Teaching Footbag in Schools - Advice needed!

[BalinorNZ]

Hey Mmmmodified,

Today (despite not really having the time) I went down to the polytech to shred with 5 Japanese guys me and Toby have been teaching to play (only to realise it is their holiday and they were not coming!). We shreded anyway, and it was a marvelous shred!

Here is the exiting bit: about 10 mins into the kick, as we were warming up, a lady came and introduced herself to us as a physical education teacher at the teachers collage! Basicly she teaches people who are becoming teachers at schools!

She got our names and my number and next wednesday at 4pm, me and Toby will be in her primary class(they are learning to teach ages 5 - 11) teaching them to teach footbag!! I think she basicly wants us to give a demonstration and to teach her students for about half an hour some basic stuff. The class will be 25 first year (about 18-19year old) girls!! I expect this to be rather embaressing , but i'm super keen!

She also wants us to do another half hour demo for her secondary class (they are learning to teach ages 13-17) so we might take a bit of a different approach with that one. It's all very exiting!

Anyway, my question to you all:
What do you recomend we do with our half hour? We want to impress the students but we also want to show them footbag is a very teachable sport! How do you propose we structure our lesson and what should we cover?

My plan is to bring along about 30 8panel bags for them to use and do a 5 or so min demo and spend the rest of the time teaching them all toe stalls and perhaps atws.

Your thoughts?

[NotHisRealName]

In my opinion, footbag cannot be taught - it can only be learned.

You've got to want to play and have the desire to break through the barriers that footbag presents.

But, good luck.

[BalinorNZ]

In my opinion, footbag cannot be taught - it can only be learned.

You've got to want to play and have the desire to break through the barriers that footbag presents.

But, good luck.

In my opinion, that is bollocks . Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I think footbag can DEFINATLY be taught. Have you had a look in the tip tricks or the Getting Started forum? They are full of footbag teaching.
Footbag, because it is not mainstream, is not really taught like other sports are, but everyone who goes to shred with others can and usually is instructed on what they are doing right and wrong, this is teaching.
When you watch videos of people and take note of how they do moves you are being taught.
Sure footbag can be 'self-taught'(like with anything) but that certainly isn't the only way to learn. Watching yourself on video is a very good way to learn, but it's even more efficient if you have someone better than you who can watch you LIVE and TEACH you what you are doing wrong, a few short comments can save hours of solo schooling in any concept in footbag.

[NotHisRealName]

In most cases, the tips and tricks threads are started by people who want to learn.

What I'm trying to say is that footbag is a difficult sport to take up. Clippers are a bitch. And, unless you REALLY WANT TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY FOOTBAG, then you will not learn how to hit clippers.

Sure, you can be taught the fundamentals, but if you're not determined to learn, then you wont be any good.

[philo~!]

I agree, that was a bit of a ridiculous comment, of course footbag can be taught. What are you trying to say? He shouldn’t even bother?

Recently as part of my sports course I was required to run and be assessed during a 20min session with my class teaching them two specific sporting skills. To be a bit different, I choose footbag.

Obviously everyone’s skill level was low; I decided to teach them toe delays, inside delays, and for anyone up for it, a clipper delay.

To start off the session I gave a brief explanation of freestyle footbag as a sport with international competition, how it is performed, and how it has evolved to what it is today, wanting to spread as much information on freestyle footbag as I could in a short time.

Teaching the toe delay --> The first thing I did when teaching the toe delay was explain the general idea can be related to catching a cricket ball. Starting with your arms outstretched towards the ball, as the ball reaches your hands, lower your hands with the ball cushioning it into the catch. Get them to do this. Then explain to them that this has the same principles when using your feet. Cup your toes upwards, raise your foot towards the bag, as the footbag reaches your foot lower your foot to cushion the delay (demonstrate this).

At this point I would recommend getting your students into pairs or small groups as they practice the delay. Having lots of student’s means it would be hard to individually go around all of them to give them feedback on what they can do better. In pairs or small groups they can give each other feedback; this also gets them thinking themselves on how they can perform the trick correctly. Also in pairs or small group’s means it can be a more social learning experience with their friends, making it more enjoyable for everyone. For the ones able to get the toe delay, get them to try using the other toe, or transferring from one to the other.

Teaching the inside delay --> The main thing that has to be taught during the inside delay is foot/ankle position to create a flat surface to delay. As I’m sure everyone knows this is not always something people can pick up easily, as it comes a lot from muscles memory. To get the students feet into the correct position: Take your foot pointing straight forwards, rotate the toe of your foot inwards as far as possible keeping the rest of your body in the same position. From here role onto the outside of your foot, this should angle the inside of your foot upwards. From here get the students to hold the foot/ankle position and raise their foot slightly off the ground. Once this has been done the knee can be moved outwards and your foot raised into the inside delay position (must try and keep ankle/foot position locked throughout movement). Get the students to mimic you as you do it. Place the footbag onto the inside delay with your hand and try and pop it back up so you can catch it. Once this has been done try dropping the bag and delaying it. Explain that it uses the same principles as the toe delay (the cricket ball catch). *I’m not sure if this is very understandable, it would be a lot easier to explain in person*

Again in pairs or small groups giving each other feedback. A lot of the students I’m sure will find this difficult, but in the end, its all about giving it a go!

Students that did well and are able to perform the inside delay I showed them the clipper delay.

Teaching the clipper delay --> From the inside delay, all I did was show them a wrap into the clipper position and did a few ss clippers. Doing a wrap into a clipper position was hard enough for everyone.

To finish up the session it’s always good to ask a few questions about what they learned. "Who can tell me what delaying a footbag can be related to? (Hands up)" "Who can tell me the steps to get the foot into the inside delay/clipper position?"

Giving a demonstration to open the teaching session would have been a very bad idea. Me doing all these crazy tricks, making it look easy as, and then getting them to try doing these simple delays, possibly not very successfully, will make them feel ridiculous and not even want to try. At the end of the session would be a good time give a demonstration of what freestyle is all about, showing what a little bit of practice and determination can achieve.

The session I gave was with 18-21 year olds, so trying to teach the inside delay to younger kids may be a lot more difficult, I’m not sure. Another skill that could be learned is just the inside kick --> Dropping the bag, kicking it bag up with the inside of your foot, catch it again. Then try for two in a row, then maybe using the other foot, etc. Be inventive, it’s up to you what you want to teach them.

In the end, and most importantly, you want it to be FUN!!! You want them going away laughing, and have enjoyed what you taught, or tried to teach them.

Hope this helps,

Phil

[Jeremy]

Great tips Phil - I would have suggested something along those lines as well.

I ran a workshop for circus students at Devonport High School last year and ran it basically like this: First I did a demonstration - so they all could see what was possible. Then I got everybody to break off into small groups of 2 or 3 with a footbag and told them to try and keep it off the ground using only their feet (ie. circle kicking). While that was going on, I walked around the circles and just joined in and made suggestions. After about 5 - 10 minutes I called everybody in and showed them toe delays and some basic tricks that they could try (other delays and atw). Then they all went back into their groups and I walked around again. When I saw people who were attempting stuff beyond just kicking I gave them direct advice on those moves and I'm sure that all those people hit toe delays and some of them did atws as well. This method worked well, because as Gareth mentioned (although I disagree with his actual point too) - a lot of learning anything is about desire to learn. I did 5 years of fairly advanced maths at school (5 and half actually) but only really learnt anything in the first 3 - after that my desire dissapeared and I stopped learning or spending any time doing it at all (I still got really good results on tests but only because I'd already learnt what was being tested in the years before). If somebody doesn't want to learn something, it's a waste of time trying to teach them. So my method of only really giving attention to the people who were working on improving worked well. As you can imagine an optional high school circus skills class would be seen by many students as just a chance for a "bludge" so I pretty much ignored the groups of people who appeared to be those people - I mean I spent a short time kicking and talking to them but that was all. I guess at that stage I had nobody to play footbag with myself either, so I was hoping in inspiring at least on of the kids to play regularly and give me somebody to play with. That idea didn't work but I did play with one of the kids from that workshop recently and he'd definitely improved a lot from it so potentially many others have lots of the very basics down too. Who knows but it is definitely more rewarding to teach people who are trying to learn.

[mosher]

Fantastic tips Phil.

[Outsider]

I recommend that you teach your teachers the most fundamental aspect of the game: circle kicking. Teach them how the game is played and enjoyed by millions of people in small groups of beginners, casual kickers, and long-time enthousiasts, rather then a few thousand obsessed shredders.

Teach them basic kicks, starting with a very strong, clear foundation of inside kicks, and then introduce the outside, toe, and maybe the knee kick. Then get them into circles and start them passing the bag back and forth.

Skooling tricks can be rewarding, but it implies an interest in developing skills gradually in order to be better later. I say show them how to have some fun right now. Circle kicking is fun, and they will start having fun passing around a circle much sooner than they would if they were to work all afternoon trying to learn Around The World.

They are learning the game for the sake of teaching it to young children after all, and young childred do not necessarily want to "Skool" for hours in order to circle their foot around a footbag, they want to get right down to having fun kicking the bag back and forth. Plus, passing back-and-forth in a circle is more social, group-oriented, and a more effecient use of your footbags and your instructional time since not everybody will need their own bag to skool their own tricks.

I recommend forming circles of about 6-8 people, and encouraging them to stand very close together. It seems to me to be a common mistake of complete beginners in a hack-circle to spread out too far, making it harder to get several passes in a row. With two instructors and 24 students, the students can be split into three cirlces of eight, and the two instructors can split up and spend time in two out of the three circles at a time, switching from one circle to the other every few minutes so that all your students get the benefit of up-close instruction from the teachers (you). Part of your job in the circles is to instruct and encourage good kicking form, and part of your job is simply to keep the bag in the air and set people up with lots of easy passes, making sure that the bag gets passed to everyone.

You may or may not agree with the no-self-serving rules, but they are more appropriate and useful in beginner hack-circles than in shred-circles, so I encourage introducing this principle. In fact, when teaching beginners to hack, I like to bring up "the only three rules of the game: no hands, no self-serves, and no saying 'sorry'". Its a very catchy and easy-to-remember set of instructions. I also like to introduce the goal of "getting a complete hack" (when everyone in the circle manages to kick the bag at least once before it gets dropped).

I would save the demonstration of your shredding skills for the last five minutes. Lots of fancy tricks can intimidate newbies. Let them have some fun just kicking the bag and keeping it the air for a while. When they've done that and had their fun, you can show them how the basic game can be elaborated upon by learning tricks and learning to link tricks back-to-back. Tell them that all the fancy stuff is Lesson #2.

The socially-progressive in me likes to remind beginners that when playing in a hack-circle, everyone is on the same team, working together to keep the bag up, rather than competing against each other trying to foul someone else up, like in most other games, and that injuries are rare and equipment is minimal.

Good luck.

[Si_iS_High]

Phil lets make babies.

Good post.

[Just call me hagesy]

Yeah i agree, nice post phil.

Gareth did you mean footbag can only taught if the student is willing to learn. That would be just like everything else in this world. We would be silly if we were not to have a go. We are disciples
spreading the good news.

[BalinorNZ]

Thank you VERY much Phil, Jon and Jeremy! All of you have givin me just what I wanted to know! You all have different views of how footbag should be taught which is completly natural. I am open to more views over the next few weeks before the classes and I will read over your posts many more times in deciding exactly what I should do with the half hour we are givin!

I am currently thinking of how I should explain the sport of footbag, and when during the sesion I should do it.
So far my plans are:
Make it brief, a few minutes talking is more than enough.
Explain that in freestyle footbag the aim is to perform consecutive tricks using one's legs and body, delaying the bag between tricks.
Demonstrate the fundemental stalls, toe and inside which leads to clipper.
Speak very breifly on the concepts involved in a trick - dexterity(legs) and body.
I might mention that the bag's flight between delays is devided into uptime downtime and peaktime and dexteritys and body concepts can be performed at each of these intervals... but maybe not.. don't want to overcomplicate it.
I will explain clearly that kicking, while not seen often in professional freestyle is a fundemental building block to learning the sport, much like tiltless play is.
Finally I will explain the basic kicks - inside, outside and toe so they know what they are doing in the next step...

After the explanation I will get them into small circles, so they get as much bag time as possible each, but can still be social with it and have fun.
I will get them to kick for a short time(explaining the no self serve rule) and during that time me and toby will rotate round the 5 or so circles - this will allow them to get comfortable with the bag, eachother and us.
When they are starting to get pretty confident, I will stop the class and tell them it's time to move on to the next step. I will explain the change in rules, the bag should rotate round the circle clockwise and each person is alowed a couple of turns each and that the goal now is to try land an inside stall (which I will demonstrate using phil's technique). I will also encourage them to help each other stating that we are working together to achieve new moves, not against each other.
The class will go back into circles and me and toby will make our way round for a while to check progress, make sure everyone understands and give advice where needed.
If they all cotton on very quickly to the inside stall I will soon after give instructions to the class for inside stall, and a bit later clipper stall, using phils techniques to demonstrate. Then we repeat the rotate round circles and check progress/give advice bit.

At the end (perhaps 5 mins before finishing) we will stop everyone and give a demonstration of freestyle footbag. We will begin with the stalls we have just shown them, then move onto basic dexing tricks, explaining breifly how it all fits together and then just have turns doing 20ish contact strings.
Finally we will talk about why footbag is such a great sport - as Jon said, injuries are rare, equipment is inexpensive, and within a few hour long sessions one can be competent enough at the basics of the game to teach students in a class how to get started, much like the rest of the sports covered in the New Zealand PE cirriculum.

Whew! What do you think? Anything I should add in there? Anything I should change?

I would also not mind some advice on what you think should be demonstrated at the end and what impresses people the most about footbag - things the can understand (eg double atw, ducks, spins) or things they don't (eg toe shuffel, dex intensive fast paced stuff).

Thanks guys!

[NotHisRealName]

The difference is like hearing and listening.

[JFootbagger]

Emphasize the points:
-determination
-perserverence
-practice
-foundation (basics)
-FUN!!!