The Inshredible Bulk: Not Trending, Not Roll Spiking Either

[Zeke]

I'm out for a ride and won't be near a computer for a while. Gotta go to the bank then kick the shit out of a net bag.








Call me

[Zeke]

Uh... practice. Ceiling height is 8 ft. My foot is reaching somewhere around 7ft. Good enough to kick a spike over a 5 ft net... if I've got the balls to try this on grass

Net session Sunday.

Union Park 2-6pm. Southeast corner of Ashland and Lake.

attending:
Zeke
Jake
Josh
Cory
Scot
Tommy


maybes:
Al
Vince
Alan
Carrie
Ronny

[Zeke]

It's sunny outside and I'm really anxious to get the hell out of work. This day seems like its going in slow motion. Can't wait to kick tomorrow. I almost want to play today but my legs are still a bit sore.

[Zeke]

8 people on the curt today!!! Sweet.

Got up and ate breakfast. Watched a shitload of net videos. Warmed up by just throwing some basic kicks around before a long stretching session. I was a little sore at the beginning but a couple days rest and the long gradual warm-up was the best thing I could do to get ready for today. I felt strong and was moving fluidly throughout. Even got a chance to eat another meal before leaving LaRAZA.

The twins picked me up and we met Tommy and Vince at Union. Tommy's net had a huge gash in it from one of his friends trying a spike and his foot got caught as it swung down. We found some rope and managed to stitch the gash together. Ugly, but effective. BTW, the park was still trashed after Pitchfork. There was garbage everywhere. Fucking park. Anyways, we warmed up for about 20 minutes before Scot arrived with Cory and Brian Nelson.

Vince, the twins and I started doing spike drills once the second court was set up. This was so much fun, I wish we had six bags to work with all the time! Despite all the sweep practice against the wall early in the week, I barely managed to get any over the net. Scuffs on the other hand are much better. I hit every set I got and most of them landed in. I contacted about half of the tosses while practicing scissor sweeps but only two managed to "score". I'm really liking this spike. All 4 of us took 3 turns a piece before breaking up into teams and playing games.

We all took a break after a couple games and I went onto the empty court to practice side axes. Ever since I fucked up my shoulder a few years back, I've been very tentative about doing crazy things in the air. As you can imagine, it's a big problem for a short net player who wants to get up and spike. After about 5 pathetic attempts Cory came over to offer some help. After applying his advice my foot was able to get just under 6 feet in the air and even cross the net on a few occasions... I got sideways in the air bitches!!!! Eventually, Tommy offered to toss up some sets and I missed just about all of them. The two of them suggest that I keep an eye on the bag just a little longer to make sure my foot made contact. I think I was worried about landing on my face so I looked down as early as possible. After their tip I was able to crush a few! Landings were taking their toll, though. Despite landing on all fours my weak (girly) arms felt like they were going to give in and both knees were starting to ache. My left hand is still a little numb and somewhat unresponsive. Still though, I think I got past a major obstacle today and I'm extremely happy with the progress.

Overall, I think I played well today. I was a little more aggressive at the net and got a few spikes but nothing with any heat on it. My sets were a little off and my serve returns are still abysmal. I got a wear on Vince late in the day that Brian gave me props for. It's funny because I think I was the only one that didn't see it hit him. The one real highlight that stuck out was near the end of the session where I hit a side ax during hand toss rallies . The bag was dropping right over the net and I ran up jumped, got sideways and just went for it. I didn't know I hit it until I got up and asked! They all gave me props for it. Man, that felt so good.

Trash talk overheard:
Vince - "Got time for one more?"
Scot - "No, I gotta go."
Cory - "Yeah, Scot's got sand in his vagina!"
The rest of us ->

Good times.




I added a new photo container on my footbag.org gallery. I'll be adding all my Net session pics there from now. Any "mixed" sessions will be uploaded under the CIC Session gallery.

[gMoney]

you should come up and introduce yourself and say, "Hey I'm Grant Mooney and I'm worth getting to know you short stubby bastard!" Or something along those lines. I'm really approachable, I just don't look that way all the time.

lol. bastard. my bad though. next time

[Zeke]

Yesterday my knees were aching so bad from Sunday that I had to cancel a net session with the twins after work. Going up and down the back stairs of LaRAZA with my bike was absolute agony. This morning my knees were fine but my left ass and hamstring was sore as hell. Damn those stairs.

Speaking of the apartment, it's a bit grimy but I'm probably only there for another 2 months so I really don't see the point of cleaning any more. Unless we have guests, of course. Other than that I just don't give a shit anymore. I've effectively blocked out the fact that most of my digital pictures are gone from that hard drive crapping out on me and I've all but dropped photography as a hobby just so I don't get reminded of what a moron I am for not backing all that up.

On the bright side I've realized my timing is uncanny. I just happen to catch footbag scenes just as they are on the way up. I need to kick the shit out of something soon. Damn those stairs.

[Zeke]

There's just something endlessly cool about a great partner. Like when two players do more than merely coexist, they connect. They become more than the sum of their parts. They compliment each other so well that each persons strengths cover the others' weaknesses. There's no longer much need to communicate verbally and it's replaced with this deep trust in the others ability to finish off what you have started. It's like intuition, you just know where they're going to be right when they need to be there. Two people functioning as one cohesive unit; adapting, hustling and executing seamlessly towards the same goal.

I'll get tiny flashes of this on the net court when that near impossible dig turns into the perfect set for a monster spike that ends a long rally. Afterwards you can't help but pump your fists wildly in the air, jump up screaming at the top of your lungs and give the worlds biggest high-five to your partner because simply telling him he did a good job wouldn't do what you two just accomplished together any justice. God forbid it stops there. Rub in your opponents' faces while your at it. I'm just talking about single plays. I can only imagine what it's going to be like to string a bunch of plays to win games and matches consistently.










ok, I need sleep

[Zeke]

Kicked with Jake late Thursday afternoon we did serve/return drills, monster, dig drills and hand toss rallies. It was a fairly productive session. I was particularly thankful to drill serve returns as it's got to be the weakest part of my game right now.

Today I warmed up and stretched at home before biking out to Roosevelt Park to meet with Cory and Vince. I passed by Union Park just to see if they cleaned up all that garbage. It looked like they got most of it off the field but there was still some trash near the ends of the park. Vince and I took our time warming up. He was doing a good job of setting himself up and killing with his sole pushes when we were doing hand toss rallies. We were in a middle of game by the time Cory showed up. Hit my first sunback in a game. The form was a bit ugly but it had some good power on it. Vince ended up winning the game though. Oddly enough he wasn't setting himself or spiking at all while we played.

After the game all three of us power kicked for a good half hour before moving on to had toss rallies. Then Vine and I played against Cory. Jeezus. It was a sobering reminder of how ineffective our skills are at this point. Cory was killing us with incredibly precise shots. He wasn't even spiking very hard but they were landing in places we were nowhere near. I did manage to get a couple of good digs but was unable to bump them for a set. There was a slight improvement on serve returns but still pretty bad overall. Hit my first side ax in a game. It's a shame I never get to see where it goes after the contact. There's a great deal of satisfaction to see where or who it hit. I'm always so concerned about the landing that I almost always take my eyes off the bag too soon. My serves are getting much more consistent as long as I'm not trying to dink.

Seeing Vince set himself earlier in the day led to more frustration than usual when we played together because he rarely tries to set me. I was hoping to get a few sets come my way but it never happened. It's particularly annoying when I finally bump a serve return to him and he takes a poorly executed swing at the bag instead if setting me up. Don't get me started on his defense...

[Senor Grommet]

you need to do yourself a favor and get about 15 net bags- usually 5 dollars each when purchased in bulk from Manu at footbagnet.com. Increased efficiency for all skills practiced in drill format.

Play with with Scot Cory, and Tommy- that would be a good 4 some.

tell your partners what you want to accomplish in the game, not necessarily winning, but working on a skill such as precise bumping, or improving court positioning for defense, or giving eachother at least 5 spikable sets, etc.

When your partner just wants to win, it often decreases teamwork and increases selfish play.

[Zeke]

I just purchased 2 net bags from prokicker and will be getting more eventually. It's so much more convenient to have a bunch of bags to practice with. I do try to play with those guys as often as all our different schedules allow. Unfortunately that turns out to be once a week. I like your idea about setting goals, I'll have to do that next session.

When your partner just wants to win, it often decreases teamwork and increases selfish play.

Ssssssooooooooo true

So on to today's session. Fucking great!. My serves were on target and this was the best I've ever played defensively!. No blocks, but I was able to return more serves than usual giving some decent bumps. I was digging and running down lobs and shanks all day.

Tommy picked me up on the way to get his net set back from the twins. Thank god he felt like driving, don't know how well my knees wold have held up if I biked. We get to the park a little late where Scott Vince and Cory are setting up 2 courts. Tommy's friend Zach was there warming up. We rushed through the usual warm-ups since we wanted to get some games in with him before he would have to leave soon for his soccer league. He seemed very friendly and very active on the court. I'm not sure how long he and Tommy had been playing together. I ended up partnering with Zach for the first game against Tommy and Vince. We were down 10-2 before we got into sync and made an incredible comeback to get the win. It was a lot of fun playing with him since our styles seemed very similar and covered the court well despite being the two shortest players. He ended up getting another come-from-behind win against Vince and I. Tommy and I managed to stop a third such win before Zach had to leave.

We played a bunch of games using a 5 man rotation the rest of the day. I'll just list highlights to keep this post from getting too long and boring
-Cory and I stomping the shit out of Tommy/Scot 15-3
--I got an insane 11 point run with more than half of those points on serves alone. I was serving well all day.
--Cory can crush just about any slop I put up. Fortunately I was setting the bag well and putting it right at the net where he's practically impossible to stop.
--Being in the perfect spot as he missed the block attempt on Tommy. I managed to get the dig and turned it into a set and screamed at him repeatedly to get up. He managed to get it over to keep the rally going. I got another dig soon enough and Cory managed to get the kill to finally end the play. We all laughed afterwards about my screaming
-hit 2 more side axes and a greasy sunback
-shanked 2 spike attempts that ended up lobbing over the defenders into the back court. Also shanked a sweep into a bitch slap.
-Calling out a dink and 2 back corners on serves then dropping them right where I said the would go... pure evil
-Tommy and I playing well together even in loss
-Scot smashing 9 points in a row with his sweep serve
-Stayed aggressive at the net and bumped serve returns
-I dug a what would have been one nasty back corner lob with a left back kick. I was back pedaling from the net when the bang came flying over my left side. I shifted my weight turned my shoulders and swung my leg up just as I would on my right side. I even managed to keep it on our side of the court, that felt so fucking great!

Most of my sweeps hit the net low and I blasted a few spikes (including a scissor sweep) out of bounds just from bad positioning. But overall I think I made some fairly good decisions on what to crush what to set and what to just send over. I think my defense was really what kept me and my partners in the game. Being able to bump/set a serve or spike feels so awesome considering they're such major holes in my game. It was a great boost when everyone was commenting on how well I was playing.

Vince still doesn't set me (which really annoys the piss outta me since he tries to set everyone else) but he is fun to have on the court. Despite how intense some of the games got, there was still a lot of hilarious shit talking going on all day. What a great session.




Here are some pics from today. Also added photos from Midwest Regionals to my footbag.org gallery

[Zeke]

I have all these freestyle bags but I don't freestyle anymore. What to do, what to do...

[Zac Miley]

Where's the thread for NYJ?!!?!?!?!

only 4.5 months away!!

[Chim-Chim]

jonesin' already? it's still august!

[Moxie]

Leave the poor net player alone, NYJ is for freestyle players.

[Zeke]

NYJ = sqwerz, sucka!

Anygay, interesting weekend. Had the most lethargic singles net session with Vince on Saturday. I finished 3-0 but energy and effort were lacking from both sides. Despite having to do quite a few push-ups for not going after a bunch of shots, I did manage to get a few bump> scuffs early in the day. No net scheduled for Sunday so I rode out to Welles to play with Tony and wait for the others to show up. During the ride up there, I was in a deep lean into a tight turn when I hit some gravel and completely wiped out. Worst wipe out ever. Oddly enough, the first thing I did was check to see if my bike was ok. It wasn't until I finished that I noticed that I had road rash on both elbows, I had bitten deeply into my upper lip and got a good sized chunk of my left knee scraped off. I got to the park and cleaned up as best I could and even managed to score some tape & bandages from the park staff. I took some painkillers and forced myslef to hack with Tony for a bit. Eventually I left (just as Nathan showed up) to ride to a nearby Wallgreens to buy some antibiotic ointment and new bandages. I got back to Welles just as Tom arrived - just in time for show-and-tell. Here's what they saw...
























That wasn't so bad was it? Well, it wasn't bad enough to prevent me from kicking the rest of the afternoon. I hung a target from a low tree branch in order to practice some spikes while Nathan and Tom shred. Tony had to leave early due to some nagging back problems but he did mention that he was interested in making it out on Sundays to kick again. It was good to play with him after so long. I started by practicing a bunch of standing spikes but quickly grew bored of that. I switched to scissor sweeps and found it to be infinitely more fun than standing spikes. After a dozen attempts I was able to make a sloppy contact with the target hanging just over 6.5 feet. I'm thinking that 5.5ft-6ft will be much more practical/realistic in a game, though. I then moved on to side axes and shtatafs but had to quit early when the landings were just too much for my aching knee to handle. Inspired by Gilles Demeres, a dynamic and explosive player from Montreal, I decided to try some flying pulldowns. After just a few successful contacts I had already grown to like this spike over the standing version. I don't quite have Gilles' perfect form but hopefully it will become just as effective for me on the court.









The rest of practice was spent learning toe flips with the target initially set at about 5.5 feet. My first 2 attempts, as you would expect were ugly and awkward. Surprisingly my 3rd try had a good swing that carried my kicking leg back towards the ground for a respectable landing. I totally whiffed but the form clicked for me at that moment and I never had problems with it for the rest of the day! After dozens of attempts I was able to make contact with the target at about 6.5ft in the air but getting viscous kills at 6 ft and lower... I can't wait to unleash this on some poor fool next session









Full set here

Somewhere in the middle of all this, Tim calls, Tom leaves and Josh shows up to shred and play 2-square. He lost to Nathan on a best of 3 match, games to 11, winner stays. I won 2 matches against each of them in 2 straight games every time. I was actually lacking in confidence going in because it had been a while since I had played. The previous 2 times I played were against Tom and I was very sloppy and getting out gunned. Once I was in the square though I was very relaxed and focused. I had a few problems with not defending dinks and watching a few shots fly past me instead of challenging them but overall it was a very satisfactory performance. I was even hitting a few -just plain nasty corner shots, the ones that you want to believe it was pure skill that put it so close to the line instead of blind luck

After Jake left, Nathan and I got some food from Garcia's and we chillaxed for some time in the court across the street. Eventually we moved back to Welles and sat and had a good time talking for hours about footbag before we both decided to call it a day. My knee didn't bother me much during the bike ride home but it seemed like the painkillers wore out just as I took that first step on the back stairs with my bike over my shoulder... the agony! I sat for hours in my room uploading photos and watching video of my practice before finally finding enough of my testicles to shower and thoroughly clean up my nasty, pus-oozing crater of a kneecap. I've never known water to be so painful

I called to take today off work. I woke up sore as hell from practice and my knee aching like crazy. This thing needs to scab up already. I've going to have to go to work tomorrow no matter what, though. Ugh...

[Zeke]

I'm dying to play right now...

[Zeke]

Today was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

Edit:

Memphis Footworks and the Chicago Lake Coast Kickers are planning a road trip! We're meeting half-way between our cities in the small town of Salem, Illinois. If you'd like to join us, we're meeting at Bryan Memorial Park at 10:30 AM. (It's only about an hour east of St. Louis, MO.) We'll play until4-ish, get a good meal somewhere and head home afterwards. We're hoping this will be the beginnings of a new tradition: come out and be a part of it!

I asked Scot, who lives all the way out in the west suburbs, to pick me up at the end of the Blue line in Forest Park @ 6:30am Sunday so we could drive down to Salem, the designated town between our two clubs. But to get there I would have had leave my house around 4:15am to take a cab to the redline station, go south towards downtown, switch to Blueline train then head west to the Forest Park Station and hopefully get there around 6:30. It was enough to make me not want to go at all, sleep in and kick with the locals. Thankfuly, Rob Creel called and said he wanted to drive down with us. We planned it so that I left my house at 5am instead, took a cab to the Humbolt Park neighborhood where he was staying, hook up with him then get on the Blueline towards the west side. I got to sleep in later and bypass the shitty Redline train altogether. Sweet. It worked out so well we arrived at our destination 15 minutes early. It was a little chilly in the morning so we decided to play some 2-square while we waited fro Scot & Cory to pick us up. It took a little while to get used to his kicking style but once I became more familiar to it I was able to show him some of the finer points of Chicago 2-square, hehe. I was up 2 games and in the middle of a pretty good match by the time our ride picked us up. Pretty good start to the day.

Rob is a Renaissance man in that he shreds, plays net and squares. On top of that he's pretty cool and easy to talk to. That's important when on a 4 hour road trip with someone you've never met before. The drive was fairly uneventful. If the passengers weren't passed out we were treated to Scots many "old" footbag stories. The one about "The Animal" was probably my favorite... mostly because it's the only one I can recall at the moment. You know you're in for a good story when Scot starts out with, "You guys ever hear of..." or "Back in nineteen ninety-... "

We finally hit Salem and took a piss-stop in a Mcdonalds. After my business I placed my hands underneath one of those fancy paper towel dispensers with a motion detector. Nothing. "It's cuz I'm black, right?" Cory got a pretty good chuckle out of it while he washed his hands. I started to leave when he said, "Hey dude, look..." he proceeded to wave his pink little hands in front of the dispenser and was given a paper towel.
"Sonovabitch!"
Fuck that racist paper towel dispenser! It evened out when it took Cory 10 minutes to get his food - with no one ahead of him. Fucking McDonalds!

We found the park without too much trouble and pull up to a sweet little spot where Tommy and Mikey were already warming up. We greeted each other, unloaded the car and started setting up. Memphis signaled their arrival when Ben had announced that he had sensed something a bit queer with his olfactory organ. We had 8 players, 3 courts, great weather and 4 hours to kill. Warm ups started out with power kicking and hand toss rallies over the net. Rallies quickly became games. After being on the road for 4 hours I guess we just wanted to play as soon as possible.

We played doubles for the majority of the afternoon, changing partners just about every game so that everyone got a chance to team up with everyone else. I think I played well for the most part. My serves were 'on' again. I started serving deep then dropped a dink just past the net whenever I saw the opportunity. I felt I did a decent job of setting but it's impossible to truly know when you have such good players that can crush just about anything in sight. My spikes are still fairly inconsistent. Got a few scuffs and sole pushes but hit the net with every sweep I tried. Hit a toe jam during warm ups from one of Hammer's sets that got Scot's attention. I can still see the expression on his face after I blasted a sunback later on. I turned around and Scot was frozen with the bag rolling behind him, his arms out, palms up, shoulders shrugged and a look on his face like some just took a long nutty shit on his food. He was wondering out loud how someone my height could hit a (standing) sunback from the middle of the court. Late in the day I hit a more conventional sunback while playing with Ben. It felt great to kill with the only two that I tried.

Rob and I played some singles and did some practice in between doubles games. He was trying a new serve and I got to practice returning them. That worked out so well. I was having so much fun but I eventually had to give my knee a brake. The bandage I wore to cover the road rash just kept getting loose from the sweat and rubbing against the abrasion. This gave me a chance to take some good pictures though. Looking back, I wish I had taken more pics of the site, Mikey and Rob. Almost half of the images I captured were of Ben's monster spikes! He takes big scary swings at just about everything so it's hard not to shoot him. What surprises me more than his power is his freakish agility. Unfortunately, I only managed to play one game with him but thankfully only one game against him.

I only played with Hammer once throughout the day. Near the end I overheard Rob thanking him for being such a patient and encouraging teacher. It made me wish I had more court time with the Memphis crew. Hm, maybe I should have played better and earned it. Speaking of which, Tommy was absolutely on fire Sunday. I watched him hold his own against Ken in a singles match, he was brutally connecting with just about every swing and was jumping and reaching higher than he normally does. On the final play of the day he just flew up and crushed the bag with a pulldown from about 7ft up taking game point for his team with authority! It was the perfect way to end such a great day.

We cooled down, cleaned up and chatted about how incredibly great the day had turned out. There was talk about doing this again in a couple of weeks in Mikey's town after his wedding. If it's going to be as much fun as this past jam then I can't wait for it to happen.

The ride home, as always, seemed to go much quicker than the ride to Salem. Rob and I jumped into Tommy's car since he was driving into the city anyway. We stopped at a Subway to pick up a quick dinner for the road. As much as I dislike that place it was still better than eating at a McDonald's then being in a car for 4 hours after. Back on the road, we witnessed the end of a sundown and the start of a moonrise simultaneously... SSSSOOOOOOOOOOOO COOL!

[Zeke]

More photos here.
This is by far my favorite page of this blog

[Zeke]

Net sessions this week:

Thursday, Welles Park @ 6pm
-Tommy, Vince & Zeke
-Carrie

Saturday, Roosevelt Park @ 12pm
-Vince & Zeke

Sunday, Union Park @ 12pm
-Scot, Tommy, Vince & Zeke
-Alan, Jake

[Zeke]

Damm, I love this page