

Great great session today by the promenade, had probably some of my best runs ever. Lots of people stopped to watch. My new crowd pleaser is clipper->cloud kick->clipper. Saw it done by Jorden at "Top Canadian shredders". I'm surprised that double downs usually go unnoticed.

My dragon to slay is toe both sidedness. Any improvement there would do wonders.

5 younguns who used to play with us showed up. They played shaky as they hardly practiced, but showed potential. I told them to start their sessions with 20 consecutive toe stalls. One of them learned osis.

[PoisonTaffy]

Recording my bee sauce toe guiltless progress:

dlo->magellan->plo x2 . That's six contacts.