Probably the only shredder of all fLemmings

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 01 Oct 2006 02:31

Ok so a good 50 minutes of shred yesterday evening by the chapel in the forest. I LOVE that spot even though it's mostly frequented by elderly people saying prayers or lighting candles for beloved ones. Slim chance of luring people into footbag there

.

Anyway, worked up a good sweat (for the second year in a row the weather was crap in August but sweet throughout September

).

For starters I did okay runs, none too hardcore, just avoiding too many drops. My flip spin felt completely OFF, it kept hitting my shoulder. So in utter frustration I hit spinning butterfly BSOS haha. Also symposium whirl BSOS again. They feel pretty good these days.

The other highlights were all hit during the last five minutes of the session.

-matador E-A-S-I-L-Y on one side (don't actually have a flip on nuclear), almost BSOSed it. Should do more nuclear in my runs, as well as quantum.
-PS whirls! Decided to dust them off and probably hit my best and most controlled up to now on either side. *Note to self: set lower (optional) and pivot more (compulsory)!*
Yeah, that's two fives in one session

.
-36 osi for cool down, which beats my previous PB by three.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 05 Oct 2006 02:41

I somehow managed to f*ck up my hip while running a few days ago. I've been taking it easy since. Tried to hack a little yesterday but felt that I couldn't even paradox mirage with full confidence on that side

.

However, I had a good night's sleep and I may be in for some light kicking this evening and some shred tomorrow with Julien from the Brussels team.

Having to take it easy is all the more annoying because I've watched a ton of footbag movies over the days and I'm dying to try out new ideas.

On a different level I'm still unemployed

, no wait,

. My job interview from last week was a no-no. I contacted the firm later to ask what had put them off and they had two points of criticism:
1.- They had offered the job to a more experienced candidate (well, not actually a point of criticism this one, can't help that).
2.- Throughout the interview they had the feeling that my knowledge of the vacancy was insufficient (not to say non-existant).
This got me pretty worked up, as BOTH during the interview, via e-mail, AND on the phone I had told them my application with the firm was free (i.e. I had no actual job in mind, rather I was applying 'beforehand' for future vacancies - this is called something like 'free application' in Dutch, not sure about the right term in English).
So I think I made it quite clear my application was free. I found out there were slots only when a fellow candidate informed me so (just before the interview). In the end it just keeps me wondering HOW they can use that AGAINST me as at NO point in e-mail or live communication they had mentioned that there actually were jobs for grabs. Argh.

Anyway, today I found out that my application for a job at my ex-university is another no-no. My professor told me that I was listed second, but the job was offered to someone with 6 years of relevant experience at another university

. I just can't beat that.

This probably sounds pretty bummed, but I'm past the stage of feeling bad about it. I know in the end things will get rolling.

*EDIT* This is the 40000th post in the footblogs thread. SICK!

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 06 Oct 2006 02:05

My hip is feeling aight these days. On the flipside, the pain has sunk down to the inside of my knee

. I realised that during my 40 minutes of kickee in the kitchen last night.

After a while even inside kicks with that leg started to hurt, so I did some low dex.

Had a few tries of drifter*4, got to 3 but had to stop as I was moving in dangerously close on the sink

.
Concluded the session with a highlight:

14 ducking clippers!

Weew.

This is pretty huge for me because my second best EVER is a lousy 6, haha. I've been throwing ducking in my runs randomly for... like... 2 years, but I never really drilled consecutives.

The knee suggests less high impact activities like running and footbag.
More low impact activities such as swimming, easy biking and having sex. Fair enough.

max · Post by **max** » 06 Oct 2006 02:16

More low impact activities such as swimming, easy biking and having sex. Fair enough.

I am confused by your comments. Then again, I'm French.

hehe, take it easy Wim.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 06 Oct 2006 05:47

Well, I guess it all comes down to how you have sex. I don't know about the French style

but mine isn't necessarily a burden on the knees.

Haha, enough suggestive talk for the day.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 09 Oct 2006 02:30

Max wrote:take it easy Wim.

Well, the intention was there, but the weather was so perfect on Saturday that I couldn't resist having a short public shred by the chapel in the forest.

There was a guided tour about plants etc. going on, and I think some of the audience found it hard not to be distracted by a guy in white shirt and sneakers, yellow shorts and orange socks kicking a bag

.

Anyway, I was doing pretty well with good long runs now and then, and a good feel to it all. After 15 minutes I began feeling some aches in the knee but shredded through it, only refraining from symposiums. After 35 minutes I switched to blenders, which was alarmingly painful so I called it a day.

So now I'm really going to take it easy for a few and see what happens. It doesn't hurt any more but as I've seen before that's no guarantee.

Actually I think it's not the joint itself that was causing trouble, it's the muscles on the inside and the back of the knee, which is somehow comforting to me. When I came back from that short session on my bike, I could bend my knee all I wanted, but I just couldn't lift my leg from the pedal.
In other words, the flexibility is there (joint?) but the area can't bear pressure (muscles?).

max · Post by **max** » 09 Oct 2006 03:06

Yeah take a couple of days off for sure.

By the way, any news on that 27-09 footage?

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 12 Oct 2006 05:26

Aaragh,

I just typed in a fucking long post (took me an hour), lost it while logging in (apparently I was logged out automatically), can't recover it. Bleh

Here's a version with just the content words.

WOW! Much news.
Big ass shred with Polish Footfighter crew.
She: nicely guiltless
dim, rip, good spins and ducks, dyno>dyno! nice.
He: rad!
blurriest>blurriest>blurry whirling X-body rake, flurriests, whirlygig, beta bedwetter, lil' scorpion's tail, 19 barflies (record 28 ), string around 10 double dex tricks super clean. Bails to ripwalk.
Gave me a footfighter for free!!!!
pic:

Must think of proper way to thank them by Euros next year. Is a sacred bag too, stitched on Wednesday in front of Saint-Michael's Cathedral downtown Brussels.

After they left 7 people left kicking it. Club growing!
Filmed the session, but crap, reviewed and tape is around 27 minute mark though I taped at least an hour

Messed up knee again, knew I was shredding on thin ice all day but I was prepared to take that chance for the Polish. Ended the session by giving pointers to a new guy. Rewarding, even though talking footbag in French is unnatural to me.

Hit my first good down double downs!

Highlights earlier session:
paradon>barrage bs
side>rip (repeat) midstring
diving clipper>ducking clipper (repeat) also midstring

Did this shit over a year ago, nonetheless it feels good to be on a similar level again.

Different note:
Taking another dip in varsity life! Subscribed earlier today for teacher's degree. Been messing around a year and I want things to get back in motion.

Raaaahhh, this post doesn't do justice to the experience AT ALL, but I just can't get myself to type out the whole bloody thing again.

max · Post by **max** » 12 Oct 2006 05:50

who is "the new guy"? and where does he come from?

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 12 Oct 2006 05:56

Well actually I missed his name

but I'm positive I haven't met him before at any of our sessions. Dammit, I don't even know how and when he joined us, I think he showed up together with Alex. He averages about one new recruit every session

of which most bail out but this one seemed rather motivated.

Oh yeah, I sold my girlfriend's lavers off for 25 euros to Pierre, the other new kid on the block. They both have size 40

.

Actually there are at least 8 people with quantums/lavers in our club now. That's a LOT! Looks like a modest explosion of the Brussels footbag scene if you ask me.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 15 Oct 2006 03:41

I've kept to my footbag embargo so far (except for some 20 minutes of hack waiting on the train) and I'm happy about that as my knee feels allright.

The hack was on Friday night. In long trousers and replay sneakers. Mainly did toe kicks, inside kicks, and inside stalls. My knee felt only a little sore afterwards

improvement!

Some 1.5 kilometres of swimming on Thursday (=a blessing on the joints).

80 kilometres of biking today and the knee feels top notch!

I might do some light shredding sometime in the coming week so as to get back in good shred shape for the French Open.

I've also been uploading a lil' footbag vid for aaaages (tried several times on Friday as well). I don't know what's wrong with my .org gallery.

*EDIT* Here it is!!

Watch out, it's got a kickass soundtrack.
http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/10170

The shot at the end is from when we cracked a few bottles of champ later that night to celebrate the acknowledgement of the BFC as a non-profit organisation.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 16 Oct 2006 01:36

I've been haunted by footbag lately. Last night I dreamt we were doing demos to recruit new people. There was one dude who was very enthousiastic about footbag and he looked just like John Mahood

.

Then at breakfast another thing happened to me. On the wrap of salami it said 'fresh selection' and I read 'french conexion'

.

I think not playing footbag is slowly driving me bonkers.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 16 Oct 2006 02:25

Oh yeah, I missed some highlights from last week.

Hit matador pretty easily, and butterfly swirl after a few attempts. Sweet!

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 17 Oct 2006 02:45

Kicked for 40 minutes yesterday evening; no pains!

I was pretty happy that my body didn't protest for the first time in weeks. If I do some more of these short low-dex low-impact sessions this week I think my knee should heal up.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 19 Oct 2006 07:08

Messed up my hip again yesterday when running to catch the train. Aw!
I hope this time the pain won't sink down to my knee

.

I'm using the ultra sweet university comps. Went to my first lecture earlier today and it seems only moderately to very hot chicks are taking this degree

. Where the hell are all the blokes? My masters degree (languages) was clearly female- and male wuss-oriented, but this time it's even more obvious I've chosen a sissy topic.

Fortunately I play the ultra macho sport called footbag, which makes up for a lot of things. Errr, hum. Oh yeah, I checked out the sports facilities on the university campus (for shred) and they've CHANGED in my year of absence. There's a fking big fitness hall with all kinds of stupid ass devices (I don't understand how a university can invest in that), an outside football pitch (that is, as was to expect, not accessible for non-members such as me

) and the running court that used to have gravel and was more or less suitable for footbag (except at the time my sandmen turned orangey red) now has a freaking sweet new non-gravel surface (I haven't a clue what it's called but it's the sort of mainstream running court surface that grips really well) BUT they've also opted to close that to non-members. Fuckers, exploiting EVERYTHING

. Okay, so I think, if I'll be playing footbaggee during my jump hours, it'll probably be on the main university square, which has this one big advantage to it: it's outside, so no one can kick me out.
I hope to get some exposure there with the club, maybe organise some sessions when the weather gets better in spring. I've noticed that a university audience generally yields more footbag recruitments than the regular street audience.

Oh yeah, I've signed up for the French Open in circle contest and, after some cheering from Max, shred 30. I'm looking forward to it really. Still a little in doubt about single routines however.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 20 Oct 2006 11:29

More or less an hour of bag for me 2day.

I first went to the forest to kick in front of the chapel, warmed up nicely, but then got 'kicked out' by the janitor after not even half an hour. Actually he was closing the gates of the main and only entrance and was so nice as to inform me of that. He also told me that, as days are shortening now, he'll be closing down at 5pm every day from the end of this month on

.
On the bright side, I had some more chat with him and I informed with him if there was a problem with me hanging out and kicking it there and he was REALLY tolerant as he said "no prob as long as you don't disturb anyone", which of course I don't (I actually try to limit my kicks when there are visitors in the chapel

). So yeah, I 'officially' have permission to shred at my second favourite location in the neighbourhood. All in all a nice change too, as janitors generally tend to be asses when it comes to their territory.

Anyway, I had to piss off but had a LOT of shrenergy left so I kicked some more in the living area around the block. The surface there actually slopes a little + breaking up in the middle of a session when you're completely warmed up is never a good thing, so the good feeling of before was gone, but still hit some longer runs and a vortex, which doesn't happen too often. I mainly tried to recover all the things I was just acquiring before I had to cut down in my footbag time.

The best thing of the day is probably that there isn't ANY pain anywhere in my lower limbs/joints, which (I assume) means that I'm finally past those little injuries that kept me from full throttle shredding for weeks!

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 23 Oct 2006 05:22

Holy shit, that Norek kid from Slupsk, Poland is so good. I was just reading his blog, it's unbelievable how good he has gotten in 2 years. Probably a future world champion, if my infallible nose for talent is not mistaken

.
Also pretty confronting how he puts "

" emoticons after every 3 add drill he completed. I still think some of those are pretty fat, and I've been shredding for 2.5 years dammit!

Anyway, I've been playing the last few days too. I'm trying to get in daily sessions now, even if it's less than an hour a day. Just to build up consistancy while avoiding to go hard on the knees etc.

Here's what I did on Saturday (50 minutes):

-blur>legbeater BSOS into loads of other tripless

-whirl>pdx whirl BS, almost OS, and almost repeat

-7 tripless

Lil' 50 mins break in session with my footfighter on Sunday:

-drifter times four

-pdx drifter BSOS (no honestly, I think this is pretty good so I'll skip the ":oops:" on this one)
-whirl *6 on both sides. I've never done consecutive whirls but reading Mike Wiwchar's blog (he has single trick sessions for weeks) made me think it can't hurt.

some consistancy practice:
-39 infinities

-19 osi

-10 pixie sets

. No, this really sucks. My toe play has gone bad, seriously bad somewhere. I remember doing 16 pixie sets two years ago when I had been freestyling only a few months

.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 25 Oct 2006 01:22

Some 40 minutes of baggey in the garage last night (by no means suited, but neither was any outdoor spot given that it was pouring down).

-13 pixie sets.

We're getting there. No seriously, I feel some improvement in my guiltless toe play already.
-4 contacts into rubberman

. I should've hit it by now.

I've jotted down a possible shred30 for the Paris open. I figure I should, as I am to compete against some badass shredders. All my links seem possible on paper, next level is to give it a try in real. The theory looks pretty sweet though. If I hit the 30 I've written down, I should score around 200. Then again I would probably be happy with anything above the 160 range, so I'm allowed a few drops.

max · Post by **max** » 25 Oct 2006 03:10

aaaaaaah I also reminisce when thinking about the first shred 30 I wrote... I too thought it was possible

Go and give it a try and tell me what you think

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 26 Oct 2006 00:17

Yeah, I figured the trouble will not be the links, but rather consistency. In thirty tricks, there must be at least one I fuck up (if I'm having a good day that is. More likely two or so).

Still yesterday I had a go at the links I thought were hardest and there is at least one I'll have to cancel

. I mean, I can perhaps hit it 4/10, but in order to make a shred 30 the hit likelihood should be at least above 8/10 IMO.

I'll try and have a complete run through later today. I'm curious about it.

Quick 30 minutes session yesterday, mainly focusing on possible shred30 links. Did 35 BOP, which was fun.