How did You find footbag?

General footbag-related topics that don't fit elsewhere go in here.
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footjoe
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How did You find footbag?

Post by footjoe »

Well It all started for me when these like2-3 kids could toe stall and shoulder stall and stuff. Then i got a crotched hacky sack at the bottom of my hill theres a gas station that was selling them. So i like kicked with that and learned toe stalls in one day out in my yard. I practiced so long just to get them but it felt sooo good. Then I went to school and showed them my toe stalls and stuff and i was very pleased but i wanted more. So i looked up "hacky sack" tricks on google and found flipsider. I was so amazed on what this man (ellis) could do with that little bag and his feet so i laced up my dc skate shoes funny because i thought that would work and i learned like clipper kick both sides and i always had mirage off ym foot i just wasnt quick enough for the catch. Oh yeah i also bought a 122 panel shaggy hack like when i found flipsider. Then i wanted to be good like ellis so i bought some rods and a mr.sandbag from footbag.org and thats where it took off from there.

Tell us How you found footbag
15 year old Joe Kulacz
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Post by Juice »

Well there were a few different ways that made me get into footbag. One of them was when i saw the movie "Shes all that" where Freddie (Chad i think played the part) did a footbag scence up on a stage. I thought it was bloody amazing so I wanted to try it. Then at State Tee-Ball camp one of my mates brought a hacky sack and we all kicked and played with it. Then when i got home i kicked a little hard ball thing around then i bought a Striker Hacky Sack. Then i looked up tricks on the net and found footbag.org
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slapdash21
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Post by slapdash21 »

when i was younger, my older brothers used to kick around...occasionally a toe stall, but only rarely. we never knew there was anything beyond that. so i grew up just kicking it. but then i started to get slightly better and i decided to try to 'invent' some other stuff to do with it, so i would do knee stalls, forehead stall, stuff like that. and, same as other people, i wound up looking online at websites for 'hacky sack' and wound up finding a lot more than i was looking for.
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Post by BainbridgeShred »

Kicked for a few months with a couple of buddies. Were kicking in the terminal of the Minnesota airport when a guy came up and started hitting stuff we'd never seen. The guy was Miles Kelly (Waldenpond on here) and he told us about footbag.org and Rain City Shred in Seattle.

Hooked ever since.
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Post by qphox »

Mine's really similar to Joe's. I emailed Ellis, asking why it's not called a Jester, why it's not Hacky Sack, how he got so good...etc. A lot of standard newbie questions. He emailed back, happy to help out with my questions. A lot of the freestyle was so far beyond my 8 kicks record, so I decided I should master the basics before I try the stuff on there.

So I chose to get my kicks dialed up. I practiced dropping the bag to my foot, kicking it, then handcatching, over and over and over. My Mom would go into a furniture store, I'd stand outside and count to 50 kicks on each surface. Then we'd get home, I'd do 50 more. In a few days, the kicks got a lot easier, so I made up a chart of "Kick X > Kick Y".

Inside > :
ss inside
op inside
ss toe
op toe
ss outside
op outside

And the same for outside and toe. I think I had sole and clipper in there too, but they had asterisks beside them, meaning "Maybe not yet, but try it out."

Once kicks were down, I used the same method for learning delays. I did 50. Then 50 more. Etc. Then I used the exact same chart, delaying instead, and incorporated clippers. I'd learned enough about freestyle by this point to understand the concept of dexterities, and how they can be in-out or out-in, but I still wasn't really up on the terms. So I decided to make some more practice charts, using the surfaces I knew.

They worked kinda like Jobs, now that I look back on it. It was basically the same kinda thing as the "Inside >" thing above, but it would insert an in-out dex in there. Or an out-in dex. I viewed the set, the dex, and the delay all as separate entities, so it was 'set X > dex Y > del Z'...all one trick. I differentiated between which leg does what by putting "Change Legs" in between each element. So Toe > in-out dex > Toe, using each combination of changing legs between elements, could be ATW, Mirage, ss Mirage, or Pickup. I had the same thing starting and ending on inside. Or start on Outside and ending on Toe. Or starting on Clipper and ending on Outside. I never did manage to hit all the stuff on there...seeing as there's stuff like Pdx Drifter with Soles...but I did manage to have all bases covered.

As I learned on my own, and experimented with different combinations of elements, the freestyle I was reading about online and the video I was watching...it all started to make sense. It was this big revelation, I immediately recognized the difference between Out-in Atw and Legover. I didn't have to watch the mirage 50 times to understand what happened. Even some of the later stuff like Drifter, I could understand. It was all just parts making up a whole. Freestyle was attainable.

Then I practised more.
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ebo
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Post by ebo »

I remember first seeing a vid of a xbody rake - I was trying to figure
out what was going one for days. ;)

It started the classical way - blabla 2 years kicking blabla searching for hacky sack tricks on google blabla footbag.org blabla downloaded
Ryan's 2001 Final routine blabla started working on toes and insides
and bought a bag from planetfootbag.com.

It took me 2 years to fully understand hardcore shred. I mean,
when I watched freestyle videos when I started out, I couldn't
understand anything. Half a year ago it was still like "Oh, wait,
he just did a, erm, what was the set again?" while losing out on the
following 10 tricks. Now I'm finally able to fully follow and understand
the shred of today's pro's. It took loads of videos to get to this point ;)
It becomes harder and harder for me to really understand what people
think of the sport when they watch it for the first time, because it's
oh so clear to me :)

Anyway, I'm rambling.

With noone to guide me, I practised mostly alone, without knowing
the concept of both-sidedness. I hit a couple of clean phoenixes before
I hit one decent flipside clipper or legover!
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Post by mc »

I had been circle kicking for a few years at Cross-Country running meets. It was easily my favorite part of being involved with the team. Then, when I was 16, I went to a Beck concert in Saratoga, NY. I saw a guy in rolled up pants and birkenstocks doing osis and double around the world. I had never seen anything like it. I came home and researched footbag, and the next summer (or maybe it was that summer), I went to my first tournament, the Funtastik Summer Classic. I met Steve Goldberg (who was my hero for years to come) and Ryan Mulroney and Sunil Jani and Bob Riefer and Yacine Merzouk, and a bunch of others. Good times...
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Post by pips »

Eric Windsor randomly imed me cuz I had hacky sack in my aol profile. I had no clue what was coming when he asked me if I played hacky sack. But I'm happy he did!
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Post by Outsider »

Kickin' the Hack around at Grateful Dead concerts back in the early 90's, and at school during lunch. I thought stalls were stupid, cause doing toe stalls with a really hard crocheted bag takes too much patience with too little pay-off. I went to college and saw somebody do an Around the World Stall and I reconsidered my position on stalls (now that I can see that stalls are useful for doing something fancy like circling your foot around the bag, I can appreciate their value). I practiced all summer with a reasonably soft sipa sack in Nike hightops. I returned to college in the fall, and trying to show off my one trick (the only trick I really knew) in a circle, one of the dudes said "there are these guys who play over by the library; all they do are stalls...". Not knowing how many other stalls they could mean, I was intrigued and checked at this library scene. It was Daryl Genz and Jane Zerbe (nee Jones) and a couple others (Brent and Jeff: they quit. Too bad. ) They taught me everything. Within half a year I had ordered Lavers and Tricks of the Trade. Just in time for my first groin pull. I learned to stretch out.
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Post by junkyardjew »

I'm twenty-one, and I started kicking when I was FOURTEEN. Man, that's seven years I could have been shredding... Up until even this summer I was kicking around a crocheted bag, usually at work, and often in steel-toed boots. I've probably kicked with a thousand different hippies at music festivals all over ontario every summer, and I'd seen some guys who were really good and fluid at kicking, but never anybody who played footbag until I was introduced to Tom in November.

He was playing some footbag to busk for warchild, which my friend Jess runs. He got me to kick with him, and watching him bust just blew my mind. I'd never seen anything like it, and I was instantly hooked. I came out to a club meeting the same week, and made my first four panel the next day (I've always been good at sewing...). Now every time I play I wish I'd heard about footbag when I was in grade 8!
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Post by LittleBoy footbag »

Well there were a few different ways that made me get into footbag. One of them was when i saw the movie "Shes all that" where Freddie (Chad i think played the part) did a footbag scence up on a stage. I thought it was bloody amazing so I wanted to try it. Then at State Tee-Ball camp one of my mates brought a hacky sack and we all kicked and played with it. Then when i got home i kicked a little hard ball thing around then i bought a Striker Hacky Sack. Then i looked up tricks on the net and found footbag.org

yeah it was big add chad....one of the ways it came to me...

the true reason was I saw, going home from school a buncha kids kicking a crocheted around and it was the last day of school so I was like, cool I'll try ANYTHING once......................ten minutes later, I was hooked.....I sucked-ass, but I was hooked. I felt like shit going home and only getting like, two kicks total so I found an old bag in my mom's room (don't ask but seriously) and started kicking it.....I didn't know anything though then about footbag so I learned this toe hold things............................which later turned out ot be toe stall....I showed my friends that the next day which by then, I knew the trick cuz I thoguht I invented something revolutionary......and that's about it...


as for Mr. Schneider, yes i am due for a kciking with you....................I'll try to find some time this summer for us to kick.....

:)
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Post by Stuge47 »

BainbridgeShred wrote:Kicked for a few months with a couple of buddies. Were kicking in the terminal of the Minnesota airport when a guy came up and started hitting stuff we'd never seen. The guy was Miles Kelly (Waldenpond on here) and he told us about footbag.org and Rain City Shred in Seattle.

Hooked ever since.
That is almost exactly how I started, but with some differences.

Back when I was a freshman in highschool (Senior in HS now), I used to hack all the time, every day, after school, for like an hour with my friend Josh Mouser and sometimes Erik Sederholme. We all mastered the toe stall and it was the shit. A good year indeed.

Erik went to another school and met Ricky Moran and then heard about footbag and started learning from him. He also heard that someone from MTHS played footbag. So we got a whole thing together and thats where I met Miles and Ricky, and also when I got my first impression of footbag. It was crazy stuff.

I kind of stopped for a long time though, because I was lazy and yeah. Junior year I went to SJFF and saw so many people busting, and decided to really work my ass off in the art of footbag

I guess thats my story. Kind of long and I am really exhausted, so some stuff might not make sense.
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Post by lightningbolt »

I saw some people kicking in the mall. I bought a bag at the store I bought my sisters gift. Within a day of buying the bag I wanted to learn tricks so I googled "hacky sack tricks". I found flipsider first. Read all of the know section and the rest is history.
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Post by Uranos »

I saw Dan Ednie Shreddin hard ath the station and from then he told me to come to sunday kicks. For a while i didnt go because i went to japan and i didnt have much interest, to be honest. IN fact, 1 year before this when i was 12, i did a bit of hacking around when i bought a footbag which came from the Pepsi Promotional event in japan where you get a footbag (good quality!!) with every pepsi bottle you buy. With the bag came instructions and the basic tricks list. For hours i tried to do them but just couldnt!

My game only started kicking about 6 months ago when i only started playing 24/7 and i always had a footbag with me everyday
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Post by Canthraxsoldier »

junkyardjew wrote:I'm twenty-one, and I started kicking when I was FOURTEEN. Man, that's seven years I could have been shredding... Up until even this summer I was kicking around a crocheted bag, usually at work, and often in steel-toed boots. I've probably kicked with a thousand different hippies at music festivals all over ontario every summer, and I'd seen some guys who were really good and fluid at kicking, but never anybody who played footbag until I was introduced to Tom in November.

He was playing some footbag to busk for warchild, which my friend Jess runs. He got me to kick with him, and watching him bust just blew my mind. I'd never seen anything like it, and I was instantly hooked. I came out to a club meeting the same week, and made my first four panel the next day (I've always been good at sewing...). Now every time I play I wish I'd heard about footbag when I was in grade 8!

I know exactly how you feel. I started kicking when I was in year 7 so I woulda been about 12.... never bothered to look up "hacky sack" on google.... until I was in year 11.... then I found footbag.org.....and the aussie titles were coming up soon, so I went to them and saw people doing all this tricks and I was just like 8O
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Post by LittleBoy footbag »

i wish we had a footbag time machine......then we could just put the know-how we all have now into our 7th or 8th grade bodies before..........then we'd be kick-ass in the future.......I'll do it.....I just need to figure out the whole time-space continuum thing....
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Post by B_Man »

I started getting into circle kicking in the 10th grade after a long distance relationship ended. I guess I was pretty decent at kicking to start out with due to martial arts training, but at the time I could only do consec toe kicks with my one foot.

Anyways, what started out as something to kill time quickly became something so much more. I would always bug my friend to whip out his crocheted bag and start a circle. There were a few people who were "the pros" at my high school, and they were doing Flying Clippers, delays and Butterfly Kicks. I distinctively remember one of the biggest combos was entitled 'Turbo' which was a Flying Clipper > Butterfly kick.

I got my mother to purchase me a hacky sack and almost every nite since I just worked on kicking the damn thing. I started initiating more inside kicks (and on both sides even) with the odd outside kick. I think ym record grew to around 28 or so by this time. Once the bag got to be broken in, ATWs followed shortly after.

A few weeks later, around the middle of May in 2003, I went outside in the front doors to go kick with the 'gang'. Shortly after I gave up my shoes to a friend, so I played in socks on nice and chilly concrete. We had our circles going when these two guys came. They joined in and just started doing Clippers, heel stalls and attempting Butterflies.

I was flabbergasted.

They were totally impressed with my skills. Well, to be precise, my 7 consecutive ATWs (in socks). We kicked and one of the guys (I think he hit a Pendulum in steel-toed boots) brought up footbag.org. We kicked a bit more, and that evening I checked it out.

I watched the Clipper video by Eric and I really did think that it was just an outside stall for some reason. Haha, my bad. My favorite tricks were Mobius and Scorpion's Tail, but I also recall that Spinning Osis blew my mind. I seriously thought those tricks were the most massive that anyone could ever do. Boy was I wrong!

I guess the rest is history. I finished that school year with Turbo > Turbo under my belt. That summer I didn't kick as much as I wanted to just because I was working a lot, so I really started progressing when school came around again. I remember starting a circle and doing really funked up Dimwalk kicks and blowing everyone's mind away. Ah good times.
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Post by mosher »

Turbo>Turbo!!! :lol:
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slapdash21
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Post by slapdash21 »

mosher wrote:Turbo>Turbo!!! :lol:
heh, i chuckled a bit at that myself...i would have done moreso, but that sounds EXACTLY like stuff i did and thought was cool...
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Post by Uranos »

When i started kicking i couldnt understand the difference between moves.
I thought ripwalk was just as hard as blurriest or even bedwetter.

My grandpa came to australia and when i did double switch over he called it "Ultra" :D
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