Fanzine

DTank126 · Post by **DTank126** » 05 Jun 2009 16:55

Hey Ken, your spinning game's gotten so good so fast! I'm very jealous.

Anyway I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoy your daily updates to your blog, it's always a pleasure to read during my breaks at work.

Oh, and tell Ryan Thomas that I have found the cheese. And it is good. He'll know what it means.

Peace

Sébastien · Post by **Sébastien** » 07 Jun 2009 05:33

hi Ken,

I see you haven't confirmed your presence for the Montreal Open. I hope you can come and play in Montreal in a week.

for the record, I think that your game is at a tremedous level, keep your good practice and positive energy.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 08 Jun 2009 03:39

Thanks for the kind words Doug and Seb; I really appreciate it. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to make it to Montreal this year. Flights aren't cheap, and 20 hours in a car is a lot, especially for just over a day in town.

Saturday shred:
After playing footbag for eight consecutive days, I took off Friday and just enjoyed hanging out with friends. My body appreciated the rest, and I came back very strong with a session on Saturday. It was pretty nice out, but after doing my warmup I figured it was a little humid. I also knew there wouldn't be anybody in the classrooms because it was a weekend, so I went inside to play. The combination of AC and being able to hear my music put me in a good mood, and I had an excellent session. I also took advantage of the good acoustics to practice my routine. It's slowly improving. I'd say my session broke down something like this: 12% routines, 5% consecutives, and the rest was just playing for fun.

Consecutive highlights:

*"Strong" paradox drifter x12. Old record was nine.
*"Flip" paradox drifter x13. Old record was six, so this really surprised me.
*Stepping clipper x26. Mostly did this just to motivate/annoy Josh M

Shred highlights:

*Frenzy
*Nine unique spinning tricks
*Spin osis-gyro osis drill. My first time hitting it; I'd like to tighten it up.
*Blurry torque-inspinning eclipse

And one of my better links of the day:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM6m-0fud_8&fmt=18[/youtube]

zeroman13 · Post by **zeroman13** » 08 Jun 2009 08:19

C-Fan wrote: *Stepping clipper x26. Mostly did this just to motivate/annoy Josh M

That you did sir! Props!

C-Fan wrote: *Spin osis-gyro osis drill. My first time hitting it; I'd like to tighten it up.

Props for this drill! It's really fun and challenging.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 09 Jun 2009 10:50

Continuing my tradition of blogging sessions out of order...

Got in a solid shred yesterday. It was a little hot and humid out though, so I went to my rainspot to play. As I was unpacking my gear, I realized that I had brought everything except for my camera. D'oh!

That said, that was the one item I could most afford to forget. If I had forgotten my bags, shorts, or shoes, I wouldn't have even been able to play. And the fact that I had my speakers and ipod meant that I could still practice routines. Not having a camera actually had some positive impacts too, as it allowed me to practice things I am bad at without having to worry about constantly dropping.

On that note, I started off the session by messing around a lot with calf kicks. Stuff like alternating calf kicks, pixie set calf kicks, bevclickety sets, etc. Halfway through this, I got the idea to try xbody calf kicks, which proved to be hard but also a lot of fun. I started doing pixie set xbd cloud kicks (think like a pixie reverse swirl, where your calf kicks the bag instead of completing the swirl). I'll try and get some of these on tape next time I play.

Weird stuff highlights:

*pixie xbdy cloud kicking ss mirage
*pixie xbdy cloud kicking eclipse
*bevclickety opp knee bump-opp legover-pixie opp calf kicking far osis

I also took advantage of the camera-less session by skooling my weakest spinning concepts. The two I focused on were flip zooming and flip inspinning. Flip zooming still feels like crap, but maybe if I get some on film I can better see what I am doing wrong. Flip inspinning is more promising. I think I could make it reliable if I put time into it.

Spinning highlights:

*spin clip-gyro clip-gyro clip-spin osis [rpt]
*spinning osis x2 bsos. One in each direction.
*spinning osis-spin clip bsos
*spin osis x3, unsealed. I'm coming for you Byrin!
*far osis-inspinning clipper [rpt]

And since I want to have a video in every post I make in my blog, here's one of the better runs I got on tape from my Sunday session:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il2jmnuYX0k[/youtube]

Rieferman · Post by **Rieferman** » 09 Jun 2009 12:04

that run above is my favorite run of you in as long as I can remember. Your style in terms of body control was tighter, and I liked the mix of tricks.

h0ag3yb3atZ · Post by **h0ag3yb3atZ** » 09 Jun 2009 14:28

C-Fan wrote:
*pixie xbdy cloud kicking eclipse

Wow that sounds really impressive. I thought of pixie xbody knee sets awhile ago but pizie xbody calf bumping is nuts. Props.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 10 Jun 2009 11:08

Sunday the DC Allstars had a special guest at our shred: Flash Bevier! What a nice surprise that was. Since he was staying in Virginia, we changed our shred spot from UMd to DC, and played at my usual shred-spot. I have to say it was really nice having everybody come out here, rather than committing to the two hour RT I do most Sundays to go play with everybody.

It was beautiful summer weather, so I got a Sin City comic out from the library, bought a Brisk iced tea, and sat by the metro reading until everybody showed up. On the walk to the shred spot, I got a call on my cellphone from an 808 area code. I didn't even know where that was. The reception wasn't great on the line, but after a few "who?"s I was shocked to realize it was...Yacine Merzouk! Holy crap! That came out of nowhere. It makes me happy to think about the friendships I made in footbag that have lasted after they dropped out of the sport. I've met some excellent people through footbag.

The weather on Sunday was really pretty ideal. It wasn't too hot or muggy in the shade, and we got the occasional breeze to cool us off. I thought we all played pretty well. I got Ryan and Flash to hit some consec records for me on tape, and I filmed a few runs, but for the most part I just played. Towards the end of the session Vince and Ryan stopped, and Ryan took a bunch of video of me and Flash. So thank him for most of these highlights.

Flash highlights:

*inspinning whirl!
*Symposium mantis
*barraging far squeeze
*Nice run with whirr bsos
*Bevclickety whirl bsos
*whirring swirl a couple times
*Gyro barrage

My highlights:
*Sonic eclipse
*Sonic clipper-pdx torque
*Blurry whizz-legbeater
*Overall my spinning style felt good.
*GSDLO. First try in the circle, and then it took me over 10 more tries to get one on film.

After shred we all went to get Thai food, which was delicious. Even though I was tired, it was so nice out I decided to go for a walk in Georgetown. I saw carp and turtles in the canal, and it reminded me a bit of seeing them in Yoyogi park in Tokyo. It made me nostalgic for Japan, and my Japanese footbag friends.

I'll close this out with the best run we caught of Flash:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CCvMJa_5ds[/youtube]

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 11 Jun 2009 13:06

Got in a two hour solo shred yesterday. For some reason though, I was feeling uninspired. I've been under a lot of stress lately, and I think it's creeping into my sessions a bit. The way I see it though, even if I'm not playing well or having fun, training will help me in the long run. I know that getting better at spins, or being able to do a dropless routine, aren't things that happen overnight. Sometimes you need to remind yourself that getting better takes work, and its not always fun.

I spent the first chunk of my session just trying to re-hit my highlights from my last session, but on film this time. Mostly I just wanted to see what my pixie xbody cloud kicking looked like from a 3rd person perspective:

*Pixie xbody cloud kicking eclipse
*Pixie xbody cloud kicking ss mirage

Then I re-hit some of my spinning highlights from my previous session:

*Osis-inspin clip [repeat]
*Spin clip-gyro clip-gyro clip-spinning osis [rpt]
*Spinning osis x3

I think spinning osis x4 is an achievable goal, but the true goal is just to develop flip zooming a bit more. It sucks so bad now.

I did a few normal runs, and even did a shred30 practice, but other than re-hitting my old highlights, I spent most of my time working on my routine. I've made some progress; at least now I know what I'm supposed to be doing at each part of the routine, even though sometimes I don't execute well. I feel like knowing the structure of the routine is important though, since it minimizes the margin of error. So while I may have had some lucky dropless runthroughs in the past, I'm almost happier with a structured 1 drop during my current practices. I think the latter gives me a better chance for dropless when it counts.

Gonna play again tonight then watch Game 4 of the Finals. If the Lakers win, it's pretty much over. I hope the Magic make a series of it.

I'll leave you with two other random highlights:

*Vertigo bsos
*Mullet x2

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 12 Jun 2009 21:29

Sometimes I feel like footbag is the only thing that makes any sense.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UyogiOTuHs[/youtube]

Ian Brill · Post by **Ian Brill** » 12 Jun 2009 22:28

Nice run.

I hope we kick soon.

I took off the days for NYFA jam today.

I am going to try and make it.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 13 Jun 2009 13:35

Life's been coming at me fast lately. It's stressful, but also kinda exciting. It kinda feels like somebody has thrown 8 balls in the air, and I need to catch as many as I can. On one hand it's tricky, on the other hand at least the process has started and most of my issues will probably be over in the next month or so. Then I have a week in Berlin, which I want to treat as more of a vacation than a tourney. Hopefully when I come back from Worlds, it will be to a new apartment with cheaper rent, and a big raise from work. While I can get stressed out during big transition periods in my life, I find it sometimes helps to tell myself: "this could be the start of the best period of your life." I guess this is always true, it just takes some effort to try and believe it.

Had a pretty excellent session on Thursday. For some reason I was feeling springy and creative, and everything was coming to me pretty easily. Then at the very end of the session, I pinched something in my neck during my SB 1 shot. It's weird too, cause if you look at the video I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary when the pain hit. Basically it felt like whiplash, but worse. I took a lot of advil and used icy-hot patches for the next couple days, and it helped a lot. I'm gonna roll the dice and try playing on Sunday, though I worry I may be rushing things. We'll see how I feel. I'm hoping I'll be OK so long as I stay away from ducking and sonic and play lightly.

Back to Thursday: I did some routine practice, but spent most of the session just playing for fun. Messed around a lot with whizzes and inspins, but also had some strings where I played with stuff I've for the most part abandoned over the last 6 months, like toe shuffle.

Highlights:

*Osis-Isis [repeat]
*Spinning osis-inspin clipper bsos
*PS Whizz bsos
*Blurry whizz-whirl [repeat] to mullet

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 16 Jun 2009 13:02

Hurt my neck pretty badly last Thursday, so the plan was to take off Friday and Saturday, and see how I felt on Sunday. As it turned out, I didn't get to play on Sunday because my apartment hunt went better than expected, and I closed on a place! Very exhausting day on many levels. Thankfully I had Monday off of work, and my neck was feeling better, so I was able to get in a session with Ryan Thomas.

We played in a park in Georgetown, and had a pretty laid back session. Ducking and diving didn't seem to hurt me while I played, which was promising. More than anything I just felt kinda out of shape/practice, and maybe a bit tentative because I didn't want to risk hurting the neck. As I write this on Tuesday, my neck feels about the same as it did before playing Monday, but my shoulders and upper back are really tight. But then, that could be due to a bunch of other things. I've got a feeling that my neck/back will work out fine over the next week, so long as I don't do anything stupid and don't overdo it with footbag.

Ryan played really well. Beyond hitting a bunch of good stuff though, he just has a very clean, controlled style. I hope it will motivate me to improve my own style, which can still be a little wild.

Ryan highlights:

*vortex-mobius
*mobius x2, midstring! I think he hit mobius bsos before, so when he did his third mobius, I totally didn't expect him to zoom out of it with another. He couldn't hit it again on tape, but he had some close looks.
*Symposium whirling swirl-anchor
*ingyro torque
*Spinning paradox miraging...bent?

I on the other hand, played pretty badly. I felt rusty with everything, and just overall like I was missing "the touch." I was very frustrated the entire time, which wasn't fun. At the end of the day the best I could say was that at least I was able to play, I put adds on my shoes, and I didn't exacerbate my injury.

Here's one of my better runs:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt8GXxa932Q&fmt=18[/youtube]

max · Post by **max** » 16 Jun 2009 18:11

Spinning paradox miraging...bent?

looks like spinning mofly no?

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 18 Jun 2009 11:56

When I first saw it, I actually thought it was spinning pdx miraging symp reverse whirl. When I got home I watched the clip frame by frame using quicktime, and it's not. After the spinning pdx mirage, the next component kinda looks like a leggy symp mirage, but he catches it on a clipper. So it's kind of like bent? I apologize for the poor video quality, and that I haven't bothered to learn how to edit my videos. That trick is a weirdie any way you slice it.

Skipped footbag on Tuesday due to a birthday dinner, but I got in a session last night. My shoulders/neck still feel tight, but I think they're getting better? Kinda hard to say. In any case, I was able to play without worrying about pain, and I had a productive session. I'd say my time was divided about 35/25/40 between routines, playing for fun, and filming consec records.

I started off the session by going for consecutive records. I used my warm-up as an excuse to go for the butterfly record, and ended up getting 118 of them. My non-video record is in the 160s, so this was good but not great. The consec attempt I was happiest with though was 40 smears. I think my actual record is around 43, so 40 on vid felt good.

After filming records, I tried shredding for fun. Spins felt a bit alien to me, so I decided to just play and not be too concerned about working on my spinning style. I still didn't play very well, so I decided to not film for most of the time, in order to remove any sense of pressure. At the end of the session, I think I only got like two things on tape I was happy with.. Since I was playing badly, I decided to work on routines.

Routines were the highlight of my session. I felt low-energy and not in the mood to practice, but I forced myself to do it, and it went well. When I'm up on stage about to compete, it's nice to be able to think back to days like this and say: "hey, I was able to hit this routine dropless on a day when I wasn't feeling it, so there's no reason I can't hit it today." My first routine had I think 3 drops, but I treated it like a warmup. I then did two dropless routines in a row, which put me in a good mood.

Here's probably the best run I got on tape all session:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V22zatPAJmw&fmt=18
[/youtube]

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 19 Jun 2009 10:44

I was exhausted at work all day yesterday, but with a tournament a week away, I didn't want to take time off. Got in a quick nap after work, then hit my rainspot for a session.

The most redeeming part of my session was practicing routines. Not that they went particularly well; just saying it felt good to put in time and work on them. One of my goals this year is to get another dropless routine. Ideally I'd love for it to be at Worlds, but I'll take it wherever it happens. Based on my experience last year, I know that the only way to do a good routine is to skool the shit out of it, so I'm really making a push now to get my routine solid. I'm motivated by the fact that next week is the New York tourney, which is one of only two tournaments I plan on attending this summer (the other being Worlds). NYFA routines are only one day and at Worlds I can't assume I will make semis, so (no pressure, but) next Saturday's routine will be one of the two or three routines I do all summer. By training a lot I hope to give myself my best chance when I do get on stage.

Didn't do much in the way of consecutives yesterday, though I did hit 27 magellans, which I'm pretty sure is a new personal record. Inspired (if that's the word) by Damon, I also spent some time messing around with tricks ending in rake, and hit some fun combos with them. It really just confirmed what I always thought about rakes: they're a cool mixup if you really accentuate the xbody aspect and bring it from where you would have clippered. On the other hand, they look super lame if you do one of those weak xbody toe rakes. You know the kind I'm talking about.

When I got home and loaded my videos to YouTube, I noticed that I now have over 600 videos on that site. At least 95% are footbag videos, and probably 99% of those are unedited 20-30 second clips I shot with my camera. I think it's safe to say that that camera was one of the best presents I ever got.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw6Rqqj0fvM&fmt=18[/youtube]

sen · Post by **sen** » 20 Jun 2009 18:09

Ken! Glad to see you still rippin it up!

Sporatical_Distractions · Post by **Sporatical_Distractions** » 21 Jun 2009 03:14

C-Fan wrote:Sometimes I feel like footbag is the only thing that makes any sense.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UyogiOTuHs&fmt=18
[/youtube]

Teach me how to properly dlo. You're ridiculous. in-gyro, smogs all over the place, gdlo into drills, gsdlo. teach me master.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 21 Jun 2009 16:49

Thanks for the kind words guys.

Kevin: I don't have any real good advice for DLO. The main things I keep in mind are:

1. Focus on the second dex (the legover). The first dex just sort of happens automatically. In a way a DLO is like a symple legover, but easier because your other leg gets out of the way.
2. Keep it tight.
3. The power is generated in your abs. Crunch it out.

Inspired by your compliment, and by Dave's new video, I hit a new DLO trick today:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyt1R9e2los&fmt=18[/youtube]

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 22 Jun 2009 09:09

Less-than-ideal footbag weekend. Friday I didn't play because I was exhausted and had a bunch of errands to do. I planned on playing on Saturday, but I wasn't able to squeeze in a session in between doing errands. I also got really bad shin splints from running to keep appointments, and moving a bigass futon/couch combination down some stairs. Sunday I wasn't able to go to the DC Allstars session because of, you guessed it, more errands, but I did manage to get in a solo session. Unfortunately my indoor spot was locked because it was a Sunday, so I played outside. Halfway through the session I tweaked my ankle while going for scorpions tail, probably because I wasn't used to the uneven surface at this new spot. Ugh. Less than a week til I compete at NYFA jam too...at least it doesn't feel like that bad a tweak. I've definitely done it worse in the past. I'm hoping that if I take it easy this week and warm up slowly before sessions/competition, I'll be fine.

In other health news, my neck still feels a bit weird. My co-worker is an occupational health specialist, and he thinks it may be due to my monitor height being too low. I stuck a phonebook under there, so hopefully that'll help out some.

Yesterday's session wasn't all bad. Before going out to play I watched Dave's new vid, which inspired me to play with whirling sets and continue to work on my whizz tricks. I did so many during the session that when I practiced my routine, I was accidentally doing whizzes instead of whirls. On that note, I put a lot of time into routines yesterday. Did some before the ankle tweak, and some afterwards. I think the most important thing I need to focus on is my pacing. When I pace the routine properly and stick to the plan, I can make it to the end with enough energy to close it out. When my pacing is off (say I fumbled somewhere, or my choreo is off and I've improvised some), I get pretty tired towards the end and am more likely to drop.

Highlights:

*Whirling pdlo. New trick.
*pixie whizz bsos
*blaze-dso-dso
*tomawhizz bsos. First time hitting it on either side.
*blurry whirl-vortex
*blurry whizz -symp whirl -psw bsos

One of my better runs from the day:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I63tHqT1zIs&fmt=18[/youtube]

Gonna take today off to let the ankle heal, but I'll try to play a couple times before the weekend so I stay in game shape before competition.