Getting stylers to diversify

[mc]

yeah, Anssi, I think it would be cool to include those kind of things you mentioned, although, I would be less likely to do that Jorden move you mentioned midstring, and more likely to do a tootsie roll or swirling tootsie roll, but that's just me personally.

I bet jorden could do that move midstring, though... fairy set> back stall> roll to calves > pushup and osis as the bag drops > back into crazy fearless... yeah, i guess it would break up the string in a sense, but it could be good style if he kept himself smooth and did it in the middle of a hardcore, flowy run.

Thanks for your input.

[HG]

I don't really understand why there needs to be much of a debate. As popular players start to popularize concepts, like Jorden, these concepts will begin to be done more. I know for certain that between when I began playing and now more people do wauxpins, dragons, rakes, tootsie rolls, favor dexless, or whatever. It isn't the majority, but shred is shred. I feel like people who try and bring these debates up every once in a while (Matt in this case) have sort of lost sight of the fact that we're still playing footbag. Like it or not, but a 20 contact shuffle string looks cool. Consecutive ripwalks look cool. PS Whirls back to back and long vanilla fearless runs. I'm sorry that you're bored with them but there's no reason for you to try and marginalize what people clearly DO like to do and watch. It's exhilirating hitting a good shred 30, even if it doesn't have a flying toe stall in it. Hitting a goal like... 20 tripless, or 10 fearless makes a player feel successful.

Footbag is Kenny Shultz and Rippin and what they devised. It's Peter, Vasek, Ryan, Jorden, and whoever else has helped keep the sport alive over these past years. I would really hate to see a new generation of shredders with their own dogmatic bull shit ingrained into them looking back and looking down on these people for not throwing rakes in or some trivial thing like that. There's a lot more to footbag than move selection.

Another point, one that is perhaps a little less abstracted and more to the point, is that the basis of shred as we have it is a good one. The different components people generally learn in their quest to be a strong shredder tend to set one up for being a strong and diverse player. Look at Allan. Allan in my opinion is where footbag should be headed (but my opinion here isn't worth a damn). He has a very strong base in all the different vanilla aspects of shred and beautifully incorporates all manner of stylee nuances and tricks. Varying arm positions for the same moves, different execution for the same moves, a vocabulary of funky tricks like his swivels and reversivals. I would love to see more people developing fluid styles with a strong mastery of a weird component. Jakob Wagner is another great example, same with Ricky Moran.

Just my thoughts.

Sam Potter for president! I agree with ABSOLUTELY everything you said there.

[mc]

Cool, Henry. Thanks for your input.

What do you think of my response to that post by Sam?

[Muffinman]

I only read that last quote, and I agree with it, but also with your very first post, Matt. I also feel that so many people's games are really "cliched", including my own. I wish I was confident enough to throw in spinning toe stalls like Rory Dawson; I am so confined by "guiltlessness". I agree with Sam in that I DO have my own style, and that it is unique and everything; I enjoy playing a lot, even though my moves themselves are cliched and not very unique. I wish I was more creative myself in move choice and combination.

I find it more entertaining to watch other players, when their move selection is more unique than the average player, though style is always a precursor for me (bad style negates unique move selection, from my perspective).

I hope I didn't contradict myself in this post -- I didn't mean to. And I hope I made sense.

[Senor Grommet]

One interesting aspect of this debate which has not yet been addressed is how the public views our moves- what they think of our trick selection. This phenomenon is important because as modern-day freestylers, we are trying to increase the publicity of the SPORT while decreasing the perception hacky slacking. When I see Jorden do a crazy string of unique moves that most freestylers dont hit today, I think back to my days in a hack circle, where the runs consisted of weird and unique body delays with some kicks in between. I dont want the public to see this and think that the state of our sport today in just as THEY remembered it back in the late 80s and early 90s. Our sport is much more accomplished today- it is much more intense. With that said, I would wager that the average passer-by would be more impressed with a shuffle combo than a no-look pincher> flapper because of the technical skills required. It just looks way more athletic. When I am out in public dispplaying my sport, trying to portray it as an athletic endeavor that also looks good, I am not even going to think about underused concepts. I am going to hit stuff that looks cool. Thats what the public wants to see, and that is what is going to make the public interested in the sport.


When Im shredding by myself, I'll try anything I think is cool. This is just something else to think about.

[sampotter]

Matt --

Sorry for the delay and sorry for being so presumptuous. It's just that I know that I've read threads like this exactly before and it always seems like someone is really gunning what I presumed your attitude was. Sorry for being an ass hole.

Let me try and address what your point actually was, Matt. I'm not really sure if people do need to open their minds up very much. Freestylers like what looks cool. Why do you think people do stuff like ripstein and whirr on such a wide basis these days? It looks cool. When someone comes along and implements fliers on a wide basis and makes it look good, then I don't doubt that that concept could make a resurgence. Some of my favorite combos are from people like Ahren and Peter who seamlessly throw stuff like blurry dragonfly and spinning butterflier into their hard, techy runs.

Although it can be quite hard to break out of that schooling mindset and really incorporate something like that into your shred. I know personally I can't do fliers well to save my life and that I didn't really learn them when I started shredding. I suppose with the slightly growing publicity of shred it's more common to see people who pick up the game who can kick as well as they can stall right off the bat.

Again, sorry for being presumptuous and rude overall.

Jeremy --

I think there are merits to what you're saying, but really I find that there is an equilibrium to weird stuff, shred, and flow. The balance that makes shred look athletic and not at all like hacky sack is what seems to me to catch on the most and help shred along in its evolution.

Henry --

[dyalander]

I think flyers can be a really good comprimise - to me they can be more easily used to punctuate a run without breaking a flow and they look cool, as well as impressive to the public.
Perhaps a way to encourage some imagination beyond sic 1 (and i agree with Max, I think sic 1 already rewards imagination if judged properly) would be to get in touch with Nic and get him to run a special online comp devoted to uniques. Perhaps all moves need to end in a unusual stall, or perhaps begin from a unusual, or perhaps both. Better still run it yourself (this directed at anyone interested who has the capacity to edit together the entries and organise judges, etc.), I mean I'm sure Nic wouldn't mind changing the next online comp if people were down with it, but I'm also sure he wouldn't mind a little help.

[HG]

matt-



I know that you dont dislike freestyle as it is. I wasn't siding with sam, i really didnt read the whole thread, i just read that and a few more posts. I didnt know what you said before that, but nevertheless, i agreed with what he said. Im not disagreeing with you, because i still dont know your whole mindset (i still havent read your opening post and other posts by you cause im lazy )

[Iron Clad Ben]

I am a newb and the self-teaching philosophy I am employing right now I think fits into what Matt is saying. I am trying to build a pyramind here, what I mean is that I am trying to master as many 1's and 2's before I progress more onto 3's, then get a bunch of those down pat before I move onto 4's. I've got quite a few of the 2-add's down but there's A LOT. I'm in no hurry to get tiltless. On the other hand, I know two high school kids in Austin who have a huge rivalry to see who can hit a 4 first, and they can only do a few 2's and a few 3's.

Here's the distraction IMO. The tiltless/guitless/fearless etc. rating system pushes people toward DEPTH instead of BREADTH. I am really just working on breadth right now. If I wanted to, since I have clippers nailed, I could start working on my butterfly, but it's just not a priority when I need to work on my illusions and pickups. Like I said, I'm trying to build the base of a strong pyramind here. I know I'll thank myself later.

Great post Matt, it's stuff like this that pushes everybody to step it up which is great for any sport.

EDIT: How many you tiltless guys out there can knee stall BSOS? Booyah.

[mc]

Grom, all good points. I agree with sticking to solid cool looking tricks for public demonstration. However, I think what you're saying applies to passersby more than it does standing crowds. In my experience, standing crowds get bored with shuffle, and they like to see variety. I tend to go in thematic waves for standing crowds... basic stalls > light downtime > light shuffle > shred > spins and ducks > weird surfaces. Furthermore, just because someone has skooled their spinning ass stall doesn't mean they have to do it and other weird unusual delays like that exclusively in front of crowds. I'm still pro-shred.

Sam, thanks for re-responding. I still disagree with you, though. Freestylers don't just like what looks cool exclusively. They like ADDs as well. You really seem to be ignoring the very strong point I made for how ADD values have influenced shred in a limiting way. You also haven't really brought up any negative examples of what might happen if the ADD system were diversified, or if people "needlessly" ( ) opened their minds to different elements of what one can do with a footbag. If you want to leave well enough alone, that's fine for your own game, but there's no reason not to acknowledge these other elements that offer an Additional Degree of Difficulty to a move.

Although, you're not really talking about ADDs, are you? you just think freestyle is fine as it is, ADDs or no... Well, I disagree. Thanks for clarifying. You seem to think things will just happen naturally on their own as people see what they like. That's not how it's gone for the past few years, though. The system exists, and the system influences. It's not just what people think is cool.

Or so I feel.

Thanks, everyone, for being so reasonable and straightforward. I really appreciate it.

[sampotter]

Hmm.

I really think that you're overestimating how much people pay attention to adds. I know that when Ricky, Justin, Ben and myself get together to shred it is -very- rare when any one of us will actually say, "Hey, step the add content of your shred up!" or even discuss adds. To us guiltlessness or triplessness is a guideline. It helps outline what to push, it doesn't turn us into add hunters or anything. That addressed adds limiting shred.

As for whether or not the add system is effective, isn't that just a can of worms? I know I've paid attention to it in the past and even made motions at collaborating to help revise but, really... Who will really use some newly devised system that came out of a forum? Modified isn't really perturbed by the overall footbag community as a respectable source of information, at least from what I've gathered. Of course, there's a difference between that and making additions. I mean, I think Eli threw down the idea of BSOS on a forum, and look how much people accept that now. If you can come up with something that is -pragmatic- and -sensible- then more power to you.

As for the system and its evolution... Perhaps I should expound past "what looks cool." By "what looks cool" I mean what works fluidly in shred, what people find versatile, and what is linkable. Tootsie rolls are cool but it's hard to hit a whirling tootsie roll. Rooted stuff is cool, but again, difficult to link. I could go on and on listing the reasons as to why weird shit people come up with isn't practical, but I won't bother. Clippers and toe stalls are easy and flowy to link together in shred as has been demonstrated over the past 10 or 15 years by all of the freestylers that have been doing them. Honestly, I have an amazingly hard time believing that if people had been doing tootsie rolls or cloud stalls or whatever instead of clippers that they would have had the same amount of versatility. When new stuff like janiwalker and ripstein and GRIFTER (good example) and whirr start to be done commonly enough to be viewed frequently on video, people start saying, "Hey, that is cool, I will make an attempt at said trick and see if it is to my fancy." As a result the shred vocabulary of today is much different than it was a couple years ago. It's like when I hit janiwalker in front of Justin for the first time and afterwards made a close attempt at some ridiculous move like blazing barfly. He said, "Back when I was getting good there was a definite mode to what was being hit, but with this generation these moves are already here just waiting for you to hit." And this is where I tie it back to the add system. Whirr is a HARD 4-add! Same with ripstein and janiwalker! I would argue that janiwalker is -much- harder than blurry whirl or PS whirl, but people don't really seem to care enough about these moves to complain about the lack of adds. They do them anyway. When these underused concepts start to be incorporated into shred more frequently and in such a manner as I dictated above, I don't see why people won't say, "Hey, cool, let me try!" How come no one was giving Will Digges the ridiculous props he deserves for hitting pixie miraging pick-up in comp!!!! That's nuts! I bet you that he saw that move in one of Jorden's vids and was impressed and inspired and wanted to hit it himself. It has as many adds as smog, but he didn't care. I guess generally I just can't really agree with how limiting you make the add system out to be.

Also, to throw a new point out there regarding the add system: People find totally different things easy, so isn't the add system completely subjective anyway?

[sampotter]

Oh, forgot to add -

Fun discussion! It's always interesting getting other players' take on the way things are in shred when so many players I know audibly groan when the subject turns to that. I suppose you need the dorkiness of modified to talk about a topic with such dorkitude.

[Anz]

[drunken post]

just play, goddamnit.

[skoxn]

i don´t think ADDS limit the game of footbag.

of course, you have to follow the rules of adds to play footbag. that is a limitation. but ADDS are just elements to detect and categorize a trick. sports have rules. in this sport, adds are rules. every trick you hit, which isn´t "officially" accredited, you just have to describe it by jobs.
i like jobs, it gives this all a better scheme.

when you wanna play anthing else with a little sack and your foot, play hackysack or so. but not footbag.


the only thing i don´t like, is the "guiltless-must". this limits!

[Tsiangkun]

I don't think Guiltless is really about adds. It's about the fealing one should have if they are taking really really long turns with the bag and let everyone else they are playing with get cold. 3 ADDS was a practical limit for the time period when it was created.