Israel Footblog - Training program

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 05 Nov 2009 13:38

Well this week has been a huge improvement over the previous one, although I didn't play any footbag other than today. Which is terrible, since Jon Schneider's gonna be here next week!
After I really improved my spins I feel like I'm stuck again. I've been working on stepping for a couple of sessions but no big improvements yet. Hit Ripwalk x3 instead of my usual x2. Yippe. I'm getting sick of this component already.
I tried fairy and couldn't hit a single one. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, other than probably everything. I must learn Fairy!!

If I upload a video of me not hitting fairy, will you promise to not laugh and give me tips?

Asmus · Post by **Asmus** » 05 Nov 2009 15:03

For sure, bro.
Also look up on the forums/.org and see what tips there are.
Maybe there are some advice in the vasek manual aswell (don't remember).

matt_bailey · Post by **matt_bailey** » 06 Nov 2009 15:12

vid please. could always throw in a bonus spinning string for us?

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 07 Nov 2009 03:45

Will do Matt

Right now I can't find my camera's USB cable (And of course the plug is propriety so nothing else fits

) so nothing I video can go on the computer yet..

At any rate, I've been thinking about where my game should go and I will continue working on stepping a bit more. I wanna see how much I can improve it before moving on, every bit will help.
When I move on, I'll (finally) start working towards better double downs. I contemplate whether I'd benefit from improving my datw first or go straight for dod. Anyone willing to share their perspective on that?

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 08 Nov 2009 11:40

Had a nice session. Hit Gyro mirage bsos, spinning clipper-> stepping ss clipper, a very nice zooming and toe barrage both sides. I hit Dan's challenge, although I footed the last contact. Does that count?
Tried doing fairies, I think I did one relatively ok on strong side, and I also hit my bi-yearly dragon

I'm very influenced by Nick's shred on the Night shred video.

On Friday I played by the beach and some passing kid said "hey I know what you're doing! it's called footbag!" turns out he had footbag classes in his school, when the hackers at footbag israel taught it. He didn't participate but just the existence of these classes in the school exposed the sport to everyone there.

Jonathan Schneider is going to be here on Thursday, and I plan on bugging him for Fairy tips until I find or replace my camera's usb. It's gonna be fun on a bun!

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 09 Nov 2009 14:47

Long, rewarding session with the Ra'anana kids - Ron, Matan and Yuval.
We haven't played together for over two weeks, so I was glad to see they improved. Ron has quantums and a good crank, he can throw a long run with far osis, flapper stalls and stuff, but his left side is seriously neglected. Matan is more two sided and has a nice trick vocabulary, but no consistency what so ever. I'm hoping the lavers will fix that. Yuval is newer to footbag and has terrible shoes so he obviously lags behind. I think he could be really good once he has proper shoes.

I played extra aggressive today, trying to up string difficulty and linking stuff I never link. I still forget to throw stepping mid-string, but spinning is definitely a mid-string component for me now. I spin with confidence

I'm considering putting DODs on another hold in favor of quantum or atomic, since I'm sick of playing shuffle only with pixie.
I hit one pretty good fairy! I was like "YESSSS" and Ron said "hah that's how WE sound when we learn new stuff!". Still a long, annoying road until fairy becomes useful.

boyle · Post by **boyle** » 10 Nov 2009 02:14

Hey Roy, it sounds like you're doing real good. I'm thinking of making a return from Europe when I go next year via Dubai>Tel Aviv. It's cool to hear you're getting some other kids into shredding, it's always hard doing it by yourself. That session from the previous post sounds really strong.

I hope you're making lots of art sales to fund your Australian trip

. It's really ridiculous, whenever anyone from Israel checks into the hostel, the first thing I think is "are you a crazy art dealer?"

You hit my challenge so I need a new one.

stepping ss clipper>whirl> op butterfly rpt

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 10 Nov 2009 02:30

Ah I like your challenges!
By stepping clipper you mean setting from right foot and stalling on right foot, right?
If you come to Israel it'll be awesome! I'm becoming very experienced at hosting footbag players. I'll take you to good hummus places, and we'll go around selling fake arts and stuff. It'll be awesome.

boyle · Post by **boyle** » 10 Nov 2009 03:12

fuck, I could totally sell `authentic aboriginal dot paintings'. I would make a mint.

Oh yeah, I edited my challenge, the first trick is stepping ss clipper, so like a sidewalk, but with clip instead of butterfly. So you are right, start and finish on the same foot.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 15 Nov 2009 01:09

My internet connection was out the entire weekend, so I couldn't update on what's been going on.
Jon Schneider got here on Thursday, and we met on Friday and Saturday for some outdoor kicking.
On Friday we went to Rishon Letsyon, where all the hackers used to meet. I was expecting a modest session, but a surprisingly large amount of people showed up, mostly kids. Some I've never even seen before. Jon brought my Ra'anana kids lavers, so at some point there were circles with more shred shoes than not

I hope these kids are going to explode the Israeli footbag scene (pop. 1) in the near future.

But the real highlight was Saturday, we met on the Tel Aviv promenade, my old shred spot, on a perfect sunny, chilly day for 3 hours(!!) of shred. One of the kids I've never seen before showed up too, he seems very enthusiastic. I felt good because I got allot of stepping and spinning in my strings (finally, mid string stepping), and watching Jon do his unique moves and combos has been a pleasure.

He gave me some dragon tips and I'll be sure to work on that. Unfortunately he's not into uptimes so he couldn't give me fairy tips.

I took some videos, and I'll go buy a card reader to get them on my computer and share with y'all. Hopefully I'll see him for a night shred mid week, and have a goodbye shred or two next weekend.

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 15 Nov 2009 09:59

Very very cool. Even though you didn't talk about highlights this post made me really want to get out and shred today. Glad to hear you had a good time and that there is still hope yet for growth in the Israeli footbag scene.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 16 Nov 2009 23:37

I finally got a card reader that's working! (although I forgot to check whether it reads mini sd's for my phone, and sure enough, it doesn't

)

I've uploaded a picture I took of Jon, for now. Swirl, Tel Aviv promenade, November 14th.

[Edit]
Ben, I'm not good with highlights. But the highlight for me was when Jon complimented my spinning

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 18 Nov 2009 11:04

Started working on dods. I couldn't decide between out to in datw or dod so I do both.
I started out not being able to do datw out to in on both legs, and dod with left leg only.
Today I hit out to in datw and dod on both sides. It's been going good on strong and an uphill struggle as usual with flip. I try to remind myself how bad my flip was when I was working on spins, and how good it is now. Just grind through these rough beginnings and don't despair!

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 18 Nov 2009 20:55

Interesting. My spinning totally deteriorated on one side after my injury and I've been grinding through getting it back. It suuuucks. Spinning and spinning ducking are 2nd nature on my strong side but a mess on my weak side now. Glad to hear you're getting your flip spinning going finally, gives me hope cuz right now I'm pretty frustrated.

I hit Ripwalk x 3 today for the first time. Let's both try to get 6 of em OK!

Props on all the DODs. Richard Abshire taught me a drill to learn that move but I haven't done it yet. Basically you do ATW-out > SS Butter. And then you try to do them in quick succession. Then you try to do barely any stall on the ATW and barely any set on the butter to try to make it more like DOD. He said it's how he teaches everyone to double down.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 18 Nov 2009 23:39

You're on for the ripwalk x6

I actually think of atw+butter when I go for DOD, because when I think of DATW bail to clipper I mess up the first dex. I always try to simplify things by working on the components separately so the Abshire drill totally makes sense! Thanks, I'm sure it's gonna be a huge help.

And don't give up on your flip spin! How is it messed up? Is it the set or the spin itself?

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 21 Nov 2009 08:05

Had two days of footbag with Jon. Yesterday we played in Rishon letsyon, had a huge turn out but was nothing special in terms of shred. Just fun in the sun.
Today we kicked at the beach near my house and I personally had a huge session. I hit some new stuff - Spinning osis, blurry whirl and pixie paradon!
I think I inspired Jon to play more uptime moves than he usually does.. He did Matador, barfly, tried for atomic and pixie stuff.. But his style of game doesn't really require uptime to look good imo.

I think I'll be taking a week off now, my back hurts and my knees sting a bit. Maybe double downs isn't the healthiest trick for me.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 24 Nov 2009 02:13

Since it's a slow footbag week (I'm on break), I'll reveal that the mystery guest confirmed his arrival, we'll meet on April 2010, and that his name is JORDEN MOIR. Yes. Envy me!

boyle · Post by **boyle** » 25 Nov 2009 19:53

nice! That's a good score.

But it means you will be missing this view...

That means you should come out for Narooma if you won't come in April. That is what I think.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 02 Dec 2009 12:35

I've only played twice this week because my life has been a fucking turmoil lately (is that a trick name? Sounds like it should be).
I'll stick to my habits of not talking about personal life here and get on with it. Some of you are getting plenty of my personal life on twitter, anyhow.

I love having a trick under my belt that people say "wow" when I pull it off. Pixie paradon is 'it' now. Before that it was ducking mirage. What's yours?
Last session, Sunday, I hit paradon BS for the first time (yes i hit pixie paradon before I hit paradon. Not that weird for some reason), dod bs several times, and out to in datw bs several times. I'm surprised by how well I'm progressing. Although I figure I won't be making any of these tricks a safe mid-run trick by the time I'm done with my double down training.
I've been incorporating tons of spins, stepping and whirl moves in my strings which makes me happy. I love all these components. I just need to remind myself to do more flip spins, which I hardly do even though they're decent.

After the double down training I'll do a short osis refresher since I drop too much on osis, and then I'm contemplating swirls, even though I'm afraid I'll fail. Jon gave me some tips on how to approach the subject, and he said I came close to hitting butterfly swirl in his presence. So combine that with the fact that I was wary of double downs too, this fear may be misplaced. Having swirls to play with will certainly take my game to new, interesting places.

boyle · Post by **boyle** » 03 Dec 2009 21:29

nice work on your paradon progress. It sounds a lot better than mine as a matter of fact!

My osis is really the worst part of my game at the moment, I've got to work on it more and more. Swirl is an awesome trick to have in the repertoire, just adds a little variety, once your learn them they're not really that hard.

My trick like your paradon would be revup. It's not really that hard, but not so many people do it, and on my strong side I can hit it about 90% of the time no troubles. Whenever I hit it people are always stoked, even players much better than me.

Pixie paradon is a nice trick, can you do blurriest as well?