Begin Phase 1 again

Kljopa · Post by **Kljopa** » 19 Jul 2006 00:41

Cool to hear that you found your bag

About the mosher challenge i had this in mind yesterday too.Dont know if i can keep it up

but ill try too.

Good job working on your flip.And if you really wanna get better at illusions try clip set ones,those are hard.

SandWraith · Post by **SandWraith** » 19 Jul 2006 13:48

I <3 illusions

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 19 Jul 2006 19:15

I worked on illusions again today. Hit 3 in a row. They are feeling better and better. I also hit bubba and a reeeeeeeally thin FLAIL. It wasn't clean enough to be well-hit, but I did hit it, kind of.

Shredded with Luis. He hit pickup for the first time and was pretty stoked. His clippers are getting better and he almost hit near mirage a few times.

I drilled infinities, legovers and illusions again. It is hot as hell out in central Texas these days. I must have sweated 2 lbs of sweat tonight. I was getting winded after 5-6 contacts because of the heat. It wasn't that great of a session. Highlights:

Legover x 11

Infinity x 4 a couple times, could not get 5!!

Mirage x 15

Illusion x 3 strongside, Illusion x 2 flipside

Illusion > pickup > illusion (maybe first illusion BSOS for me not sure)

Mirage > Legover 14 contacts

Also experimented with some other shit like PS mirage, but didn't hit anything new.

Last Wednesday we found some chalk and wrote down the moves we hit on the tennis courts. It was fun. On our way out tonight we noticed they were still there from last week! So we wrote down what we hit today. I am going to bring my camera to the Wednesday night sessions from now on and take a picture at the end of all the crap we hit. Should make for cool blog posts.

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 23 Jul 2006 17:36

Rained like a badass on Saturday so our normal session was pretty much cancelled.

Went to the pool today with my gf today. Did the usual shred > swim > rpt.

Didn't hit anything huge. Drilled ducking and strings.

Hit a 15 contact tiltless strings with butterfly and pdx mirage BSOS thrown in which felt good.

Hit ducking clipper b2b a few times. Got some stranger props for that.

Illusion x 4. I got a figure out a way to do these without so much strain. I am always winded after doing strings of illusions. Any ideas?

Footed symp mirage > butter and ducking pdx mirage both sides a few times.

The heat is really a bitch, really saps my energy. I need to find an indoor shred spot.

Moxie · Post by **Moxie** » 23 Jul 2006 17:42

Has your girlfriend ever tried playing footbag?

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 23 Jul 2006 19:25

Moxie wrote:Has your girlfriend ever tried playing footbag?

Yes she's tried. She's not very coordinated and hasn't gotten into it. Swimming is her sport. Her name is Amber and I've nicknamed her "Aquamber" because she loves the water so much. She's great and very supportive of footbag, even though she insists I'm obsessed. Maybe one day she'll get into it, but it's OK if she doesn't.

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 26 Jul 2006 20:10

IMMORTALIZED

Great session today. You can see the stuff we hit above. I worked on doing moves very slowly and controlled. It really helped string length because I was able to exert myself less. Hit some good tiltless strings with BOPs thrown in.

Other crap not listed above that I hit

Flip Illusion x 5 (some of them where "the" according to Cody)

Infinity x 4 again... grrr why can't I hit 5 infinities?

Flip mirage x 14

Illusion > mirage > rpt

Illusion > legover > rpt

I was telling Cody I was having a hard time doing the plants right for PS Mirage. That my brain had a hard time planting my clipper set foot afterwards and keeping the other foot up. He said he'd demonstrate. I thought he was going for PS Mirage but he ended up hitting PS Whirl and a look pure shock came over him. It was the first time he'd ever hit that move. He was amazed.

Other highlights

Some chick who had a very similar car to Cody's was trying to get back into her car, which was actually Cody's car. It almost looked like she was breaking in. Cody saw her car and knew it was just a mistake. The chick apologized profusely, it was pretty funny. "then I realized... my car doesn't have a sun roof!" DUH. LOL

Barton Springs swimming area is free every night 9-10pm. Water was cold as eskimo balls but felt GREAT. We may have to make that a regular post-session activity on Wednesady nights.

There was something else I wanted to post in my blog, but I can't remember what it was. Oh well... till next time. Peace y'all

morsecode · Post by **morsecode** » 27 Jul 2006 07:01

We may have to make [barton springs] a regular post-session activity on Wednesady nights.

I second that.

Once again, props on a good session.

beenjammin · Post by **beenjammin** » 27 Jul 2006 17:58

You guys are getting good, keep up the hard work it'll be worth it!

Zeb Jackson · Post by **Zeb Jackson** » 28 Jul 2006 15:59

good job man, i have the SAME issue with infinitys, my record is 6 and i can tie it but never do anybetter X.x well anyway i cant wait to meet you at the US open and kick

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 30 Jul 2006 18:15

Thanks everyone for posting in my blog

Well here I am it's Sunday night and another weekend has come and gone. My girlfriend left for camp (to be a counselor of course) for two weeks on Saturday

She's also my best friend, so I feel like a part of me is missing right now. I won't see her for 3 weeks!

That's OK, I'm still having lots of fun.

Saturday session with Luis and Cody. We all had a pretty good session. I haven't hit anything new in a while but then again I haven't been trying much new. Nothing noteworthy hit by me, but it definitely wasn't a bad session. Had a few 15+ tiltless runs with a lot of the typical crap like LO's mirs, pdx mirs, ills and butters all BSOS.

Cody had some long runs, hit pdx whirl and torque mid-string and was pretty stoked. Footed Gyro DLO a whole shitload of times but no luck. Also Legbeater and Atomsmasher both BSOS at least once. He also hit like 11 or so infinities? Maybe more? Nice shred Cody.

Luis asked "what's an infinity?" when we were talking about them. We showed him butterfly and within 10 minutes, LITERALLY, of that instruction he hit butterfly, his first 3. I think we were definitely more amazed then he was. It's a very natural move for him. Now he just needs to hit it flipside.

Another post-session swim. Soooo important for Texas heat sessions. Speaking of Texas footbag, someone messaged me on myspace and wants to kick with us next Wednesday. Also Sam aka bluntobj3ct moved to San Antonio? It's only 90 minutes away so I guess we'll probably shredding with him eventually. I gotta plan TX Statewides, holy shit I've been neglecting that! It will be more of a jam than a tourney. Who the hell am I gonna get to judge competitions? I gotta get on that shit.

Saturday got home and played online poker and Baldur's Gate 2 all night. Ahhhh bachelorhood... wolfed down plenty of candy and chips and walked around in my drawers. Today, played more BG2 and online poker. I finally got the motivation to go shred an hour before it got dark. Didn't hit anything spectacular, but did enough to work up a nice sweat and get my 45 minutes of daily recommended exercise.

Well I've got 2 weeks of solitude ahead of me. Plans:

Shred EVERYDAY. Oh yes. Portland is less than two weeks away. For shizzle.

Pay bills, rent all that "gotta do it" crap.

Secure location for TX statewides

Revamp www.atxfootbag.org goodness that site needs an update!

CARDIO! My endurance needs to better. Bottom line. Gotta get that ticker in better shape. 3 times a week on the gym bike. Now that I got the Nike Frees maybe I'll run?

Hit a new F&*#ing trick dammit!

Play plenty of BG2

Hopefully I'll add some more stuff up there.

PORTLAND!!! SEE EVERYONE IN LIKE 10 DAYS?!?!!? HOLY SHIT!

Peace!

Ben

SandWraith · Post by **SandWraith** » 30 Jul 2006 18:39

BG2-- hell yes. That's probably my favorite RPG (real rpg, I mean) of all time. This isn't your first time playing it, right? MAN! I love how you can go like 300 hours in that game if you try to do everything... what a game.

You played any TES: Oblivion? That's a really good game too. I'm 70+ hours in and haven't done a third of all that's there to do.

But man! BG2! Good times....

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 30 Jul 2006 18:52

Hey Zach.

Yes, I played BG2 SoA in the summer of 2002 and beat it. I bought the expansion set a couple years ago and never played it. Well I've got a different computer now so I'm starting from the beginning. So far I've just been screwing around in Athkatla. I got that inteligent two-handed sword that's says all the wacky shit like "come get some!" and "tastes like chicken!" for Minsc, makes the game so much fun to play. No real quest progress so far other than killing all of those dirty evil slavers in the slums... fucking slavers... fucking scum slavers... I hope you rot in heck!

No I have not played any of the Elder Scrolls games. Computer RPGs are like Morphine for me. Addictive and completely paralyzing. But oh well... I've been a good boy for 4 years, a little BG2 acidflashback is OK. You've got Smashbros, I've got BG2, LOL.

SandWraith · Post by **SandWraith** » 31 Jul 2006 10:05

Did you ever find the couple houses in Athkatla that have liches in their basements? The harder (or hardest... can't remember how many there were) was in the section of town that has the Harpers sanctum. It's on the bottom row of houses, I wanna say the third from the left? I remember those took me forever to beat. Crazy lich bastards and their time stop spells.

shredzilla · Post by **shredzilla** » 01 Aug 2006 19:12

Haha blogs are so cool. Well, other people's are. Mine's mainly a move list and talking about fun times at tourneys. I have/had the same problem with infinities. Try not setting cross body, but somewhat between straight up and cross body. And make it a rhythmic 3 step move:

set> swing leg around>dex/delay>repeat

That helped me a lot.

So BG2 was really that good huh? I remember BG was pretty fun, but a little too hack n slash for me...a little too much like diablo. Which isn't bad, but I got burnt out on diablo and that style of game. Maybe I'll check it out sometime, I could probably pick it up used for like 10 bucks somewhere.

Yay Portland!!!! Yippeee. I can't wait to bs about infinities and all kinds of footbag related stuff with fun people! Plus it'll be nice to kick with some people around my skill level. I bet there's gonna be some really chill circles there.

Oh-nice sig!

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 02 Aug 2006 19:51

YaY! Posts in my blog! Hooray! Thanks homies.

Oh man what a day. WOW. The Footbag universe and the non footbag universe are very harmonious right now. I'm feeling the flow, life is good.

I had a great day at work for the first time in... shit... I can't remember. Everything just fell into place. There were no fuckups, everything just went smoothly. No one else's stupidity ruined my shiznit, the karma was just there. My job was fun today. I had a great time. Also, they had pizza at the cafeteria and it was some important ass dude's birthday, so we got cake too. Pizza, cake and Vault, what more could a Benji want?

In the early afternoon my phone rings and a 917 area code (NYC) number shows up on my phone. None of my customers are in New York so I was a little surprised. I told my boss "Someone from New York is calling me, I don't know who it is but I gotta grab this"

"AMD, this is Ben" (standard greeting)
"Hey Ben, this is James... from footbag" (he has a NYC cell I guess)

It didn't even occur to me that I had no idea how he got my work number.

"Dude! What's going on?"
"Are you guys going to shred tonight at the tennis courts?"
"You better believe it, you gonna be there? I heard you've been really ill"
"Yeah my gall bladder stopped functioning for about 2 weeks, but I'm better now. I really wanna play some footbag"

So after snagging a bunch of free drinks and snax from outside the auditorium where some presentation happened, I headed over to the shred session. I changed clothes in my car. Sure enough there was James there a few minutes early, warming up.

WHAT A FUCKING AWESOME SESSION TODAY

OK first off, a bunch of new faces showed up. Two peeps who had found the club through our MySpace group showed up, plus a couple of Luis' friends. One guy was hitting butterfly, ATW, and mirage in low top chucks.

James after not shredding for like 2 or 3 weeks because of his health problems, ripped it the fuck up today OMG! I have never seen him shred like this. Holy shit!!! Here is a list of crap he hit

2 blurry whirls + tomahawk in one run

tap > atomsmasher > tap > legbeater

ps whirl + torque in one run

footed mullet

spining ducking butter > spinning osis mid run

ripwalk > blizzard mid run

food processor mid run

total of about 40 clippers occasionally alternating sides + one osis

Plus a whole ton of other shit. He was just out of fucking control today. I've never seen him half of those tricks, let alone mid run like it was no big deal. MAD PROPS JAMES!

I hit

a bunch of 12-15 contact tiltless runs

run with illusion, legover, mirage, clipper, and far legover all BSOS

6 contacts of butter > pdx mirage

Infinity x 4 (...again... motherfucking son of a

...)

toe dada curve both sides

(new trick for me)

illusion x 6 again

What an amazing day. I just feel sooooo good. Portland in 8 days!! BOOYAH! Peace out mahfizzied--

Ben

shredzilla · Post by **shredzilla** » 02 Aug 2006 22:29

Good Job dude.

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 04 Aug 2006 18:00

Awww yeah bitches.

I saw Elvis On Speed last night. Great fucking show! They are getting some momentum in Austin now. There is a radio DJ who loves their shit and helped promote the show last night. Still there couldn't have been more than 60 people there. They ripped it up and played one new song which was pretty rippin.

Shamless plug. These guys rule
http://www.elvisonspeed.com/

Got home from work today. I had decided I needed to watch Tricks of The Trade since my shred has really stepped up a notch or two since I last watched it. COOLNESS. I think I learn something new every time I watched that video. I actually wanted tips on whirl, because I am still trying to hit that trick. Anyways, what caught my eye were Kenny's tips on Symposium Mirage. I've hit this trick both sides before, but with terrible consistency and was never able to link it.

Set the bag slightly to the side [that you do the dex on]. OMG this made all the difference it the world. I footed it once, then tried again and hit the cleanest symp mirage I've ever hit! It felt so easy! Befoer my dexing leg kept hitting the bag and when I did hit I felt like my legs were putting my balls in a vise. I'd land very off balance and it felt kind of uncomfortable. Setting it a little farther to the side that I dex on made all the difference in the world! Booyah! I could finally link this move

I hit

Symp Mirage BSOS

Symp Mirage x 2

Clipper set Symp Mirage (one side only)

Butter > Pdx Mirage > Symp Mirage both sides

Butter > Pdx Mirage > Symp Mirage > Butter > Pdx Mirage

And on an unrelated note I also hit

regular mirage x 19 which I think is a PR

Oh yeah bitch, symposium mirage will soon be just a link for me!

PS shit, I hope my legs don't hurt tomorrow after all that symposium today... big day of shred.

PPS PORTLAND IN ONE WEEK!!! FUCK YEAH!

Zeb Jackson · Post by **Zeb Jackson** » 04 Aug 2006 23:09

hey man what time does you flight arrive and stuff so that me and nick can come pick you up?

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 07 Aug 2006 19:37

Zeb I sent you this in a PM but just to repost it just in case

Thursday, August 10, 2006
American Airlines # 1285
Arrival (PDX): August 10, 10:36 PM PDT (evening)
--------------------------------
Monday, August 14, 2006
American Airlines # 6982 Operated by: ALASKA AIRLINES -- AS
Departure (PDX): August 14, 6:40 AM PDT (morning)

Usual Aud shores session on Saturday. I think I sweated another 3lbs of water again. Damn. James, Cody and Luis were there. It was a good session, no one hit anything spectacular but it was still a lot of fun. I hit symp mirage mid-string a few more times but only on the strong side.

I've had shin splints for the past few days since I started hitting all those symposium mirages. They aren't particularly bad, I had worse when I first started learning freestyle. Still, they kind of get in the way when I'm actually shredding.

I played again solo tonight.
Drilled: Pdx illusions, Symp mirage

Since I've been working on illusions I decided to work on pdx illusions today. I hit a few of them on each side but I wasn't able to link out of them. I need to work on finding the right place to set them. I think I need to set it lower than pdx mirage. Getting the right set and hitting the move will just take a few more drilling sessions.

I also fooled around trying symposium pixie. That's a really weird trick. It's just so counterintuitive the way you do the plants. I footed it a couple times on each side, but no luck for a seal. I'm pretty pumped, I think this will be a fun trick to put into runs. Also, once I get the plants down it should be a good segway into PS mirage.

Random holy-shit session highlight
flip illusion x 12!

It was really cool. I just started doing them on my flip to practice and after 5 I began to think "OMG, I could break my record here". Then another voice from the back of my head said "Ben, don't worry about numbers, just keep doing illusions" and I had this really peaceful feeling come over me. I slowed down and it just kept going. I was amazed I hit it 12 times on my flip since my previous record was 6 on my strongside and only 3 on my flip. I guess my flipside is the my new strongside for illusions, weird!

Portland in 3 days?!@?!???@?@! OMFG!

I am so pumped. I have this great feeling that I am going to learn a ton of new tricks and just blow my game wide open. See you all in a few days!