shredzilla

[Bander87]

Sick Chris. Its funny how he was right down the street!

[Wasabi]

Awesome! It's good to see that you have a shred buddy that's actually stationed in DC. And the fact that he was looking for you and took out his Lavers is an awesome way to greet you.

[Xain]

looks like the DC scene is blowing up

[shredzilla]

looks like the DC scene is blowing up

Yeah, I wouldn't go that far...lol

[shredzilla]

**This came from another thread, but may as well go here too**

I had my first 'is footbag worth it' thought toward the end of GRASS since I've been footbagging.

The last tournament I went to, I played fairly well and had a blast. So, I drove up to RIT, and the first day I played decent, but not great. I shredded for 4 hours and really wore myself out. That night, Aric was having a small get together at his place. As soon as I get there, there's a litterbox staring me right in the face, and two cats walking around. I'm severely allergic to cats, and after only being there 10 minutes, I spent the next day and a half under the weather. I shredded about 2 more hours that night with my bud Chris Balch, and that was fun. But like I could barely breathe when I was trying to sleep both nights, and I felt sluggish the whole weekend.

It rained heavily pretty much the whole time. We were indoors the whole time, but the rain was still annoying getting to and from places (and drivinng home) My legs were sore/stiff, I had barely any energy, and didn't play well most of the weekend. I lost all 3 times in beer pong, lost 2 bucks (almost a lot more) in addiction to dave, basically got PWNED in every sense of the word.

I found myself playing 4 Square at the very end. I thought 'wow, now I'm old. Cuz I'm not shredding like most of the other guys. I'm playing 4 Square. The thing you do when you're too old for freestyle.' I had a great time playing 4 Square, and it was probably one of the highlights. But man, I felt like 'Can I really do this? Can I really become genuine guiltless? Am I just fooling myself?' I don't care man, I'm gonna keep on drilling and skooling. If Funk breezes past me toward tripless, oh well. But I love this sport, and I'm not giving up. By next tournamment my goal is to be able to hit whirl bsos and drifter bsos (amongst other things) in every string. Period. I did hit whirl bsos and drifter in a string btw, on the last day. And ducking clipper back to back. So it wasn't all bad.

So I'm going to drill like crazy until my one year mark. And then keep on playing and getting better for years til I fall over. Yay Footbag!!!

[shredzilla]

**Sequel to that post**

Update! Wow, today I had the best session of my life! I hit all types of moves that I have trouble with bsos, and some great strings. Then these french tourist chicks came along and I busted so huge for them. Nice long strings with ducking clipper bsos, whirl bsos, and some bop which is great for me. Ended the session with a ducking mirage hit for the first time to top of the head stall. I'm so glad I didn't 'give up'. I know I wouldn't have, but it's just comforting to know I CAN do this! I Funk'n LOVE FOOTBAG!!!!!

To further list what I did today:

Whirl bsos 4 times
Drifter bsos twice
Ducking Toe Mirage first time x3
Ducking Clipper back2back clean x4 and mid-string a few times
Paradon like 10 times!!! I'm really getting this move down.
I skooled paradon flip for a while at the end
Some long strings
Just overall control of the bag.
I'm glad I didn't give up.

[shredzilla]

Didn't do much today. Well, I only worked on pixie. Tomorrow's gonna be a long shred sesh. But I hit smear both sides. A bunch of times on strong side. Gotta ditch tha twos, get my guiltless contacts up.

This is for myself more than anyone reading, but I gotta get this down. To hit pixie moves:

Lift knee straight up as high as possible. Foot will naturally fall forward to get out of the way of the bag. Then go for second dex.

Tomorrow's gonna be nice again, can't wait to shred hard.

[mc]

nice to hear you're making some advances. I'm in a slump, too. I'm perpetually injured and sore Hopefully we can both come out on top...

[Bander87]

Hey Chris, got your bag today. Very nice! I was freaking out for 5 minutes, haha. Soft, great size, and great weight. Havn't played with it yet though, can't wait! Thanks!

[hippiedan]

Wow you really have pulled so far ahead its unbelievable! That is awesome, my man. Considering we were in about the same spot just under a year ago, I can't believe how much faster you've advanced. I've been working so damn hard at school, I've had little time to kick. Can't wait for July to come around when I will be graduated and ready to start kicking everyday again. Big news for me tho, I'm going to head out to Germany to attend Worlds for a couple of days. You should grab a ticket and we can party out there.

Good luck on your guiltless mission. I'm still working on adding more three add moves to my repetoire. I haven't kicked in like two months, but right before i stopped I was hitting my first whirls and double legovers. anyways. My biggest move is a paradox dada-cruve at the moment... I hit it a good percentage of the time, now. You should school that, it is a high-add move, and not that difficult, especially if you are hitting drifters both sides (which I still cannot do). Looking forward to starting my own footblog once i have time to actually start one...... and yes, i am wrestling a plastic snowman..... it had some choice words that I couldn't let it get away with... about 15 minutes after that picture was taken the snowman was doused in lighter fluid and other flamable substances on our front lawn (at the house me and 12 other New Orleans refugees were temporarily staying in in Seattle) and lit on fire. You could see the flames for miles. I actually used the light that the fire was sending off to shred a little bit at 2 in the morning. Well, that's my story for your blog today.... hope you enjoyed it.

Peace and Smiles, my man.

Dan

[Bander87]

Hey pimp,

I hear you are hitting 20 contact tiltless?? SICK!

I still havn't had a chance to play with your bag yet

[Troyson]

yeah he was hitting real nice strings yesterday at the mendham jam...me and him had a fucking showdown in the rippin run comp, that rematch was intense ..but i came out on top!

It was great to finally meet you, and im looking forward to shredding together again next week at spike n shred. I hope those tips i gave you for toe whirl work, keep drilling!


P.S....me and sigman got lost on the way home lol, but we ended up getting home allrite after missing our exit(exit 9a) and getting off at exit 1a hahaha

[shredzilla]

Well it's been a while since the last bloggy blog entry, and much has occurred...

Well, I'm still a little shy of my guiltless goal. I wanted to do it before my official one-year mark with lavers, but it'd be pretty tough. I'm hitting 5 contact guiltless strings pretty consistantly now, but I'm not going to pressure it anymore. I'm going to be drilling guiltless 2 move combos, and long tiltless strings with some 3s, and some guiltless strings as well. Wow that was horribly written. Blame it on the epic flame war I had to serve in lol.

Today's session was great!

Lately I've been super-pumped about where my game's at. I can hit pdx mir>butter>pdx mir in my sleep now, which is nice because it's become a really reliable bail. WHIRLS are becoming my favorite move all of a sudden. I made it a point to start trying to get all my moves to be downtime. Now my whirls are much more reliable, super floaty and I can even hit strong toe variation. My strong paradons are becoming so solid they're like butterflies. Okay, well I can't take it anymore, I'll just get to the major highlight:
BARFLY!!!

Wow, I've been dreaming about this move since I saw Nate hit it back in August at my shred spot. Chris Prosser, a shred bud was walking his dog and stopped by to watch the magic happen. I basically skooled it for about a half hour, alternating with paradons and 'ghost' barflies. I kept footing it, then finally hit it. It was epic. The rush was incredible. It's so huge for me to hit a dream move like this. Well, time to go hit my move list for an official update!

[shredzilla]

Jersey Spike n Shred was an awesome jam. I had a good feeling about this one. All the east coasters were there. Beer pong was fun. Josh B was my partner and we like owned for 4 games then lost. The parties were really awesome, and the competition was great too. Clavens won 3 out of 4 competitions, got 2nd in Shred 30. I played really well the first day, and hit some cool stuff like barfly mid-string. Dave helped me by giving me a HUGE tip on stepping set

It was cool seeing everyone, and hangin with Josh and Dave who are awesome friends. It was neat seeing Pete and Matt at the same tourney too. They're such cool guys. The tournament basically rocked and I had an awesome time.

[cammel]

Nice Job on the barfly. I see you dont have any fives up there, so i challenge you to hit pixie paradon. That was my first five add and its a pretty sweet move.

[Xain]

.

[shredzilla]

good job with barfly, and also that other 'barfly' that you hit

lol

[mtoolan]

stepping is so awesome. once you get that down and can throw it midstring its so much fun. good luck with that.

[shredzilla]

Wow what a cool weekend. Man, I'm really getting used to this jam every other week thing

One of my favorite parts about this jam was the fact that I didn't have to drive at all to get there The event site is only 20 min from my place, Pete's house is like 10 min from my place. Friday night Dave and I went to the registration and kicked some. Saw Waylon there. I felt decent, my strings were fairly solid. Got a call from HooD, so we left to go pick him up from Wonderland, a bar near my place that's really cool. Came back, and pretty much crashed.

Saturday, or should I say Epicday lol. Got there, watched/filmed some of the tournament, like Dave's shred 30 and the Open routines. I filmed a little shred here and there throughout the weekend, I have to look at it to see if it's any good. I'm like totally camera impaired, so we'll see what came out. Tournament went well, Dave was solid with like 1 drop. Busted a Shred 30 score of 221. Then we all went back to kickin.

Saturday at around 7:00 was a big highlight for me. Pete invited everyone to a juggling show, the event coincided with a juggling jam. The show was held in a theater on College Park campus, ver nice theater I might add. We were up in the balcony the whole time watching.

Dave and Sunil decide to give a footbag demo. It was AMAZING! They showed the audience everything from an Add 1 to an Add 6, and even some shuffle! Sunil is an outstanding speaker, and I felt he really got the crowd to understand what was going on. They clapped so loud at everything Dave was doing! Dave then caps off the demo with something really special for his supportive audience, Nemesis first try and super clean! Again, the entire demo was AMAZING.

Then there was this 11 year old kid that juggled rings, pins, I think 5 balls and some other stuff, but this kid was crazy. He was probably one of the best jugglers there. Then, time for Pete's show. OUTSTANDING. I've seen a lot of Pete's stuff, but there were a ton of tricks I'd never seen, such as 6 bags while rotating around each leg back and forth and just a ton of other mind-blowing tricks like that. It was super cool to watch, and he capped off the evening and even got a standing ovation, one of many he recieved that weekend.

After, me HooD, and Chrisdean went to Wonderland to get our drink on and dance. Met a cute chick and had some decent conversation while getting trashed. Yayyy. Came back and talked with Chrisdean for like a long ass time about footbag stuff. We were both hammered.

Sunday we finished the tournament, Pete's last performance was epic with a dijeree doo guy as his music, and beat-boxing INTO the digeree doo. It was really cool. Super-solid performance with like 2 drops I think, but really clean and cool.

Got to talk to Lonn Irish about stitching, and it really helped. I think my bags coming up are going to be super quality, hopefully close to hers. After that, went outside and kicked with a Chrisdean and a bunch of others. I played really well Sunday. A lot of my strings were guiltless with like a far legover tucked in here and there. Hit ducking pdx mir mid string, ducking clip>pdx mir>butter stuff, but just solid stuff that I've been working on for a while. I felt good about that.

Hung out with Tommy/Andrew/Pat most of the weekend too, but it was so sporatic. I always have fun with those guys. Andrew's mom gave me some facile she doesn't use anymore that was awesome.

Went to the awards dinner, and that was supercool. Said goodbye, which always sucks, but for some reason this time it felt much worse. Maybe it was just the fact that it was such an awesome weekend. I don't know, it seems like every tournament I feel so much closer to the people I spend it with.

Well, two weeks til the next one. I think I'm going to compete next tournament. I think I'm ready. Hope to see you there.

Chris

[shredzilla]

Wow what a cool weekend. Man, I'm really getting used to this jam every other week thing

Personal Results: Sick1: 1st Sick3: Tied for 2nd Shred30: Tied for 2nd

Lol. Here we go again. Another tourny recap. I don't know, I guess I'll just highlight the things that stood out the most to me.

First off, this was my first tournament competing. I did compete a tiny bit at Balch's tournament, but the crowd and field were tiny comparatively. I did pretty well for the first time. But really my Shred 30 was AWFUL. I had the perfect one planned out that I practiced all day, and had it so solid. Then when I went out there, like it was so weird. Everything just dissappeared and it was me and the bag, and the ground. I don't know, I just felt so out of control and I went for infinity to start off, but didn't even hit the first clipper. Picked up the bag and kept missing like so much stuff. Toward the end I started getting it together and scrambled to hit a bunch of 2s and 3s.

As much as I was pissed about not doing what I'd planned, which in turn caused me to not get 1st in the event, I really liked being in that space. I know that next time I'll at least know what to expect, and I can just zone out and play.

After Shred30 was Sick1 and 3. Sick1 was paradon and ducking pdx mir, I won a bag that Bevier's girlfriend stitched. It's a great bag. Sick3 was pretty weak, but I just wanted to make sure I could hit something. It was ducking clip>pdx mir>butter.

Anyway, for my first time in a big tournament I'm pretty pleased. I know I could've won Shred30, and I know that next time I'll have a decent chance. I'm even excited just to plan a Shred30 for between now and my next event!

Apart from that, I played great all weekend. I was hitting lots of long, solid strings. I got to play with Josh Gayhart, which was really cool cuz I've always liked his style. It's way different from my own, but it's just neat to see someone do stuff like he does. I got to see Jake again, which was awesome since it's been almost a year. Same with Nathan Pippenberg, and he and I talked stitching for a while. I ended up buying an amaretta bag off of him which I'm VERY pleased with. Hood, Dave, Caleb and B-Rad kept the party goin all weekend.

I won a game of 4Square on Sunday, and had some decent circles. Toward the end I became really focused on schooling stepping. It's been on my list for some time now, and I was intent on hitting Ripwalk. And at the end, I did. It was the perfect ending to a perfect weekend. After I hit it, perfectly clean, I just sat down, and then got up and helped some chick try and hit pendulum.

Oh yeah, and me and Dave had Five Guys burgers. The best burgers anywhere:

2 patties
cheese
bacon
lettuce
mushrooms
Bbq Sauce
Hot Sauce

=1000 calories of delicious goodness. Thanks Steel City!