Endurance Training

[Jorden]

Hey.

After the SA Championships, a couple Colombian players asked me if I could make a list of advice on how to get good endurance in footbag.
It's pretty short but hopefully it gives some decent insight. Enjoy!

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Jorden’s Endurance Training Tips

Goal: to understand how to regain energy during a string, become more efficient to save energy while playing, and to drop due to error and not fatigue.

Step 1: the standard position. This is the body position you should maintain when playing in general. Keep the feet shoulder width apart or slightly closer when standing. Try not to go beyond shoulder width because it’s easy to lose balance and the legs are harder to lift (waste of energy). Apply most of your weight to the front part of your soles (balls of the feet) with the heels barely touching the ground. Keep the calves slightly tense.

Have good posture at all times. You can lean forward but don’t arch the back when doing so. Bend at the hips and not the lower back. Keep the shoulders upright (don’t dip them down) and relaxed. Keep your chin up just enough so you are still able to see the bag. Looking straight downwards all the time can strain the neck, so try and keep it upright. The knees stay at least slightly bent at all times. Never hyper extend the knees. In general, don’t angle the feet outwards relative to where your torso is facing. This may result in loss of balance or unnecessary stress on the joints.

Take deep slow breaths when playing. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. This maximizes oxygen intake. Keep the entire body in a relaxed state. Only the muscles that need fast response for the tricks should be tensed, but only slightly.

The arms stay relaxed and at your sides. The palms should only ever face down, inward or backward (never up or outward). There are only 2 actions the arms may need to perform to maintain balance during shred. They are sideways abduction and bending the elbows.

Step 2:

During play, work on blocking out all distractions and anything stressful. Such things include self-consciousness, life stresses, background noise and most importantly: worrying about dropping. If any of your mental energy is being diverted to other things when you play, you are wasting energy. Footbag should be an escape, or even a form of meditation. The 3 things you should focus on are 1) your breathing, 2) your heartbeat and 3) the FOOTBAG! Get used to telling when your heart rate is going up. You may be becoming excited or shaky. But we want to stay RELAXED at all times! This is the key to endurance in footbag. If you feel this happening, focus heavily on your breathing. Make sure each breath is exactly as described above. Get the rhythm of your breathing smooth and consistent. Try to relax your muscles when you exhale.
Visually, the only thing you should see is the footbag. Be confident enough in your legs that they can do what you want without you looking at them. You should (eventually) be able to see the amount of spin on the footbag. It should be the only thing in focus and everything else should seem blurry and unimportant.

Step 3:

Trick selection and session structure has a lot to do with building endurance.
A great tip for saving energy for all tricks is to constantly be moving. All body motions in footbag should be somewhat circular. Any sort of abrupt stopping and starting wastes energy and is highly inefficient.
Always start off with your single easiest trick (probably inside kicks). Practice it until you are warm enough to have it smooth and consistent. SLOWLY add new kicks, one at a time, to your inside kicks. Get all of these smooth, consistent and even on both sides. Then start freestyling with only kicks. Challenge yourself by making random combos of kicks mid-string. Once again, only tense your muscles when you absolutely need to. In this case, it’s right before and during the point of impact with the bag. SLOWLY move to stalls. Do toe stalls using the forward circular setting motion, setting towards you. The legs and entire body should be in constant motion. Always cushion stalls by bending the support knee primarily. It’s the lowering of the body that cushions stalls, not just the stalling leg itself. Work your way up slowly by adding more difficult moves that you are comfortable with. Don’t move on to the next trick until you are confident with the previous trick.

Step 4:

For endurance training, practice only up to 70% of your current skill level. Work on smooth circular motions for every stall and dex. A good drill is to pick 3 simple downtime moves, either 2 normal + 1 bail, 1 normal + 2 bail or all 3 bails and restrict all your runs to only these tricks. You can add anything uptime as long as you use just the 3 downtime moves. Some examples include osis, legover mirage, or butterfly osis pdx mirage and my personal favourite, osis swirl xbd rake. Try to chose moves that are very boring to you. Think up 3 or 4 sets of these moves to work with that you think will help you. This will force you to think creatively, prevent you from rushing ahead to advanced concepts and help isolate a set of useful moves for the sole purpose of mastery. This drill relates to endurance because at least one bail is included with whatever trick set you choose. Bails are the most important moves for maintaining long runs.

3 Last Tips:

1) Stay low to the ground whenever possible. Replace your feet rather than hopping and switching. Unnecessary hopping, planting (arm flailing, muscle tensing…etc.) will slow your progress on the road to better endurance.
2) Eat a balanced diet. Eating poorly will slow you down and get you tired faster. Stick to fresh natural foods rather than anything processed or fried.
3) If you have any questions or are unsure of anything, never hesitate to ask a pro. We are always more than happy to help!

Best of luck,

JM

[gMoney]

Damn, Jorden, I can see you put a lot of thought, effort and time into this. This is seriously stuff I know I never would have thought about. Thanks for posting this

[Grade Zero]

Has this been stickied yet?

It needs to be


EDIT: Man, once Jorden types one of these advice threads up, it's like the heavens part and the Hallelujah theme plays.

[Bringerofpie]

I would also suggest cardio exercise separate from Footbag.

[MatS21]

Has this been stickied yet?

It needs to be

[qphox]

I really like step 4. I'll have to try that more when my ankle is back up to snuff.

Well written Jorden.

[alvarojunka]

hey Jorden:

thank you so much for your tips, they're very usefull, but I think I'm gonna need more time to practice then I thought hehe my indurance sucks..

As you told me here I'm practicing maybe 4 days a week and working on your tips every day.

nos vemos!

[Ian Brill]

I had to search for this. I saw it weeks ago and forgot to come back when I had a chance. Anyway, I'm glad I finally read it. It looks like it could help a lot.

[ShredOnLawn]

Thanks Jorden Moir.

The biggest difference for me was when I quit smoking.

I try to get better:

Air
Sleep
Food
Equipment
Cross Training
Spinal Posture
Joint Strength for Impact on Landing on the Heels

777 Posts, so this was my Jackpot Post