Muffinman

[Muffinman]

[I am suffering from a pulled groin. I haven't played footbag in probably almost three months now. It doesn't seem to be getting any better. I should stretch more but I can't find the time ]
I started this blog when I first got injured, in the spring of 2004. Now it is almost winter of 2007, and I'm only worse, with a handful of more injuries, unable to play. I'm going to use this post to make lists of stuff, though...



REHABILITATING DRILLS RECORDS LIST:
(As inspired by Ryan Seath)
BASIC KICKS
-alternating inside kicks (332)
-alternating outside kicks (18)
-alternating knee kicks (41)
-alternating toe kicks (125)
-alternating jesters (5)
-cloud kick > far clipper [repeat] (16 contacts)
-same toe > op knee > same toe > op knee [repeat] (19 contacts)
-outside > same toe > same inside > op inside > same toe > same outside [etc] (12 contacts)
-same outside > same inside > op inside [repeat] (19 contacts)

BASIC STALLS
-alternating inside stalls (21)
-alternating outside stalls (11)
-alternating toe stalls (100)
-op inside stall > same clipper [repeat] (53 contacts)
-op inside stall > wrap > same clipper > rev wrap [repeat] (10 contacts)
-alternating clippers (87)
-sameside clippers (right: 100 | left: 48 )
-alternating 10 sameside clippers (66 contacts)

BASIC DRILLS
-far clipper > osis [repeat] (right foot: 28 contacts | left foot: 29 contacts)
-osis (22)
-far osis (right foot: 5 | left foot: 5)
-osis > far osis [repeat] (9 contacts)
-clip mirage > osis [repeat] (14 contacts)



Stitching trades to make:
-Johnny Suderman
-Lotus

[HooD]

Did you ever see a doctor about your problem ? Also, will you be at Worlds ? I know you won't be shredding hard or anything, but I'd like to meet you anyways, good times are ahead of us...

[QuantumBalance]

hey eric i had a messed up hamstring from a week long dance performance but i have been stretching it EVERY SINGLE FREAKING DAY like 30 minutes a day divyed out through the day and its starting to get better after 3 weeks so ... do that

[Muffinman]

Thanks Sam. I will try to make the time to stretch more.
Yesterday I got The Move in the mail. I was so excited, but I've been so busy I couldn't even watch it. I came home briefly today to shower and popped it in for, like, 5 minutes. It doesn't play on my DVD player. I heard other people had the same problem. It's so annoying!! So I went to my girlfriend's house to see if it worked on their machine and it did. But they wouldn't let me watch it. So I have this dope new video and I can't watch it. I'm dying here. I'm going to email Fabian now and tell him I got the video. Then I'm going to stretch and get in bed.

[King Monkey]

hey Erik i have the same problems with my copy of The Move. if u have the facilities to do so, rip the DVD onto your computer and create an SVCD from the movie file. thats what i did and it plays almost perfectly except for right at the very end credits it starts to stuff up for some reason. there is not much drop in quality of the image either

[Muffinman]

Yeah. I've been thinking of buying a DVD burner for a while now, since they're going for so cheap ($150ish canadian). I'm leaning more towards that now, since then I could watch and burn (DVD) movies on my computer. I'm pretty upset that I still haven't seen The Move. I don't know how badly it skips for you, Ian, but on my DVD player it's basically NOT watchable. Fabian said it may be because I ordered DVD-R instead of DVD+R, but it is a -R player. It's just really low end and sucks ass. With a DVD burner I will also be able to burn my own movies onto DVD and make MENUS!!! and HIDDEN FEATURES!!! That would be the highlight for me in owning a DVD burner. Making my own kickass DVDs!!! WOOO!!

[HackyRichard]

I thought you had a tricked out xbox erik, have you tried it in that? My -r copy didn't work in my pc at all, but it worked semi well in my xbox and on my laptop (it would play flawlessly for a time and then choke).
I had to go extra ghetto style to get a copy onto my pc, as I couldn't even rip the dvd onto either computers, I played it on my xbox and recorded it thru the tv onto my dv camera (by some fluke it played flawlessly barring a small glitch in yacines section) and from there onto my main pc.

You're missing a really nice vid btw erik, I'm sure if you put on the charm you'll be allowed to watch it at marita's place, it's black and white so it's kinda artsy if that helps the cause

You definitely should get a dvd burner, that would be a great combo quality chan editing and dvd image quality, and hidden features too (top secret muffin recipes mmmm)

blurry whirl>whirr>[repeat] looks really pretty full screen dvd quality

[Muffinman]

REALLY? Crap!!
My brother broke my Xbox, so it's been in the process of being repaired for a looong time. I've asked my brother to buy my a DVD burner over the weekend -- I will be really upset if I can't watch The Move on it. What the fuck??
I watched the first few minutes at Marita's house and I love it. I love it so much I tried a million times to watch on my own player, even through the horrible twitching and freezing (basically no sound and no picture....).

[sNale]

Chan you are really hardcore! Watching footbag videos without picture and sound
I hope your back in again soon, and start to upload videos again!

Greetings

[Muffinman]

I bought a DVD burner today and was able to watch The Move! It is by far the best shred video I've ever seen!!!!

[King Monkey]

hey good for you Erik! it must have been the worst having it sit there and not be able to watch it... but now u can enjoy its greatness too

isnt Vasek's section just so scary?!

[canadian girl]

What are you talking about mister chan!!!??? I was like, "You can keep watching it if you want hon, I'll talk to my dad (because I wanted to chat with him, and he didn't understand footbag at all)" and you were like, "no, it's alright" and I was like "Well, you can watch it later with me if you want.."

Silly boy, making me sound evil and not letting you watch the best shred video ever. I'm really not THAT mean people!

Anyways, I still want to see it. AND, you didn't tell me you bought a DVD burner!

Pshh, this boy makes me sound evil, and then doesn't even tell me cool stuff!!!! Anyways, talk to you later.

[HackyRichard]

Somebody's in trouble

[Muffinman]

I still haven't played in quite a few months. But I'm finally seeing an athletic therapist. My third appointment is tomorrow. My insurance coverage is almost used up so I'm not sure what I will do after the next two sessions. I will either ask my parents to help pay or I will try physiotherapy somewhere else (since I'm covered almost 4 times more for physio).

I had ultrasound on Tuesday and a groin massage @____@

The doctor asked me what specific moves were hurting and I showed him and he gave me exercises based on those moves (I was really impressed with that!) So what I do is I wear these workboots (instead of ankle weights) and move slowly through the motions for (mostly) whirl and inside kicks -- I tried atomic sets and barrages a bit too but it didn't have the same straining effect.

I have a lunge stretch I have to do, also and I'm supposed to do inside kicks without a bag. Everything 3 sets of 20 reps (or 20 seconds), 3 times a day. Today I only did 2 sets of everything (well -- I will do the second soon) because my groin feels really tender from the massage (it hurt so much). So I'm going to ice for a bit now.

Oh yeah, he also said my pelvis keeps sitting out of alignment (or something??) and that it is putting strain on the muscles and that if it continues he will send me to a chiropractor.



Anyway.
Champion's league is sick. I can't wait for my own copy to arrive. I still go out to sessions with Derek and Andrew as often as I can to film. i have some footage from Worlds that Derek filmed for me to edit sometime too. So I'm hoping to make a fun DVD with all this footage.

Last session I wore my lavers. I shouldn't have worn my lavers. I played a bit, lightly. Some osis', spinning clipper > ducking clipper [repeat], spinning clipper > gyro clipper [repeat]. Plus I hit barfly (I've been aching to double dex for soooo long -- I always air shred at work...) and I hit mobius first try. That was really cool and I got props

I am still walking with a limp >_____<

[Muffinman]

PS: Thanks to everyone who keeps PMing me about how I'm doing -- it means a lot!! I hope everyone else heals up fast!

DONT FORGET TO STRETCH!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Muffinman]

My athletic therapist said I can start back into the basics today. I haven't been keeping up with my exercises because I've been soooo busy. I have a week before school starts now, though, where I have nothing so I'm going to stretch and exercise like mad. I tried jogging first last week to see how the impact (with my legs aginst the ground) would affect my injury (I don't know if I corrected myself before but it's actually my hip flexor rather than my grroin).

I jogged for 2 minutes just around the block and I didn't feel any pain. I felt fine the next day too. I won't jog today but I did some basic kicks for about 5 minutes in my backyard. (Oh yeah -- did I mention I was winded after 2 minutes of jogging? I haven't exercised in, like, 5 months and I have lost all my stamina.) I am starting from scratch and concentrating completely on bothsidedness.

I could never inside kick on one side, toe flick on one side and outside kick on one side. Outside is by far the weakest. I played equally with insides and toes today -- it felt REALLY good. I thought I would start with 2 adds, but there's no way I'm ready for that yet. I did some alternating toe stalls concentrating on leaning my upper body over to either side when doing eitehr toe stall (rather than leaning to the right on a right toe stall AND leaning to the right on a left toe stall). Then I did some consecutive sameside clippers (alternating is too much impact for now) and a couple ducking clippers back to back. It felt really good just to know that I can still control a bag. I played with my J-Bag. I am going to start up again with bead bags!!

Anyway, I'm really excited about getting back into footbag again.

School starts in a week. Derek and Mark are both going to the same university, so we are going to try to hook up some regular jam times. We also have a tournament coming up. We haven't done any advertising of any kind. It's in just over a week. I should make some flyers or something.

My personal life feels really messed up so I'm very happy to have this relaxing week off before school (I dropped all my shifts at work except one to start with -- they're really nice and will give me as much more as I want once I know how I can handle my school load). I'm going to concentrate a lot on footbag (hopefully painting and photography too -- I've used, like, almost 20 rolls of film for photography in August alone and I have a few large canvases I'm going to do some portraits of my girlfriend on.)

That's about it for now.
I'm going to go relax and maybe finish my midday exercise routine.

[zachatree]

Awsome man sooo glad to hear that your starting to kick it up again, hope you start freestyleing it out soon

have a good one man !

Zach

[sen]

Hey Chan I'm glad to hear your starting to get back into it too!

I'm kinda at the same point of you except the reason I haven't been kicking is just plain Laziness. I hope you have a speedy recovery.

[ericksonj]

Yes! Chan is back in the game!!! It feels so good to start playing again doesn't it? Just make sure you stretch a bunch and warm up really well before playing, and then stretch a bunch afterwards. I've been back from my injury for like 3 weeks now, and I am already better than I was before my injury. In the beginning it hurt my leg a little bit to play, but I just would take a few days off and stretch really well and I was fine. You will be amazed at how quickly your body will strengthen itself!

I'm really glad you're back Erik!!

[Muffinman]

Thanks guys! Especially James -- thanks for checking up on me all the time. It means a lot! I'm only kicking and I only kicked 5 minutes yesterday. I feel fine today, though, so I'm about to go try kicking and some basic stalls again for 10 minutes or so. Maybe 15.

I have been stretching and exercising an hour to 1.5 hours a day -- I'm not playing at a level, yet, where I really need to stretch much after I play since all I'm doing is kicks. But I will ice and do some basic stretching just to make sure that everything is okay.


Here is a list of what I do in my routine (2-3 times a day):
STRETCHES
1) "lunge stretch" -- kneel with legs behind, facing forward. Move non-injured leg in front of me so that my foot is flat on the ground and my thigh is parallel with the ground (knee bend at 90 degrees). Turn lower leg of injured leg inward as much as possible (anywhere up to 90 degrees from original position). Slide foot (of non-injured leg) forward (a distance I adjust according to the amount of stretching I feel is actually stretching comfortably) and slowly lunge forward so that the knee of the uninjured leg is at 90 degrees again. Hold for 20 seconds making sure that upper body faces forward. 3 sets of this between short breaks.

2) "inside kicks" -- basically an inside kick with just my injured leg repeated 20 times without a bag. 3 sets between breaks.

3) "pull" -- laying on my non-injured leg side with both legs straight (injured leg above non-injured leg) bend (injured) lower leg so that its touching my bum -- hold in place with hand. With non-injured leg press against lower thigh of injured leg so that the injured leg is pulled behind the back to stretch that is not too aggrivating (when my athletic therapist does this one to me it hurts quite a bit -- bit in that good way...). Hold for 20 seconds and repeat for 3 sets between short breaks.

EXERCISES (with ankle weights -- I use a heavy work boot. I'm supposed to increase weight as I feel I'm able to.)
4) "slow inside kicks" -- basically the same as the inside kicks but slowly. It should take two seconds to raise my leg to the peak of the motion and then 3 to lower it back to the ground. I hold for a second or two once I'm at the peak. 20 reps, 3 times between breaks.

5) "slow whirl" -- a specialized exercise my athletic therapist gave me for the movements that aggrivated my injury directly when I would play -- at first I tried atomic sets and barrages slowly but they didn't work the same. Basically it's the motion of a whirl slowed down to 4-5 seconds -- I exaggerate the motion to increase my flexability and strength in the muscles. I try to do 10-15 reps of this one, 3 sets.

6) "90 degree lift" -- The hardest one, but It is getting easier so maybe I will add some more weight tonight or tomorrow. Lift the thigh of the injured leg to a 90 degree angle so that it is parallel to the ground. Then lift lower leg so that the entire leg is 90 degrees to the body (or as best as possible -- my knees don't bend very well so it's pretty weak looking) -- this lift should take 2 seconds. Hold leg straight for 2 seconds. Then lower in 3 seconds. Repeat 10 reps (I can't do more, though I may have done 15 one time...But my therapist said that more weight is better than more reps anyway.) for 3 sets.


Yip -- that's about it. That took a while to write out I should go do some actually stretching now. Later