Importance of the basics

[Dave Soderberg]

I've been playing freestyle for 2 years and I did not learn all my basics before I started trying new tricks. I thought I was doing well in my footbag accomplishments until I went back to the basics. I had skipped Illusion and osis and now it is kicking my ass.

I just thought I would start a new thread about how important it is to get your basics down first because since I have been working on these two tricks my freestyle has been sooo much better!

[sidekick]

It is my fundamental belief that mastery over the basics is the only way to get good at freestyle footbag, or anything for that matter, and not hurt yourself (as much) in the process.

I feel that I must stipulate that learning how to stick a stall is key to the development of all foundation moves, but after stall mastery there are 5 different foundation tricks that all build up to the other tricks you would see any high level freestyler doing. They are:

1) Clipper
2) Mirage
3) Illusion
4) Pickup
5) Legover

In turn there are a few things that one must master about these tricks in order to do them with ease and proper form. I consider good form to be the use of minimal energy, correct posture, correct landing stability and positioning, and finally a stuck stall. Also, if there is a dex involved with the trick, then your leg should be going around the bag at above the ankle to create a thicker looking dex. If you can demonstrate all of these elements when executing a trick, then you have proven you have good form, and style only matters in relation to the visual aspect of footbag.

After the foundation tricks there are many other three add downtime moves to learn, which, in my opinion, are the next step in advancing your footbag game. Those are:

1) Butterfly
2) Whirl
3) Drifter
4) Osis
5*) Eggbeater
6*) Double Leg Over
7*) Barrage
8*) Swirl

I purposefully left out Paradox mirage due to it being almost the same as mirage once you learn the proper hopping motions and foot placement, but it is a foundation move.

After learning the first 4 moves, learning sets is advisable for furthering your guiltless game because you can combine any set with and two add downtime concept to make your game more varied. The second set, the ones with the * by them are more advanced downtime concepts, which are great by themselves as three add moves, but can be combined with other sets to allow for more creativity.

[Dave Soderberg]

Thanks for the post. now I know the next set of tricks I should start working on after I master the illusion.

[Rieferman]

great post nick, I agree 100% (and wish I'd been smart enough to follow that advice when I started)

[MathieuGM]

I'm still a beginer, but IMO the worst thing a new player could do is to try to play guiltless as fast as possible. I'll explain what i mean :

Sometime, we see new players post video with move like : ducking cliper-butterfly-osis-pdx mirage-spining clipper-mirage-smear-butterfly, etc.

And we see some comments like : you should take off that mirage and it would be better.

I think it might be true for some, but it is still REALLY better to have a good mirage with a good form than having a rushed osis that would messed up the rest of the string. Plus, by doing this osis, you the probability that the next few moves get rushed and don't have a good form get really higher.

So, IMO, it's more important to keep these 2add longer if needed, because they allow you to ''reset'' the string and make sure that every single move after that will still have a good form... So, in a short run, when player get between the tiltless lvl and the guiltless level, it's nice to have good basics because they will make your string more clean and really longuer taht if you only rush on 3 adds.

That was only my opinion!

[CIC flurry]

nice post Nick.
Prop monsta

[Fade2black]

Wow Nick, right an article

steller advice for all the beginners trying to get intermediate