Spin me like a Ceiling Fan

[C-Fan]

New self-imposed challenge: set new personal records for the following:

Unique guiltless string. No idea of current record.
Unique tripless string. Current record is 23 or 25? *
Unique fearless string. Current record is 10.

I think the unique guiltless one is going to be tricky, since there's so many possibilities. I think my goal should be around 40 or 50, but the hard part is going to be keeping track of whether or not I've already hit something. Should be a fun challenge. As for unique tripless, I'm going to shoot for 30. If I string together drills and throw some fives in there, I should be able to make that. As for fearless, the real goal is just to get 10 on video, since I've never got that on film. But really, getting 12 would be a good goal.

*I'm at work now, so I can't watch them, but I think one of these is likely my record or close to it:

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=nSWyJzOA8-o[/youtube]

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=rSLu5oFfcfg[/youtube]

As an update, I'm still working sporadically at 69. Don't really see much progress on it, and at this point if I get it it'd be flukey. My most immediate goal now is to set a new fearless record, followed by tripless and guiltless in that order. Hopefully stating it in public in this thread will keep me focused and motivated.

[C-Fan]

New self-imposed challenge: set new personal records for the following:

Unique fearless string. Current record is 10.

As for fearless, the real goal is just to get 10 on video, since I've never got that on film. But really, getting 12 would be a good goal.

Got ten unique fearless on video yesterday! Took me a few sessions to work up to it, but it paid off. I still would like to break 10, and it's definitely possible. That said, I feel like a lot of the pressure is off now, so I probably won't be dedicating entire sessions to this anymore. At least not in the immediate future. I'll be in warmer climes over Thanksgiving, and I'm going to try for 10+ during those sessions. Ideally I'll get it, in which case I'll put out a video with my 10 and 10+ fearless combos. If I don't, I'll just put out a video of yesterday's 10 string.

I'm kinda just glad though I got the ten. Since it's the off season, I can mess around with stuff like fearless, which is fun, but wont help my routine at Worlds next year. Now that fearless is more or less taken care of, I will work on my other two goals of unique guiltless and unique tripless. I feel like these other goals will help me at Worlds next year, since they will force me to work on my stamina, concentration, and bothsidedness. A ten fearless string does teach you certain skills (energy management), but I don't think it'd translate as directly to helping me with routines as the other goals should.

[C-Fan]

Challenges/Goals as of end of February 2012:

Routine finals at Worlds
Triple spinning anything
Nemesis
69
Start building freestyle scene in Denver after Worlds
Win USO this year, if it happens

[Sporatical_Distractions]

toe gyro legover>datw>rpt

[C-Fan]

Sounds so simple, and yet, it's ridiculously hard for me. Good challenge.

[Muffinman]

Did you achieve your February goals, Ken?

[g00d33]

Challenges/Goals as of end of February 2012:

Nemesis

I thought you had a nemesis on film around the time you got montage on film? Or am I just thinking of montage?

[C-Fan]

I still haven't achieved the goals I identified in February.

Here's the status on them:


Win USO, make routine finals at Worlds: have not started choreographing, but I've been listening to songs, and practicing my juggling.
Triple spinning: haven't worked on it much.
69: haven't worked on it at all
Freestyle scene in Denver: I've tried recruiting a bit since my last post. Not much traction yet, but I'm making a bit of an effort.
Nemesis: I was working on furious for a good bit, and saw it getting a little better. Then I hurt myself by overdoing it going for a furious quad. So now I've kind of laid off working furious so hard. My plan is to heal up a bit more, and then periodically work furious just to get the set better, but not chase quads with it just yet.

A couple years ago I hit a "the" nemesis which I posted, but it's not even close to clean. I think this is what you were referring to John:

I guess it might not be a bad idea to try and hit another one on my new camera, cause even if it's just as thin, at least the video quality would be a lot better.

[Sporatical_Distractions]

Sounds so simple, and yet, it's ridiculously hard for me. Good challenge.

Now that you're busting beasts, it's fun to think of weird guiltless combos for you.

toe zulu pickup>datw (o-i)>gyro mirage>rpt

[C-Fan]

New personal gyro clipper record. Hadn't worked this in a couple years, so it was a nice surprise:

[C-Fan]

Printed out my old spinning challenges, and tried to hit as many as I could in one session:

[Sporatical_Distractions]

Thought of a trick I've never seen:
-gyro omelette

[C-Fan]

I've been sick for pretty much 3 weeks now. I competed at East Coasts, but other than that I haven't played any footbag over this period of time. I figure it's a good time to examine/set goals for myself, and also check in on where I'm at with some other goals. Let's start by revisiting some goals I listed 8 months ago:

Challenges/Goals as of end of February 2012:

Routine finals at Worlds
Triple spinning anything
Nemesis
69
Start building freestyle scene in Denver after Worlds
Win USO this year, if it happens

I didn't hit any of my dream moves, but I don't feel bad about that. Given that my main summer goals were competition based, it was probably a good thing that I didn't waste time or risk injury dicking around with furious and nuclear. Now that I'm done with competitions for the next few months, I'll put in some time to working these concepts.
I didn't achieve my routine goals for USO or Worlds. While it's a bit disappointing, they were ambitious goals. I think it's good to set goals which are challenging reaches. Also, while I didn't achieve my comp goals this summer, I didn't do that badly either, and I did win Circle at USO which was nice bonus.
As for the freestyle scene building in Denver...man I did bad at this. After seeing the scene in Portland, and the one in Seattle, it really strikes me that I could and should be doing better at this. I think it requires some dedicated time though, and that's in short supply the way my life is currently set up.

So what now? Knowing me, I think I'll have similarly ambitious competition goals come next summer. Therefore, I'm going to take advantage of the coming months to set some ambitious non-competition goals for myself, and see how many I can get. I'm definitely up for taking suggestions, but at this stage in my career I'm most likely to focus on knocking off some dream moves I've had for a while, more than anything.

Here's my first crack at it:

Nemesis
69
Triple spinning anything
Spinning vortex/gdlo/spender
12 fearless
12+ fearless
A couple new 7 adds
Guiltless string over 60 contacts, that's not totally boring
Learn surging set
2 new beasts

If I hit any of these, I'll post here, hopefully with video. It's a pretty ambitious list for me, so I might not get many/any, but I like having ambitious goals. Hopefully posting them publicly like this will motivate me to do them.

[C-Fan]

A couple new 7 adds

In Nevada this week for business. Got in too late on Sunday for footbag, but I played yesterday with Evan and Overbo, and I played solo today. Haven't worked much on these goals on this trip, and probably won't...maybe I will tomorrow. My last session before leaving Denver though I hit 2 new 7s...though one uses xdex. Whatever, for my purposes this closes out this bullet from my recent challenges.

[C-Fan]

2 new beasts.

I think this is a new beast for me. So one more and I get this goal crossed off my winter to do list.

[C-Fan]

Guiltless string over 60 contacts, that's not totally boring
.

So close!

[C-Fan]

2 new beasts.

I think this is a new beast for me. So one more and I get this goal crossed off my winter to do list.

And here's my second one, crossing this goal off the list:

I actually hit a third beast today, but it was badly framed. I will try and rehit it tomorrow, but if I can't get it again I think I'll let it go. I know I hit it, and besides, I've already achieved my stated goal of 2 new beasts on video.

[C-Fan]

On my winter footbag goals list, I had:

Guiltless string over 60 contacts, that's not totally boring

Of all my goals from that list, this is the one that's most likely to make me a better player, and eventually a better routine player too. Yesterday, I hit a run which I consider good enough to satisfy this goal. That said, I think I will make a point to do at least one stamina string every session from here on out, just to keep pushing myself.

Here's the string I hit yesterday:

Math wizards out there may notice that the above string is only 59 contacts, while my stated goal was "over 60 contacts." I thought about that, and decided it'd be stupid to consider the goal unfulfilled, just because it's two contacts short. The purpose of the goal was to push my stamina while doing a string without too many bails, and I achieved that. My string starts off with 12 unique tripless, and has only 25% BOP. Would I have given myself credit for achieving my goal if I had done 61 contacts with 30% BOP and 3-4 fewer 4 adds? Absolutely. So why penalize myself for being 2 contacts short, when my BOP percentage was so low and I had so many unique tricks? I may be a perfectionist, but even I know it'd be pointless to not give myself credit for the run.

So to sum up everything I wrote here:

1. I consider this winter goal achieved.
2. Even though it's crossed off the list, I will continue to work it because I think it'll help my game in general, and not because I feel I need 60+ contacts.

[crazydwarf]

Hey Ken I'd like to see a huge unique guiltless string from you (and it seems like it's something your working on to) something like this...

6 bops <-bop
8 duck/dive/zulu/weaving clipper<-ducks
12 ducking/diving butter/osis/mirage
4 spinning clipper/gyro clipper<-spins
4 spinning/gyro mirage
6 ripwalk/sidewalk/blur <-shuffle
4 pixie legover/mirage
4 whirl and pdx whril <-whirls
6 symp mirage/ps mirage/symp whirl <-symp moves
6 double legover/torque/drifter <-miraging moves

this seems doable for you and is 54 contacts + it has all the basic concepts I can think of. Doing it all in 1 run might be a bit much but even if you leave out a couple categories it'll be >40. I'm sure you can find some substitutions to make this easier for you or maybe just some more tricks to add to make it harder!

[C-Fan]

Interesting challenge. Would the themed concepts need to be in blocks, or could they be scattered throughout? Either way, I'll give it a try next time I play. Given that the weekend looks cold and possibly snowy,this might be a while though.

Thanks for the challenge and the post, Dustin. I'll definitely try to film something similar to this for you.