Mike this post made me really happy. This blog has kind of dwindled to a mere "let's get together" "okay, when?" "here" "K" message board. I remember when aric, steve, myself, and matt would post new hits and drills all over the place.
you're excited > I'm excited. I'll get back to you real soon about that NYS Fair jam I'm planning. And if I can get it semi legit I'll post it in the tournies board.
I've never seen chris hit tapdown in years. I'd also like to see some symp stuff from him too! Beta smear would look sick with his shuffle.
edit: go back and read the last post. - - sorry mike.
Pat Thomsen
Syracuse, New York - The connecting point to footbaggers in the NE and Canada. We make pancakes and air conditioners.
- tighter shred
You have a ton of moves and the ability to pull of some amazing bursts of greatness in your strings. I think the one thing holding you back right now is how big your movements are. You have good power in your legs but sometimes it seems you are not in control of that power.
For example, your pixie and fairy sets are huge. This takes a lot more energy than necessary to execute and makes for a higher and perhaps less accurate set. This added height and fast return speed of the bag adds difficulty to the catch. I recommend you work on keeping the bag near or below your waste. You have the strength, speed, and range of motion to do almost anything. Now you just have to minimize the space in which you do it.
I hope this helps.
I am going to watch some of your more recent videos and see if there is anything else I can point out that might help.
Hey thanx for taking the time to think about everyone's game and giving advice on drills and whatnot Mike. It's funny because I think the last time we played (other than last Thursday) you were dead on, my strings were finally nice and lengthy, however that was when I did start working on symp stuff and now that Ive done that my strings are really short again! Haha. I'd like to give you a drill that I think would polish up your game, but it looks like you've already worked on most of them! Hmmm, maybe try and throw more spinning stuff in your game? How about pixie clipper>spinning clipper>merkon>rpt?
Thank you. As for the merkon drill, I have actually hit pixie clip > merkon > repeat. However, adding a spinning clip in there will certainly challenge me. Hopefully I can hit it by Sunday.
Yesterday, I contacted Doug Tank to have our usual Sunday session. He suggested we hit Park Ave Festival and I agreed that was a great idea. We had a great session and attracted a lot of possitive attention.
For one thing, Doug did some things I had never seen him do and in some cases, he admitedly had never done before either. I do not want to steal his thunder so I will let him elaborate on his sucesses.
As for myself, I played alright. I was happy to have people to entertain and aside from sweating my butt off, I think I gave people a positive view of footbag.
What I learned about doubles routines...
One of the things I learned at this event was that people love doubles routines. Personally, I have never been too excited to watch doubles routines, but apparently a lot of people are. After about an hour of shred in a two-man only session, Doug and I found ourselves feeling pretty tired. So I thought we should try some strings together.
We started with a simple string like pixie clip > ducking clip > pdx mirage > butterfly > pdx mirage > hand catch. We performed a few different strings, most of them five tricks or less. When we didn't finish a string together due to a drop or bad timing, we laughed and repeated the string until we got it right. After only a few different strings, I looked up and to my surprise there were about 30 or more people standing in a line in front of us watching. I then let Doug have the bag. He performed a really long string with a variety of tricks and when he finished many people in the crowd cheered for him.
We then proceeded to pass the bag back and forth to perform strings, and to my disappointment a lot of people walked away. Later in our session, we returned to doing strings together, and sure enough a crowd gathered in front of us again.
Can it be that doubles routines are very appealing to general audiences? Does it look more organized or professional to people? All I know is that Doug and I proved it can really attract a crowd. Aside from attracting a crowd and being a lot of fun, I found performing these strings together to be a nice break from straight shredding. It gave us a chance to get our strengths back. Perhaps we should try this at our next Sunday session. Think about it.
RFA - I call you guys out. Who wants to play tomorrow (tuesday)? Anyone, anywhere (I'd rather somewhere familiar and not cobbs, though. . . but whatever), any time.
I have today and tomorrow off of work and it's been hell.
Pat Thomsen
Syracuse, New York - The connecting point to footbaggers in the NE and Canada. We make pancakes and air conditioners.
I'm free tomorrow if no one else is, Pat. Call me up at 585-730-3003 and I will play and doug will come but he said something cryptic about a leg injury. I don't know what that was about because I had to leave but whatever
I intend on directing a lot of traffic to our site. The more information we have the better. The more people we have, the more people we will have. Make sense?
Sweet! Now was that barraging pickup > repeat or toe barrage > op pickup repeat? If it was toe barrage > pickup try toe barrage > pixie pickup > repeat or with fairy pickup. It's nice to read that you are drilling. I find drills force me to improve control and consistency, as well as whatever tricks are in the drill. I find if I just free shred an entire session I always fall back on the tricks I can already do well. That's not bad for building strength and endurance, but these days I want to add more tricks to my game.
I've never seen chris hit tapdown in years. I'd also like to see some symp stuff from him too! Beta smear would look sick with his shuffle. 
