Begin Phase 1 again

[Iron Clad Ben]

Dear Footblog,
I believe this will be a new page. People almost always steal my new pages, so it's nice to be able to lay claim to one.

It's been a while since my last entry. I played a fair amount footbag last week, thanks to the mats. Been taking care of some pretty heavy duty life shit, I don't want to be all mr. secrets, but I'm gonna hold off saying anything until it's all finalized, hopefully by later this week. It will be good news, don't worry.

Monday 5/14 1 hour
Total hours played in 2007: 116 hours
Total hours played in May 2007: 9 hours
Worked on: Just shredding

This was over a week ago, so honestly I don't really remember. But it was nice to get a solo session in. The one run that sticks out in my mind was:

Bubba > Butter > Infinity [RPT] > Butter > Infinity x 2 > pdx mirage > butter > pdx mirage > butter > infinity (was really just trying to hit that first 3 move rpt drill, and when I got it I was able to hang on for a pretty sweet seal)

Wednesday 5/15 2 hours
Total hours played in 2007: 118 hours
Total hours played in May 2007: 11 hours
Worked on: Just shredding
Shredded with Cody and I think that was it. Had a pretty good 2 man sesh on the mats. Worked on some new links:

SS Butter > Osis > rpt a few times. Good to drill a new trick out of osis instead of always bailing to mirage. Baby steps to guiltless, baby steps.
Bubba > Butter > Infinity > RPT again. Got this twice maybe
Blizzard > Run with Ducking PDX Mirage BSOR. That was pretty nice.

I frickin love Blizzard, one of my favorite tricks right now. Also managed to hit eggbeater again on one side, twice I think. I think I need to drill right leg dexing illusion again, they have regressed. However, PDX illusion with that side is easier than on the other. I really don't know which side is flipside these days, every concept is different.

Friday night I didn't play any footbag, but I did go see LIONS play, which was pretty sweet. You can read about it in the concerts topic.

Saturday 5/18 3.5 hours
Total hours played in 2007: 121.5 hours
Total hours played in May 2007: 14.5 hours
Worked on: Just shredding
Session with the crew downtown on the mats. It was a lot of fun, just shredding out in the open. We found this secluded spot with all these trees and this giant wall fountain. It was really peaceful. I didn't enough for breakfast/lunch and kinda crapped out early on in the session. I need to remember to really a lot on Saturdays before shred to have enough fuel to go for 3-4 hours.

Oh yeah, Cody hit stepping far swirl, it was pretty dope.

I played some online poker that night, took 2nd in a 30 man online tournament (which I should have won, bad beat in heads up play ), won some pretty sweet moolah.

Saturday 5/18 1.5 hours
Total hours played in 2007: 123 hours
Total hours played in May 2007: 16 hours
Worked on: Making a video
Well I figured it was about time for another video, what the hell right? I have a song and some good 'effects' clips to add to it along with some shred. Unfortunately, after a little bit of shredding I was hurtin pretty bad. Shins still kinda hurt. These mats sure help but they don't make me invincible. I got a couple good runs on tape and came damn close to BSOSing some of my big moves, which was cool, but also frustrating that I wasn't able to seal it. I really want to finish this video (it will be awesome, I promise), but I probably only got 2 or 3 runs that wre vid worthy.

I've been kinda sick of modified lately. A lot of people with terrible signal to noise ratios, posting like 1 sentence at once in their blog 3 times a day, posting crap that should be kept to PMs. It's gettting friggin annoying. And all that arguing in the kicking circle and discussion section. I don't even read that crap anymore just bang "mark as read". I still read stuff, but I'm kinda tired of a lot of people's shenanigans, don't even get me started on the eliteism I'm seeing among some of the better players. I'm not saying it's changed and gone down hill, or you should all go to hell or anything crazy like that, I'm just getting sick of it. I don't mean to be passive aggressive, but some of you (no point in naming names) are just really get on my nerves.

Well, the San Antonio demo is just around the corner. They are going to be promoting footbag as the main attraction at this thing! They even bought some crappy $1 bags to give out to the kids. They'll also be linking to footbag.org on their webpage for a while.

http://www.tpr.org/articles/handson.html

Should be some good publicity for the sport. It's too bad the shred scene died in San Antonio those guys were (are) damn good shredders. Maybe some new young'ns will revive it, who knows.

Alright, gotta head to the store and take care of some errands, peace out yo-

[MatS21]

Hey Ben, I too have been a little away from modified since few weeks, not posting that much anymore ( not that I ever post that many ). Reading so many flaming got me annoyed too. I decided to choose what I read a little more and I mostly read blog like yours because it is always interesting, lots of details and not 5 posts per session. I think it's the way to go not to get annoyed too much.

[freestyler4life]

Hey Ben, I too have been a little away from modified since few weeks, not posting that much anymore ( not that I ever post that many ). Reading so many flaming got me annoyed too. I decided to choose what I read a little more and I mostly read blog like yours because it is always interesting, lots of details and not 5 posts per session. I think it's the way to go not to get annoyed too much.

Amen

Good luck with your promotional demo , its too bad it couldn't have been on any other weekend

[Iron Clad Ben]

W00tage, had a pretty sweet session last night.

It started out pretty crappy. Nothing was going my way, I was dropping on really easy 2-adds, not sure what the hell was going on. Then about an hour into things stuff just started clicking. I think what happened was I hit eggbeater super clean and fairly easily first try and kinda of had one of those amazed moments of "wow that was pretty easy". Eggbeaters are back yo! I was hitting them about 75% on one side and 10% on the other. Also hit bubbabeater both sides again. Glad to have that concept back, hopefully it'll be around to stay.

Also, spinning is back! I was pretty happy about that. I think the tips in the "spins help" topic for Sergey helped, clipper setting straight up and then spinning, it's really not much harder than that.

Wednesday 5/23 2 hours
Total hours played in 2007: 125 hours
Total hours played in May 2007: 18 hours
Worked on: Eggs, PDX illusions, spins, guiltless links

Lots of Highlights!
PDX Egg, new trick, finally!
SS Butter > Osis [RPT] 6 contacts
DLO > Butter > Infinity [RPT]
Egg > Egg
Spinning Clip > DLO > Egg
Ripwalk > DLO > Egg
Bubbabeater > guiltless run
Butter > DLO > Butter > PDX Mirage [RPT]
Butter > PDX Illusion [RPT] > Butter > PDX Mirage [RPT] > Butter > Infinity > Infinity > Osis > Osis
Spinning stuff BS: Clipper, Osis, Butter

PDX Illusion is feeling a lot more controlled. Still have some work to do on them, but I got them to the point where I was able to hit PDX Egg finally

I'd like to hit a few repeats of Butter > Infinity > DLO [rpt] that is definitely a challenging but fun drill. I was only able to hit it by starting on DLO.

Hip pain today It was all those eggbeaters. For those of you who don't know I suffered a fairly substantial hip dislocation injury from skateboarding when I was 15 or 16 (almost 10 years ago ). Now and again it comes back to aggravate me. If I had known I would be doing so many damn eggbeaters I would have stretched my hip flexors beforehand.

I had no intention of shredding guiltless, but it definitely seems within reach now.

Still a bunch of concepts I can't hit that I really need to learn: Whirl, Torque, Drifter (hit before, but needs a ton of work). At this point it's more fun for me to just hit long runs of stuff I can do rather than spend 50 tries trying to hit some new trick.

My shins hurt on Tuesday, but they seem fine today. I guess that's a good thing. 4-day weekend coming up! But it's my girlfriend's brother's graduation, so I don't know how much shred I'll get in. But I gotta finish the video!!!

[Pyroman924]

Props man. Sounds like everything is coming together for you. A challenge for you though is to hit Whirl x2 both sides before Worlds. And then I want you to show me at Worlds.

Props on all the Eggbeaters as well buddy!

Keep it up!

[janis]

props on the egg stuff, with those pdx eggs you'll have killer abdominal strength in no time

[Iron Clad Ben]

Thanks guys, not sure if I mentioned this but all those eggbeaters jacked the hell out of my hip (old skateboarding injury). So I've been laying off them.

Dear footblog, (oh yeah, you all want to steal this line now )

Played on Saturday and then again on Tuesday.

Saturday 5/26 3.5 hours
Total hours played in 2007: 128.5 hours
Total hours played in May 2007: 21.5 hours
Worked on: BOP links, ducking

I don't remember too much of this session, but it got pretty hot out and my body was having a tough time keeping up with the heat. Stuff like Butter > PDX illusion RPT is getting pretty easy. I got sooo close to Toe DLO + Near DLO BSOR together. Kept dropping on the last DLO, which was leftside near DLO. I'll get that soon enough. Ducking clipper and Spinning Clipper BSOR fairly easily in seperate runs. No super highlights to report, did hit some pretty long tilt/guilt strings, but no new tricks or anything.

Cody mentioned that he played with one guy who used to shred a lot a few years ago. They had a mini session after a basketball game and he's thinking about getting back into it. Apparently after a little warm up having not played in over a year he hit stuff like dimwalk BS and swirl BSOS. SWEET! Would be good to get another player now that John is gone for the summer.

Tuesday 5/29 1 hour
Total hours played in 2007: 129.5 hours
Total hours played in May 2007: 22.5 hours
Worked on: guitlless links, spinning, ducking

Had a mildly successful solo session in my driveway. I got ducking clip > spinning clip BSOR sorta just by accident in a run, I was really stoked about that. No luck on repeat though. I would LOVE to be able to get dexless super solid and do Lon/Luis/Ricky type runs all over the place (isn't it cool how I can just mention 3 first names and you know what I'm talking about, footbag is so awesome like that). IMHO Dexless pwns shuffle any day of the week. I double BSOSed near DLO which was pretty sweet, plus one extra DLO to seal it up nice and good. Stayed away from eggbeaters again, I miss them, but I think it paid off cuz my hip hasn't hurt in a few days. Ducking is slowly showing signs of improvement, slow but steady progress. I FINALLY cleared a few dives on one side, but couldn't fall into a clipper. That move will come soon, it's been a long time coming. It's just a mental thing with positioning my head, I've finally gotten my body to understand it.

Took a few stabs at whirl and torque, nothin doin Everyone wants me to hit whirl, the fucking pressure is getting intense, but that move is just bane of my goddamn existance. If I ever met whirl in a bar, and I'd had too many lone stars, I'd kick his full-dex knee-pivoting ass!!!

I'm going to take a break from shredding until the end of next week, save for the demo we're doing this saturday. Even after I got the mats I never really let my shins heal to 100%. I feel like every session I'm still playing through some level of pain, even thought it's A LOT less. I just want to completely flush out the shin splints and hop on to the mats with FRESH legs. In the meantime, I'll be hittin' the gym every day to get in some cardio sessions, I've really slipped on that.

One thing that's really been bugging me lately is progression of new tricks. New concepts have been soooooooo slow to take on. I also just don't have the motivation to sit there and give whirl 50 tries when I could be shredding with tricks I already know. I'm almost a year and a half in the game and I haven't whirl, swirl, torque or atomic set yet. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely progressing on the consistency side, integrating all my moves together, cutting down on bails, doing long runs, BSOSing everything (I've been called "Mr. BSOS" by a few people in the last couple months) in my repetoire. But as far as new tricks, I would LOVE to be able to do them, but I just don't have the patience to sit there and give a move 50 to 100 tries during a session, it's frustrating and annoying. Any thoughts on that anyone?

Most of my new moves in the past 6 months have been serendipity, like I was fooling around and thought "oh what if I try this" and then I hit it or get awfully close first try, enough that I hit or foot it within the next 10 tries. Other than that, I am just lacking patience or motivation or something.

Anyways, good personal news right around the corner, 6/8 is the day. It's been stressful as fuck the past few weeks, but it will all be over on that day HOPEFULLY. (apologies for Mosher-style caginess and suspense but I don't want to jinx anything, this is better kept a secret until it's finalized)

More good news is that my brother will be coming into town next week, pretty stoked on that. He's 21 now, so we'll hit the bars, play some disc golf, go on some hikes, hit the river and just bro-out... it'll be a great time.

Well, the demo is in 2 days. I better get a basic script prepared, even though I'm not too worried, I've done one of these before, got a pretty good idea of what to do. Got some really great tips from Dan Ednie (thanks again man if for whatever reason you read this) on demos. Pretty stoked!!!!

[Psilocybe]

I've had shin splints too, for like a month now. I just took a 5-day break before I couldn't take it anymore and played again. Now its bad again

I recently bought the mats you suggested, for 70$. I got 16 tiles. They kick ass. My pain is still there for sure though. In fact, the worst pain I've had yet. It felt like a stress fracture.

Don't think I'll be playing today.

[Frank_Sinatra]

Took a few stabs at whirl and torque, nothin doin Everyone wants me to hit whirl, the fucking pressure is getting intense, but that move is just bane of my goddamn existance. If I ever met whirl in a bar, and I'd had too many lone stars, I'd kick his full-dex knee-pivoting ass!!!

I hear that.

A break from footbag for a week is not a bad idea IMO. I took about a week off and now I'm back, playing better than ever (which isn't saying a whole lot, but even dwarves start small).

As far as drilling one move over and over and over again - it can help to have people kicking with you who are also just working one move over and over again, so that you're all in the same mental space & all encouraging one another. If you're thinking of doing this in a solo session, then I have no real suggestions - just whatever motivates you, I guess.

[Psilocybe]

Suggestion for whirl:

I first learned this move differently than I do it now. I basically did a blazing set. At the very instant you set, start bringing the dex foot over. Try it first just bringing your foot over rather than around. Your setting foot will now plant as you dex and then clipper for the win!

Now I do it as follows. I set, bring my setting foot down quickly and jump off both feet. I actually had this epiphany just yesterday. The dexing foot does its thing while the catching foot just sort of waits for the bag. The dexing foot goes over the catching foot and plants. This is better form, I think.

Might help to take a look at penske:
http://www.paradoxfeet.de/wp-content/up ... lein2.jpeg

Good luck.

[Iron Clad Ben]

Dear Footblog,
My footbag break is not going so well. All I want to do is play!

Saturday 6/2 4 hours
Total hours played in 2007: 133.5 hours
Total hours played in June 2007: 4 hours
Worked on: doing demos for the kiddies, lots of long tiltless runs. Networking, doing a couple interviews

Cody and I drove down to San Antonio on Saturday to do a demo at Texas Public Radio's "Hands On Recess". It was a good time, and well worth the 90 minute trip each way.

Shred highlights:
Diving Clipper! New trick Footed diving butter a couple times as well. Fun concept, still doesn't compute on my flipside, but I'm definitely compelled to skool it on both sides now. Also hit diving clip into a pretty sweet ~20 contact run.
Footed both Eggbeater BSOS and Bubbabeater BSOS in seperate runs. Eggs are comin back! Booyah! Gotta get that sauce
4 hours of shred... NO PAIN! Woohoo!!
Ripwalk > Stepping set... yeesh. Flip stepping is coming along with minimal schooling. I bet if I actually schooled it, it would be awesome.

I'm pretty stoked to have a new concept in its infancy. I had all these crazy daydreams about awesome combos and fancy zulu moves I want to hit. We'll see how that all pans out.

Overall the turnout at the event was a bit disappointing. Apparently there was a bunch of highway construction right where the event was happening making it tough to get to, plus parking was terrible. They promised us 200-300 kids to show, but probably on 100 did, tops. The people who did come were pretty interested, I got a few offers to do school demos, so I handed out some business cards. We'll see what happens.

It was nice to get a lot of questions and props from people, even if turnout was weak. Also the change of scenery was nice.

I got interviewed twice, once for the radio station that was hosting the event, and once for some guy's podcast. I guess the podcast will get posted here eventually:
http://www.tpr.org/programs/iexercise.html

Well, big week for me, major thing going down Friday/Saturday. I have Wednesday off from work with no obligations. Even though I said I'd take the week off from footbag, I have been itching to finish the video I started. I'll see how the legs feel, but no pain on Saturday was a very good omen. I reeeaally want to finish this video, it will be my finest video to date for sure.

Peace out mahfizzied. Oh and Coffmizzle, if you read this, props on winning the KS tournament. I believed in you all along

[Kljopa]

Props!

Glad to hear that you're pain is gone! Pain can be really bothering!

Keep up the hardcore trainings!


Cool stuff with the demos! Good job on spreading the word!

[ObArA'BaRs]

Wow, you got some great endurance. I wish I could shred for 4 hours.

[Iron Clad Ben]

Wow, you got some great endurance. I wish I could shred for 4 hours.

Thanks, it wasn't full on shred for 4 hours though. Cody and I were taking turns, and I spent a fair amount of time talking with people about the game, talking to parents, doing interviews, crap like that.

I played on Wednesday. I did some filming but I was feeling pretty rusty and didn't hit anything huge, although I did get PDX Egg on camera. My video is basically ready and I'm about 40% of the way through the editing.

Probably about 2.5 hours of shredding total. let's see here:
Saturday 6/6 2.5 hours
Total hours played in 2007: 136 hours
Total hours played in June 2007: 6.5 hours
Worked on: making a video

I had a few days off from work and had been walking around in my Nike Free's a lot, but I didn't put my superfeet insoles in them. That was a mistake, eventually my shins started hurting I still have shin splints. It's getting fucking annoying. I played a little more on Saturday, all kinds of suck and since I was on concrete, it only took about 15 minutes for my shins to start hurting.

My brother visited over the weekend. He hacks but isn't really interested into getting into real freestyle, which is a shame. It was his first time to Texas and the first time I'd seen him a long time. We hung out, played some folf, bowling, hit up 6th street and chilled. It was good. Here is a picture of us:


As you can see he looks nothing like me.

==================================

Enough about footbag. Granted I miss it, but I was really busy with other stuff for the past month or so. I have been really stressed out the past few weeks because I have been in the process of buying a condo. This what I have been alluding to, but never mentioning outright because there was always a chance it would fall through. In fact it got really close to that a few times. I spent about 5 months house shopping. I finally found the one I wanted about a month ago and made an offer. There's a lot of bullshit to the whole process of bidding and getting formal approval from the bank and so forth, don't even get me started. I was having anxiety attacks at night for a while there and some really bad nightmares. All this shit I had to do, and then finally when it was getting close the thoughts of OMG what happens if I get hurt and can't work or lose my job, etc. etc. It was quite an emotional rollercoaster.

Anyways, FINALLY in the end things worked out way better than originally planned and I finally closed on my condo this part Saturday 6/9. I'm very happy and hugely relieved that the painful process is over. It has been a lot of hardwork over the past 4 years since I graduated college to go from $22K+ of student loan debt to a down payment on a house. I've been really fortunate in a lot of ways too, I don't deny that. I really don't want to be a braggart, but I feel like this is a big accomplishment to own my own place and no longer be throwing money away on rent. So I am sharing it in my blog, think what you will. I am a homeowner!!

The reeeeeeeeeeeeally cool thing is that it has 3 bedrooms. Sooooo, it will be my bedroom (shared with Amber of course), an office/computer room and a guest bedroom. With that said, footbaggers are definitely welcome to visit! Seriously, any time if for whatever reason you want to come to Austin and crash with me a for a while and play some FOOTBAG email/pm me! (that does not mean just show up unannounced of course) I'll probably create a topic in journeys to tourneys as well.

Here is one picture of the living room / kitchen to get you started.


We have moved all of our stuff over, but we still need unpack and put everything away. Once stuff is more finished I'll post some more pics.

More to follow later. I plan on playing a lot of footbag this week

[Frank_Sinatra]

Congratulations on your new place! That's huge.

[Senor Grommet]

grom houseguest . . .?




A big congrats. I plan on throwing much more money away on rent in the near future

[CIC flurry]

Hi, I'm outside right now. Can you help me with my bags?

[Mathochist]

Man, I was just thinking about asking to crash at your place for the Austin Cty Limits Festival in September. Tickets look stupid expensive, but damn I need to see the White Stripes live.

I love the rate your game's progressing at and reading about it here. I can't wait to kick with you again. See you soon, Worlds at the latest.

[pips]

Good job on getting a new house, Ben! I hope doing that helped your panic attacks go away some. I am just getting over mine since January. I know they are NO fun at all.

[Iron Clad Ben]

Hey thanks everyone You are all definitely welcome to visit. Jeremy, why not come again? Rob it would be good to have you as well, I posted about ACL and such in your blog. Tom, hopefully I'll get to meet the CIC crew at worlds this year, I've heard all kinds of stories about you guys (good stuff), and if you want to come visit, awesome.

Move in is going along really well.

Before this Amber and I had been staying a small place with very low rent in order to pay off debts and save up money. As such we did not have a dishwasher, washer/dryer or central air/heat. Now we have all of these and it is like such a luxury, LOL! It really makes you appreciate them if you live without them for a year.

Internet got hooked up the other day, so pretty much everything else is all set. Still need to assemble my old desk and put away some other stuff but at this point the unpacking is about 70% done.

Had a mini solo session on Tuesday, just to try to get my groove back
Tuesday 6/12 0.5 hours
Total hours played in 2007: 136.5 hours
Total hours played in June 2007: 7 hours
Worked on: basics
Highlights: Butter > PDX Mirage > Toe DLO [RPT] > run was pretty sweet

I got ab and shoulder cramps and had to stop, not sure what that's about. But I didn't really want to play for longer than 30 minutes anyway, as not to push things too hard. No shin splints! Huzzah!

Wednesday 6/13 2.25 hours
Total hours played in 2007: 138.75 hours
Total hours played in June 2007: 9.25 hours
Worked on: dexless

I IMed Cody... "do you want to shred on Wednesday" and his response was "hell yes I want to shred!". That was enthusiasm was really good to hear. It was a pretty decent session considering I hadn't played much in the past couple weeks. I was actually able to really shake some of the rust off towards the end of the session. I couldn't spin for crap in the beginning, but after a while I got it back quite a bit.

Highlights:
Butterfly > Merkon [RPT]
Muted Blur (essentially do the dexes for blur but catch the bag with your delay foot planted. this was completely by accident but I was pretty stoked when it happened)
Spinning Ducking shoulder stall (spinning ducking is within the realm of the possible now, feels sooooo sweet)
Ducking Clipper + DLO BSOR in the same run (linked on only one side)
Spinning Clipper BSOR fairly easily
Merkons got crazy easy towards the end, gyro mirages not so hard either.
Flip PDX DLO! (new move) I had footed this a few times last week. Got it 2nd or 3rd try this time. This move is soooo all about the set. Watching Clavens hit fogs and pdx DLOs in the Rochester vids really helped here, his are really good.
Butter > PDX Mirage > Toe DLO [RPT] footed last DLO, it was strongside but I couldn't quite snag it. Fun combo, it'll help drill toe DLOs, I'm going to keep working on it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention some Cody & James highlights. Cody hit Legbeater BSOS a couple times like it was nothing. He usually only hits atomsmashers which are only semi-consistent but he went for legbeaters tonight and they looked crazy smooth. James footed spinning ducking butter > tomahawk. That looked friggin awesome

Also, some guy I know from work who was playing tennis saw me and was like "OMG what is this? Are there competitions for this?" Apparently he walked by when I was in the middle of a pretty sweet run and I didn't even see him standing there watching till after it was over. So I gave him a short spiel on what it was all about, he was fairly impressed.

Thoughts on PDX DLOs. There seems to be 2 main ways to do these.
1) Uber PDX hip pivot. Basically set straight up from clipper and do a REALLY big hip-pivot/magic hop. This is how I was able to do the move initially. It requires a lot of exertion on the DLO and sometimes the big pivot can really throw off your balance.
2) Set really far across the body. This set is a little harder to do but makes the actual DLO considerably easier if done right. I'm going to school it this way, it seems to be the way the pro's do it. You still need to magic hop, but not nearly as much.

Takeaway: this move is like 99% about the set. It can be hit out of a crappy set, but not nearly as easily.

Note that PDX eggs are a totally different animal. I've found that a low knee high set right in front of your clipper support leg is best.

I may not get to play tonight, but definitely mini solo session on Friday, and the Saturday is the "Keep It Weird" festival in Austin. You better believe footbag will be reppin'