Ben Skaggs

[professor]

MFJ08:

Friday:
- Barefoot shred at the Freedom Shredquarters
- Watching Feet on Fire in Jim's room
- Sleeping on my comfy cot which I forgot at the Shredquarters
- Frisbee catch in the morning with Zac, Evan, Jim, and Zeb.
- Trampoline shred with Zac. He hit shooting legover and I hit Neutron Smasher.
- 8 hour drive across Idaho and Montana
- Cop telling Evan G. to put his seatbealt on without pulling us over.
- Kyle's horrible sounding car.
- Getting to the house and finishing Evan's programming assignment 10 minutes before the deadline.
- Finding out that not only was I not the only Ben at the event, but I wasn't the only Skaggs either.
- Everyone amazed that the first thing we would do at a jam was homework.
- Weird waiter at Perkins.
- Napkin game against Nick at Perkins.

Saturday:
- Wonderful breakfast made by Riley. Seriously, he should be a chef.
- Shred!
- Doing horrible in Shred 30 and Rippin' Run.
- Watching Nick do an amazing Shred 30
- Me, Nick, and Evan G in the same circle of the 1st round of Circle Comp.
- Wonderful ice cream with Red, Nick, Evan, Zeb, Zac, and Ben. Plus 2 Montana kids.
- The girls in Missoula.
- Chess, Guitar Hero, Footbag Videos, and Youtube videos instead of the party at Evan L's house.
- People being totally awesome and letting Evan and I use their extra blankets.
- Kenya!

Sunday:
- Leaving my just bought water at the Good Food Store.
- Frolf! Ended up having 25 people there.
- Watching Jeremiah throw a disk (frisbee) farther and straighter than I've ever seen one thrown. It was so amazing! Words can't explain the awesomeness.
- Evan and I playing ahead of the group. I realized how well Evan and I get along, even outside of footbag.
- Trampoline shred with Zac. Seeing him foot side flipping toe stall. I footed warping eggbeater.
- More shred.
- Hitting spinning ps dlo for the first time ever pretty much first try after hearing Justin and James mention it randomly.
- Ultimate frisbee with Zac, Zeb, Jim, James, Daryl, Scott, and Kyle. Then Kevin midway through the second game, while holding a cigarette.
- More shred. Hitting tobius for the first time after like 30 tries.
- Dinner at the Iron Horse with Zac and Evan. All of us were so tired.
- Walking all the way back to the house in the dark. Just waiting to get mugged or shot.
- The scary mannequin lady staring at us through the shop window in the middle of the night.
- Getting back to the house and chilling with everyone there.
- Learning a new language. long o long.
- Watching Zac stack stuff on Kyle while he slept. Watching Colin put orajel on Kyle's lips.
- Kevin's hidden skill...hehe.

Sunday:
- Sad goodbye's.
- Evan's run in with a cop.
- Not knowing if we would make it to Boise in time to catch our flight. Getting to the airport just in time.
- Being on the smallest plane Delta has and taking off in 60 mph winds.
- Landing in Vegas an hour earlier than the itinerary said.

Thanks to the Missoula crew for setting up and running the event. Thanks to Colin, Riley, Kevin, Jeremiah, and Skaggs for opening their home to us. Thanks to Sunny and Daryl for letting us borrow their van and stay at their house. Thanks to Zeb and Zac for picking us up and dropping us off at the airport and for making it possible for us to go to MFJ. Un-thanks to the cop for the $125 ticket.

I probably forgot stuff, so I'll add more when I remember it.

New page....score!

[professor]

I've come up with a training schedule that I'm gonna try and follow as much as possible and see if it helps my progression more.

Training Schedule
Tuesday: Sets (1 - 2 hours)
Wednesday: Downtime (1 - 2 hours)
Thursday: Links/Drills/Comp (1 - 2 hours)
Friday: Tiltless/BOPs (1 hour)
Saturday: Runs (2 - 3 hours)
Sunday: Strength/Balance Exercises (.5 - 1 hour)
Monday: Hard tricks (optional) (1 hour)

Sets:
pixie
fairy
atomic
quantum
neuclear
whirling
stepping
spinning
ducking
furious
inspinning

Downtime:
double Down
dlo
eggbeater
torque
drifter
whirl
swirl
blender
blur
barrage
dso
(including rev, symp, simple, pdx, combinations, and double versions)

Links/Drills/Comp:
Whirls, osis, and double downs > stepping and spinning
Shuffle
Butterfly > furious, whirr, stepping ducking, and spinning.
Pdx tricks > pdx tricks
Shred 30
Routines

Strength/Balance exercises:
One-legged jump rope
One-legged spins
Consec symp whirls
Consec vortexes
Consec atw/datw's
Eyes-closed one-legged/clipper balancing
Sit ups/Ab-wheel
Push ups

[calemccoy]

that sounds amazing. your gonna be awesome ben. sounds like MFJ was sweet too. by the way....


is kenyans from the powerthirst video? if so....

TURBOPUNS!!!!!

[professor]

1.5 hour training session.

Since it's Wednesday and I'm better at downtime components than sets, I worked sets today. I felt amazing and played well. I'll follow the schedule from now. Which means tomorrow is links/drills/comp.

I had my session than realized I needed a highlight. So I hit 54 pickups first try.

[professor]

1.25 hour training/shred session. I was training in the Rec Center at my school when Loren Baum (Bum) shows up and wants to kick. So, we played. I played pretty well. Didn't feel as controlled as yesterday, but my average run length was really good. I actually felt consistent for once in my life.

Highlight: mirage > ss mirage > rpt x2

So hard!

[calemccoy]

haha that drill is tough... i think one of the challenegs ive done is that drill for 20 contacts.... it took me like 2 hours.

[Asmus]

I wanna hit that so bad at the moment!
You should try mirage * 3 > ss mirage * 3 [rpt]

Please come to worlds, I wanna kick.

Please give us an update on the Bum.
Why is he back home?
Loren definitely made his mark on me when I was in Vegas a couple of years back.
I would love to hear how he is and everything.

[professor]

Loren has been back in Vegas for a long time now. He's teaching yoga at UNLV (Mine and Evan's school). He has a myspace if you want to contact him.


I found this sweet website that has some old footbag videos of a bunch of different players. Thought others might be interested.

http://dallas.footbag.org/multimedia/

Won't be able to play today. Can't wait for summer, so I can train everyday! Oh well, I'll do some one legged squats and balance training instead.

[professor]

1.5 hour training session. Worked sets. I'm feeling really good about my shred lately. My flipside ankle is hurting. The tendons are swollen and they snap against the bone. I think it's just tendonitis, which is an easy treatment.

Highlight: spinning clip > gyro clip > rpt - Pretty much the sickest combo I've hit to date.



If you talk to me on chat or something, I'll give you real highlights. Just don't want people to get the impression that I'm good or something.

[Asmus]

The videos on the dallas website is good. Thanks for sharing.
Nice MFJ write-up. Made me look forward to all the upcoming summer fun.

And your training schedule is really impressive if this doesn't prove to make you really really good I don't know what will.

Hope to see you at worlds.

[professor]

Ya, the training schedule won't come into effect fully until summertime when I don't have school. Right now, everyday I play, I just pick one of the days on the list. For example, today will probably be strength/balance day.

A miracle would have to occur for me to be at Worlds. Actually, a few miracles probably. Sorry.

[professor]

I moved from Las Vegas to Pahrump last weekend. Pahrump is a town about 45 min from Vegas. As of now I commute into Vegas for school and work each day. I plan on moving back into Vegas sooner or later.

On the footbag side of things, I've been playing almost everyday, but my flip ankle is messed up (surprise). Sometimes when I go from a clipper position and plant my foot, tendons in my ankle catch and snap. The snap hurts a lot! It sounds like I've said this same thing before...

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of atw, datw, and tatw work. I footed tatw barefoot a few times. It'll come soon, I can feel it.

Also been working toe-toe stuff. My average string length of only toe-toe tricks is about 5 contacts. Not too bad compared to where I used to be, but could be much better. It's hard to stay with just toe tricks.

[professor]

2 hour training session. Played well for not playing regularly this week. Hit some good stuff.

Highlight: Made it through 1:45 of my routine dropless.

[Zac Miley]

Highlight: Made it through 1:45 of my routine dropless.

I refuse to read this because it's not tiltless.

[professor]

Some of it was tiltless.

[professor]

2 hour session. Played mediocre I'd say. String length wasn't to par. Footed tatw in shoes though. On the plus side, I played with both clippers without hurting my ankle at all.

Highlight: legover > atw > rpt

I think the legover was the though.

[professor]

2 hour session last night. Worked mostly on form stuff. Watching a lot of Dave stuff at the moment.

Highlight: Ankle didn't get destroyed.

[Zac Miley]

Since you say you've been watching a lot of Dave, have you noticed yourself changing from on some things? Specifically osis? My osis completely changed after I started watching Dave more.

[professor]

I'm really focusing on mirage moves and stepping. I think those have always been some of his best concepts. I've noticed that whenever Jorden or Dave do a mirage, their support leg is straight when they dex and then they wait to bend the leg until the delay the bag. I think this helps with delay accuracy and balance.

[professor]

One more final to go. I'll be done with school tomorrow. Haven't played footbag in a week cause I've been studying like mad. Can't wait till' Saturday. Some hardcore footbagging will commence.