Ryan's Footblog: JOULUKALENTERI 2018!

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Blizzard! Nice job dude! Way to not be a bitch and collect both mirages and illusions. Smart move. Good path. Go mom, go.

[Ryan_Morris]

I was thinking the other day that I really like symposium tricks and that I should do some symp mirage drills to make my dexes tighter and my landings lighter. Then I remembered that osis is still horribly inconsistent despite having practiced it since I started this blog, so I'd better dedicate a few drill sessions to that. Of course I haven't forgotten about stepping. I did one stepping session already, and I'd like to do many more in order to feel confident putting ripwalks, blurs, blizzards, and stuff like that into my strings. Speaking of uptime sets, it's kind of boring to just have one. Jim Penske got me started on pixies at Jamps, but I haven't hit one yet and I'd very much like to. As I was relating this to Ivan, he reminded me that our club as a whole is bad at whirls, so I need to practice those, too. And ducking. Ivan ducks. Marc ducks. Ben ducks. Derek ducks. I just go "quack." I've been practicing infinities lately, but I'm not happy with my measly record of seven. Seven is nowhere close to infinity. And let's not leave out drifter, now! That's my favorite trick that I can't hit. I started practicing them a while ago but never got very far and kind of put them on the back burner. Well it's time to make some goddamn footbag stew, so fire up the stove and put on a big ol' pot of everything I want to do better! It's a hearty meal, but tough to finish in one sitting. This might take me some time.

[MetZelRio]

That was an unexpectedly pleasant and fun read. Quack. How was the "stew" ? I just began hitting drifter and I would give you some ideas on how to do it as a newbie, but I'm afraid I'd give you bad advice since they might be cruddy, being so new. What about drifter are you not able to pull off, the dex, the clipper, etc?

[Cass]

I've been working on my stew for years now, it's hearty as fuck.

Don't forget to keep that drifter dex tight. If you let your dexing leg stray far from your body you'll have a bad time. Also try to turn into the dex a bit to save energy.

[krustykrakk]

Who better to learn drifter from than Dave Clavens?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf5uZPBlG9o[/youtube]


Also, I think I have a tip for ducking (realizing how unclean mine is,) THE a stepping set. The result will be a powerful neck-high set that you can duck under. For pixie, you are going to power up a toe set and end up launching the bag sideways for a while. Once you do this a bajillion times, you will get better at separating the set itself from the dex, just takes a lot of attempts. If you learn anything about infinity that isn't "set slightly sideways," "turn your hips into the dex" or "work on butterflies," let me know

[janis]

If you are having a lot of problems with a particular concept after having trained it for a while you might find a lot of value in video taping it and watching it over in slowmo.

[Ryan_Morris]

Thanks for the replies, everybody!

Paul: I'm still new to drifter, so something different happens every time.

Cassie: I've seen your game and it looks like your stew is cooking up nicely. Also, your drifter advice sounds consistent with what I've heard before, so I'll definitely focus on that when I drill.

Ben: Nobody better than the Cleaver. As far as pixie, I'll be asking you for help sometime over the summer.

Janis: I'm drilling stuff tonight and I think I'll do as you suggest. I take video of my sessions occasionally, but rarely watch it. I should change that.

[janis]

If you want other people to have a look and give feedback but don't want to post a video publicly I'd be happy to take a look and I'm sure others would be too.

[Ryan_Morris]

Some quick notes and thoughts:

I had a two-part osis session on Tuesday, the latter half of which I filmed. I started at about 5:30 but was interrupted by my phone at 6:45 reminding me I had an important meeting at 7. Oops. After taking a shower that only an aquaphobe could love, I biked frantically back to campus just in time. Later that evening, I continued drilling, this time with Ivan's camera.

This was actually the first time I've looked at myself doing osis. I certainly don't feel the need to post the footage, and the flaws are so obvious that I don't feel any particular need to send it to anybody. For one, I'm turning way too early: my head turns to look at the other side of my body about a half second before the bag touches my foot. Also, the entire motion start to finish looks very strange, quite unlike any osis I've ever seen. In short, I need a lot more osis sessions. I hope that having taken a good look at what I'm doing will help me make this trick more consistent.

Vince Richardson is coming to town tomorrow afternoon and people are going to be kicking outside. Unfortunately, I'll probably be stuck inside at EE office hours because this week's homework makes no goddamn sense.

[krustykrakk]

Sorry about EE. I had a roommate who was an EE major. He isn't EE anymore and no longer attends PSU Upark campus. I don't blame you at all for missing the session.

Perhaps we can osis together this summer. Embarrassingly, my osis rpt record is only 3. I might go ahead and film myself... been putting it off for too long.

[Cass]

Yeah watching yourself play is the best thing you can do. I film myself regularly because It's so much easier to see flaws from an outside perspective.

Osis is just one of those things you gotta drill the hell out of. I'm still workin' on that one..

[akprice]

also agree with filming yourself. you don't have to show anyone. the last few that i have filmed, i learned a TON from watching. you can def see shit that you can't when you're actually drilling. good luck with osis (i'm putting that one on the back burner for now until i can fucking nail down clipper bs)

[Ryan_Morris]

It's finals week, but I'm not going to stop kicking.

I had a small session with Ben and April today. We circled for a bit, then drilled osis for a while. My left calf has been bothering me since I drilled ducks (don't take that out of context) with Ivan on Friday, which makes me think that it's a pulled muscle. It doesn't hurt badly, it's just uncomfortable and annoying.

Nothing more to report.

[krustykrakk]

My left calf has been bothering me since I drilled ducks .

Nope, had to. Drilling ducks is sick and weird. Anti-props to you.

[Ryan_Morris]

Studying is hard. Blogging is easy.

I had some good sessions the past few days. I don't have anything terribly exciting to report, though I did manage to hit some 3-add heavy strings, including one with a clean paradox DLO in the middle. I still need to work on that trick flip side. Actually, I need to work on my normal DLOs. And osis. And ducking. And...yeah, I've talked about all this before. Right now, I'm just happy that I was able to kick this week despite all my exams.

Speaking of exams, let's not talk about exams. Instead, let's talk about my Lavers. Ivan is going to be resoling them this Friday and I am very excited to have some fresh rubber underfoot. I've been using the same pair of shoes since I started playing two-and-a-half years ago and they're wearing a little thin. They've been good to me and I'm not ready to part with them just yet, especially now that there isn't much on the market to replace them with. Of course, this means I won't be able to do a post-finals celebration session on Friday, but I guess it can wait a little bit.

More here when my "new" shoes come in.

[Ryan_Morris]

Okay fine, Nick, I'll update my blog. Jeez.

Picking up right where my last post left off, my newly soled shoes work great! Thanks, Ivan . I actually can't feel a lot of difference, but I now have the piece of mind that comes with an extra eighth inch of rubber between my foot and the ground. The new soles did start to peel a tiny bit, but Ivan looked at it and told me it was an easy fix: just apply superglue. Unfortunately, I only recently got my hands unstuck from the bottoms of my lavers, which is actually why I haven't posted in a while (jk).

School is over now, which means it's time to dig myself out of the hole I dug last semester. I won't go into details about that because it's not directly related to footbag, but I will say that for the past few months I haven't been able to focus well on anything besides homework and studying, and even doing that was a struggle. The reason I bring it up is because included in my gradually regenerating capacity for concentration is a corner of my brain dedicated to footbag. This summer, I think I will have both the time and the mental fortitude to play often, drill hard, and improve...as much as possible.

Lately, I've been working a lot on osis and ducking. I'm still not sure how well the former is going. I've had several sessions dedicated (at least partially) to osis, but my progress seems pretty slow, which is not terribly disappointing because I sort of expected that. I did hit several clean osis back to back the other day, but looking at the video, it seems like I was doing it the way I used to. That is to say, without spotting properly and relying on blind faith that it would land on my foot. When Jim Penske visited, he helped us all learn an osis technique that is quite different from how Nick and Nate taught us. It seems to be working for everybody else, but I can't seem to get it right. I dunno. Everybody does osis a little differently, so I guess I just have to figure out what works for me.

Ducking, on the other hand, is making me very happy. I recently bsos'ed clipper-ducking > clipper in a good string, which made all the frustration of drilling seem worthwhile. When I practice it, I often hit a wall at some point where my legs don't feel overly tired, but they just stop doing what I tell them to do and start fumbling clippers and setting wildly. I think I need to add more variety to my drill sessions so that I can give my legs a different task when that happens.

I also drilled atw and orbit and my new record is eight on each side. This does not sound impressive, but I really have never worked on these tricks a lot, much to my detriment. I still have my eyes on pixies in the not-so-distant future and I've been told that atw is an important concept to know. In fact, it's an important concept for a lot of things, as well as a gaping hole in my 2-add arsenal.

Today, I drilled butterflies, especially same side from clipper. My weak side is very weak, and my strong side does not deserve that designation. By the end, I did manage to hit infinity > ss butterfly (repeat) a few times, though they were pretty sloppy. I think between that and the three concepts mentioned above I should be busy for quite a while.

This post is getting long, but before I end it, I want to talk about the people I've been kicking with now that school is out and most of the club is away. Ben, April and Khoa are all staying on campus this summer, and I am so thankful for that. It's been absolutely wonderful having friends here to kick with and talk to. I hear Ivan is coming back for a class sometime in June, so it'll be a jolly good party with all five of us. Actually, six of us. A new recruit has found us. His name is Caz and he said that he saw us kicking outside the hub during the spring semester but never stopped to talk because he was too busy. He seems really excited to learn, has already bought some footbags, and is practicing toe stalls. Go Caz. Glad to have you with us.

That's all I got for now. Should be enough to last you a while.

tl;dr: School is out, osis is meh, ducking is fun, atw/orbit is long overdue, butterfly is sloppy, old friends are awesome, new guy is, too.

[isirc10]

Ryan, about the osis techniques... There seem to be a few different ways of doing them, one based on crank and scoop, and the other based on turning into a clipper. Obviously there are players who go inbetween those extremes, but for the sake of simplicity, I will just mention the two schools of thought. I have found that the way Jim suggested we do them seems to have made mine sloppier - it made my turn less aggressive which is good, but it also allowed me to get lazy with them and I am paying the price because I am having trouble with osis out of harder tricks (crispy torque, torque, dyno, blender, ducking osis). Nick mentioned that my osis looked strange and he was right. I filmed and sent the video to Matt and he helped me out with some tips. Do the same, he said he would love to help us out any way he can, I'm sure he wouldn't mind giving you a few tips on osis.

Anyway, tldr I am going back to the way I learned to do osis. It seems to be the most comfortable way for my body to hit it atm, maybe later I will start scooping more. Film and ask people for tips.

[Ryan_Morris]

After reading your post, Ivan, I tried filming some osis but for some reason they didn't feel like they did before and seemed even sloppier than usual. Matt, if you're willing to give me some help on my osis, that would be a huge help. I'll film again next time I practice.

I was going to do that today, but butterflies distracted me. I spent most of my two hour session on drills like ss butter > far legover (repeat) and butter > ss legover. I also did an absolute metric shit-ton of infinities and by the end of the session I had raised my record from seven to...wait for it...eight. I'm not too bummed out, honestly. I was very tired by then and I'm cautiously optimistic that all the practice I did today will show up in a big way tomorrow.

[Ryan_Morris]

First of all, big thanks to Ben and Khoa for holding a late session so that I could kick after work. After a nine hour shift, when you feel like a pizza, it's nice to play footbag.

I was happy to see that my drilling had paid off a little bit. I showed Ben the illusion and butterfly stuff I'd been working on, both of which were much easier with a plopy bag, as opposed to the rolly thing I practice with. I also ducked a little, even though I hadn't practiced them in the past several days. The next solo session I do will be dedicated to ducking and osis again.

Also, I really hope I can get back to stepping again, soon. I've hardly been practicing those at all lately because I needed to work on some more fundamental tricks (and ducks cuz they're cool). Hopefully my atw/orbits, illusions, butterflies, and osii will improve more this coming month and I'll have time and energy to work on uptime sets again. We shall see.

[Ryan_Morris]

Today was a beautiful day for a session. Too bad April and Ben went to a wedding and Khoa left for the net jam with Matt Kemmer. Whatevs. I had a brief, but fun session with Ben's friend Anthony. He seems to have a good grasp of toe stalls and is trying to learn legover. I've been encouraging him to do drills that reinforce the magic hop because I think he's the type who could learn the basics of this sport pretty quickly. Any advice you've got on how to teach new players would be greatly appreciated.

As for me, I had some good strings and drills. Osis felt a little more comfortable today but unfortunately I didn't have a camera with me so I can't show Matt. Butterfly is also getting more consistent, especially ss butter from toe (from clipper still needs work). I was able to hit toe ss butter > osis > paradox mirage (repeat) a few times cleanly at the end of my session. That's one drill I'd like to be completely comfortable with, to the point where it's a warm up like mirage > legover. I also did a little bit of ducking work, though my legs were already tired at that point and I couldn't set straight. I get the feeling that I'm turning into my ducks too much. I'll have to film and see.

So yeah, overall good session. Excellent weather, good drills, new people.