Israel Footblog - Training program

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 05 Jan 2010 10:43

Asmus, every time you have a drill suggestion, it's something that sounds easy enough and then turns out to be a lot harder than anticipated. EVERY TIME! You've got a talent, son

Continued grinding swirls today. Got some of my game control back.

I've decided that after I finish with swirls I'll spend a lot of time solidifying various game concepts rather than trying to learn new ones.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 12 Jan 2010 10:49

I've decided to change my training schedule.
Up until now I left work at 6:30 pm, drove to the gym and played footbag outside till my friend showed up (7:30-7:45 pm), worked out and went home.

Due to timing constraints, the last two instances I had to go home first, and since I live 5 minutes jogging from the gym, I jogged there and back.
I feel like this is the better method, as I get warmed up just by getting there, and by the time I'm done working out, I hardly need to warm up with the footbag and I get more practice time that way.

Today I felt a real improvement with swirls and toe swirls. Still far away from decent but I'm starting to hit those bastards regularly both sides, so I think I'll start improving a lot more rapidly.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 14 Jan 2010 00:29

Had a session with Josh last night.
He said he'll be in TLV at 6:30 pm, and being the punctual person that I am, I planned my whole day around that. I should've known he'd actually get there at around 9:30 pm. To wrap it up he took about 15 minutes to change from pants to shorts while keeping me guarding our bags.

Ahh anyways the session was good, I felt on top of my shit, but there are some links I should really cut out of my game.

Ripwalk->far legover, Dimwalk->DLO, osis->mirage, spinning clipper->ss butter..

Hit two toe swirls (out of two tries!)

Refreshing to play footbag with someone appropriately challenging.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 17 Jan 2010 00:54

On Saturday we had a beautiful sunny day, so I went to play at the Tel Aviv promenade, a highly successful decision.

First off, my choice spot was taken by a bunch of young Mexicans busking by playing music. So I asked them if it's cool that I play in front of them, and they were happy to, and we attracted a cheering crowd of about a hundred people in a few minutes.
After that I moved elsewhere to concentrate on playing rather than performing, and a young guy approached and asked about footbag. He said he's from Swiss and he used to play with friends there, and we kicked a bit, he bought a mr. sandbag, and I invited him to join our weekly hack session next week.

I played really well, had several super long runs, with some cool shuffling combos with more than just pixie sets, and also spontaneously hit atomic whirl.

Only down side is that I promised Daniel to hit Blender and totally didn't even try

Today I will!

Here's a picture from saturday (I usually warmup with a sandbag and bring out the 32 after)

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 19 Jan 2010 01:28

This is a picture from last summer that someone just tagged on facebook. Not proper footbag picture but I like it:

It's going to rain this entire week, which will make for indoor sessions, something I haven't done in a while and totally am not looking forward to.
Oh yes and swirls are evil.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 20 Jan 2010 02:43

A breakthrough in swirls: I used to resist the notion of letting the bag roll off the foot for an easy uptime/midtime swirl because I thought it's a cheat. But I started treating it like a pixie set, where the dex starts in a very close proximity to the set, so it makes more sense and feels legitimate. Last session I hit many good swirls bs with this method. Plus, my toe swirls are also improving a lot, bs.
There's a faint light at the end of the tunnel.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 27 Jan 2010 01:54

Session highlight from yesterday:

Playing outside in the presumably coldest day of the year.

I took the necessary precautions; taking my time warming up, playing with a long sleeve at first, and wiping the sweat off often. I might've skipped the session if I didn't read Scott Davidson's blog, where he talks about shredding in the midwest winter. Makes our coldest day seem like near-summer.

Swirls progressing slowly, there's still a long way ahead.

Asmus · Post by **Asmus** » 27 Jan 2010 03:05

How cold was it?

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 27 Jan 2010 04:44

Must've been around 8-10 Celsius, but hardly any wind. If it was windy I'd probably give it up.

boyle · Post by **boyle** » 27 Jan 2010 14:57

8 degrees, tough days

It gets to -8 here in Canberra, not so many other cities in Australia go below zero regularly, but of course -8 is nothing compared to parts of Europe or Canada. It is still uncomfortably cold though.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 28 Jan 2010 11:15

So yeah, I realize 8 Celsius is a joke for anyone living not on the exact center of the equator, but come on, it's the psychological effect that I overcame, not the actual coldness itself

Anyways, today's session was full of highlights. I will write them down in ascending order of W00Tness

Ducking rake, inspired by Ian from U.K who hit it on video today. Very cool move that never occurred to me, Thanks, Ian!

Rubber knee symp butterfly. I saw Gordon's routine from U.S open 2009 today. Watching him always makes me wanna do rubber knee stuff.

Merkon->Parkwalk->Ripwalk. I was especially happy with this because the parkwalk was on my weak pixie and ripwalk on my weak stepping.

A perfect Butterfly Swirl!! (strong side only)

Footed far swirl on weak side. I was just messing around and was surprised with how dangerously close I am to hitting it.

Torque! And lots of 'em! It finally clicked! I hit it on strong side only because I didn't want to jinx the occasion. Another pain in the ass move that I felt inferior for not hitting is under my belt. I will work on it in conjunction with swirls.

Thank you, footbag deities!

WyrmFyre · Post by **WyrmFyre** » 28 Jan 2010 12:13

Wahey! I was a source of inspiration!

I managed it again today, at the beginning of a short string. Vid will be in my blog shortly.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 02 Feb 2010 00:52

I need to come up with a practice method to help me tie up all the tricks I've been working on for when I finish with swirls. It will be at least a month from now, seeing how slow my progress is with clipper swirls and now that I'm also working on Torque, but I'm going to need a training strategy to solidify many concepts in my shred.

Last session I hit strings including many of the new concepts, which is great, but the new concepts are usually very one sided. I'd hate losing all my flip tricks which I worked very hard on.

Asmus · Post by **Asmus** » 02 Feb 2010 02:53

Maybe talk to Anz about it?
He made that big training program study you know?

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 10 Feb 2010 00:15

Isn't the program more about drilling of specific components rather than strings? I glanced through the topic again and couldn't find anything inspiring to help me

I'm contemplating dropping the clipper swirls in favor of focusing on toe swirls. Too much effort and too little progress with clipper swirls while I think I can get toe swirls to be usable fairly quickly.

And due to lack of concrete plan or ideas on how to work on string length, I've decided to take the brute-force approach. "I'm not leaving till I hit 40 contacts". Later revised to 30 contacts. That took too long, I definitely need this practice.

At least I didn't compromise on variety, both sidedness and difficulty too much to reach the goal.

Asmus · Post by **Asmus** » 10 Feb 2010 09:33

I am absolutely sure he can give you tips about how to drill that aswell.

If you are getting too frustrated with normal swirls just do the toe ones, will probably also help clipper swirls in the long run.

And good job on 30 nice varied contacts!

boyle · Post by **boyle** » 12 Feb 2010 23:31

I think the idea of setting a contact goal is a real help for developing longer runs. Also for warming up, I like to start with 100 kicks, then some other stuff, then once I'm getting a little warmer, aim for 50 tiltless. I don't always make it there, but it's good to set a target and it feels great when you achieve that.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 13 Feb 2010 11:06

Woohoo! It's been a while.
I made a new video today!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i280Qcjwj2g[/youtube]

The result of 2 hours straight shredding, concluding a week of playing every day (well except Monday).
If you've been following my blog, you won't be surprised by the trick selection. Everything I've been talking about is there.
When in front of the camera I of course cussed and swore and wasn't happy at all with how I played, but looking at the final product, I kinda am. Not everything I know is there, there are lots of bails and repetitive links, but I can definitely say I've improved since my last video.

And isn't it what it's all about?

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 13 Feb 2010 11:21

Oh and I did hit spinning whirl on video that session, I just liked how the bag flew at the camera.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 16 Feb 2010 08:13

Ok, after watching my video again and again, I have a better plan than just improving string length.
It's obvious I rely heavily on tilt. I like tilt moves and have no problem with doing them, but there's an unhealthy dependency. I should be able to CHOOSE to do them.
So instead of focusing on string lengths, I'll work on short (~10 contacts) guiltless strings of various difficulty. I'll also spend more time in my warmup doing base 3add drills (bop, whirls, ducking - all obviously need more work).
I plan on dropping out any tilt moves for a while, see how that works out.

BTW I'm surprised no one gave props on the quantum butter->eggbeater. So, props, Roy! Nice link!

Thanks. I'm real happy with it.

Also, I'm positively surprised with how my pixie look like.