Fanzine

[C-Fan]

Top post.


That's my favorite painting by David Hockney. I think I'll put my favorite paintings as top posts in my blog from now. Of course, if anybody wants to top post me, that's still encouraged. If you do, consider putting your favorite painting there perhaps?

The onset of winter in Denver is always a confusing time. You'll get these sunny days in the low 60s, followed by snow dumps. On Friday I took off from work so we could get our potential house inspected. It went...well I think. What matters for the footblog though, is that we finished by noon, and I was able to shred outdoors in the afternoon. So nice out. Saturday and Sunday it was cold, grey, and snowy, so I'm glad I was able to play on Friday.

Friday's session my main goal was to catch up on the LOTD. I needed to get days 11 and 12, and was optimistic I could. I had never hit toe twirl before on either side, and I had never done pogo set out of an osis before either, but I suspected I could learn them both in the session. Sure enough, I managed to hit both combos on both sides.

Towards the end of the session I decided to mess with frantic set a little. I used to be pretty good at that set, but I hadn't really messed with it much recently. When I was in Boise this summer, I filmed Penske hitting frantic ss egg (see Day 1 of the Joulukalenteri). I remember when I saw him hit it, thinking to myself that I probably invented that trick at Worlds 2005. Of course, that made me wonder why I hadn't hit it since. I went back to my Worlds 05 blog, and laughed when I found the post from the session where I hit it, because I only hinted that I hit it, and didn't write it out.

Anyway, on Friday after I bagged the LOTDs I wanted, I spent a little time messing around with frantic ss egg to see if I could hit it again. The good news is that I hit a clean one on video. The bad news is that I overdid it with frantic set (it's so hard to get height off that set!), and my hip flexor felt messed up the next few days. Given how snowy and cold it was over the weekend though, I didn't feel bad taking time off, and it's already feeling better today. Hopefully this week it heals fully, and I can catch up a bit more on the LOTDs. The only one I think is out of reach for me is Day 13, since I can't swirl set.

Here's the vid from my Friday session:

[C-Fan]

Footbag in December continues to follow the plan. I'm not actively training for Worlds yet, but I'm not completely taking time off from the sport either. With daylight savings and the onset of winter, I can't play outside after work, and weekends depends on how cold it is. We're about as likely to have 50 degree temps on a weekend as 20 degree temps. So this whole month I've been using the LOTD to motivate me to play in the gym during the week, and if weather permits I'll sneak an outdoor session in on the weekends. Overall its worked out well.

I've been enjoying the LOTD series, mostly because Nick's game is very different than mine. It's almost like we both play the same sport, but we play different positions. Spins and reverse swirls aren't a natural fit for my game, so the whole process has probably helped me improve weaker parts of my game. I kind of want to continue the LOTD tradition by hosting my own in like, February. Given the low participation rate for the current LOTD though, that's probably stupid. I think I've only seen like 5 people total try and post any LOTD, and there's only like 3 of us who have uploaded more than a handful of clips.

In news thats only tangentially related to footbag, the house we were offering on fell through. Long story short, the inspection revealed a bunch of safety issues with the house, and the sellers were unwilling to either fix the problems or discount the price of the house so we could fix the problems. I'm actually proud that we decided to walk away. We've started looking again, and have already found a couple other options that may end up working better. My current front runner has a basement area that we don't love (its tiled, has a pool table and a wet bar), but without any prompting Haley suggested turning it into a footbag/yoga room with mirrors on the walls and a cork floor to absorb impact. My wife rules. I don't want to get too ahead of myself though, since we haven't even decided yet if we're going to put an offer on this house. But yeah, the thought of a shred room in my house has always been a dream of mine. If that comes to pass, expect to read about it here.

Here's a video of my outdoor shred on Saturday. I worked a bit on Nick's LOTD, and I also shot 20 combos for a potential February LOTD if I decide to do it. My favorite part is when I missed the double spin, which made me furious:
I'll be in Tucson for a few days over the holidays, where it should be nice enough weather to shred outside. The last time I was there, I left a pair of my most beat up G-Units at my folks' house. My thinking was that, by leaving a pair in Tucson, I wouldn't have to pack shoes when I went out for future visits. As it turns out though, my current pair of units have worn down even worse than my Tucson pair, so I think I'm going to take them with me on this trip and swap them out for the other pair. I still have one brand new pair of G-Units in a box, and my blue yankees pair are still pretty close to new. Between those two pairs, hopefully I have at least 4 more years of shredding. And really, if they wear down earlier than that I can look into getting them resoled.

If I have time in Arizona, maybe I'll make a post recapping my 2014. It's always fun to look back and see how the past 12 months went.

[C-Fan]

Tucson trip was really good. Only there for 4 full days, but I made a point to play outside every day. Ended up with some good footage, which I was hoping to make into another "season ender" video like I did last year:
Instead, I took the lazy route and outsourced the footage to Ivan, since I know he can do a much better job with the footage. I'd say the shred quality is a little higher than last year's video, but the video quality should be leaps and bounds better, since I have a GoPro now. Excited to see what he does with it.

Meanwhile Denver is freezing cold and snowy. Makes me feel even better that I played outside while I had the chance. I am kinda excited though to dedicate some indoor sessions to working on flip furious, and just overall drilling my basics.

2014 was a really good year. Obviously, I got married, and that was the biggest event. Footbagwise though it was a good year, even though I missed both USO and Worlds for the first time in...8 years? I only ended up going to 2 footbag events this year, but they were both super fun and I performed well at them. At NOLA Jam I won both events and was happy with my overall level of play. At East Coasts I got 2 dropless routines (I hadn't done a dropless since 2011 USO), won routines, and took second in Circles...to the reigning World Champ. No shame there.

I already got time off for Copenhagen worlds, but I still haven't bought tickets. I need to do that soon...I know flights aren't going to get cheaper.

Happy new year Modified! I hope you had a good 2014, and I hope 2015 holds amazing shred highlights for you all.

[boyle]

Look forward to seeing you in Copenhagen! Hopefully there will be a great turnout there.

[C-Fan]

Took off 4 days from playing. My last session of 2014 was in Tucson, and today I had my first shred of 2015 in the gym in Denver. I felt out of shape, but that's probably mental since it was only 4 days off. I retired my white g-units in Tucson, so I played in my blue yankee units. I hadn't used those since winning East Coasts, which feels like forever ago. It was a nice change though. They feel almost new, but at the same time broken in. My feet feel very secure and in place in them, which gives me more confidence when i push off or land hard on a trick.

Shredwise, I tried to approach today as a training/exercise session more than anything else. I want to spend the winter months just working on form and basics, pushing personal consec records on basic concepts, and not worrying too much about circle or routines. That said, my only goal for 2015 is to make finals at Worlds again, and to shoot for the podium. It'd mean a lot to me to finish my career with a routines medal from Worlds. That's at least half a year away though, so probably a good idea to start the year off just working my basics.

That made for a kind of boring video, but better than no video. The drifters are a personal best, and I think the ducking butterflies may be too? I should just push those and the barflies until I hit a point where I'm sure they're personal records.
In non-footbag news, today we submitted our second offer ever on a house. Hopefully this time we get the house. I don't love the whole house hunting process to be honest.

[boyle]

We are probably going to start the house process maybe at the end of this year or more likely mid next year. I can see the whole process getting very old very quickly. It's bad enough finding a place to rent...

[C-Fan]

Yeah, I guess the hope is that if you find a good house, you only have to do the search a few times in your life, as opposed to renting where you may have to do that every few years. We've got the house inspection today, so crossing my fingers that goes well.

I had to take a few days off from playing, because my body was coming down with a cold. There were 2 days in particular where I just felt tired and fuzzy in the head, and thought it was just a matter of time before I got a full blown head cold. Luckily though, I hydrated like crazy those days, avoided booze for like 4 days, took naps after work and went to bed early every night. And somehow that was enough for me to dodge the cold entirely!

The past 2 days I've felt good enough to get in light shreds at the gym. My energy is pretty low, but I'm just happy I'm well enough to play, as opposed to being in bed blowing my nose. Yesterday's session I worked on normal swirls. I've always been decent at symple swirls, but for some reason just straight up normal swirl has always been awkward for me. Inspired by Pretzelrod's recent success with them, and his videos, I decided to tackle them again. I don't really have an end goal with this practice, though it would be pretty great if it helped me learn ripsteins finally. I think a more realistic and healthy goal with the swirl practice, is just to improve my overall clipper balance/control.

With that said, yesterday I really focused on two things. First, was not rushing the initial set, and really trying to pause a second before I went for the swirl dex. I'm not going for swirling set clipper, I'm going for clipper set swirl. The other thing I focused on, was having my set go straight up, or even a little bit behind me. One problem I've noticed, is I have a tendency to set the bag forward, which makes swirls a lot harder than they should be.

Overall I was pleased with my progress. It's only day 1, but I think if I keep at it, there should be some kind of payoff at the end. I'll dedicate more time in future sessions to similar drills to these:

[C-Fan]

Haven't been playing regularly lately, but I don't feel too bad about it. Worlds is still over 6 months away, and frankly I don't want to burn out early before it. I think taking it easy during January and February, and dialing up the Worlds prep in the Spring, is probably a good plan. I'm not taking any extended amount of time off, but I'm also not beating myself up if every now and then I decide to skip a shred. I think that as long as I keep the footbag muscles in use, and don't injure myself, there shouldn't be any harm in this plan.

What I really need to do though is lock down tickets for Worlds, since they're only going to get more expensive. The quandary I face is deciding how long I should spend in Denmark. If I were certain I'd make routine finals, I'd book a longer trip so I'd have time to site see after Worlds ends. But I think there's a good chance the freestyle turnout will be much stronger this year than the past 2 years, since Copenhagen is closer to Finland/Poland/Czech Republic. If I went to Worlds and didn't make routine finals, I'd have plenty of time to site see on the tail end of the week anyway. And then there's the wildcard of my wife coming with me, which means I need to take her vacation days into account, and also that I'd need to ensure us decent housing the whole time. If it were just me going, I'd have more flexibility to crash on couches, etc. I'm gonna make a point to figure this out in the next week or so, because I really want to lock down tickets soon.

Footbagwise, I'm still working on swirls. I don't know that they'll ever become a regular part of my game, or that I'll develop a swirling set or learn ripsteins or anything like that, but I am hopeful that working on swirls will improve my clipper control. Any time you can get out of your comfort zone, there are bound to be positive outcomes, even if they are ones you don't foresee.
The weather on Saturday was unseasonably warm, so I managed to sneak in an outdoor shred. My main goal was to rehit my swirl highlights from the previous session, and generally just work on swirls. At some point though I tried blubberman, which normally gives me a lot of trouble, and found it was flowing well. I decided to try for blubber-rubber, which I had seen Hogan do over the summer and thought was stylish.
I'm glad I played outside, because since then it's been gray, overcast and cold every day. In good news, the house we bid on did well on the inspection, and it looks like we're entering the final stages of house buying. That's both exciting and terrifying, but I think we did our homework, and we're buying a nice house in a nice neighborhood. It'll be a long term project to make it our own (we don't really have any furniture other than 1 bed and a couple dressers), but it'll be nice to stop throwing rent money down a hole. The only potential negative impact for me footbagwise is that I lose a nice indoor shred space for the tail end of winter. But I can either get a cheap gym membership, or maybe play in a room of the new house.

My next work trip is in early February to Vegas. Nobody seemed to like the Evan footage I shot on my past few trips, so I'll probably leave the GoPro at home.

[Sporatical_Distractions]

We love any footage you come out with!
Site seeing in europe sounds incredible

[C-Fan]

House stuff seems to be progressing well. Hopefully in one month we'll sign the final paperwork, and in 2 months be completely out of this apartment. I should make a point to keep footbagging regularly to keep my stress down.

Got in a fun session yesterday. I took a break from swirl practice, and instead worked on two things. First was the LOTW, which was fun. I managed to get the first two weeks of intermediate and open all in the same string pretty easily. The other thing I worked on was some basics drills I saw in Polini's blog. One of my first sessions of 2015 I worked consecs on tricks, and I had talked about working basics in the winter, but seeing Polini's drills reminded me to actually go back and do that.
I think the atoms ties my record, and the barflies are somewhere around my old record. I should really just push them harder, and get around 20 so I know for sure I have a new record. Next session I'm going to work on the pixie/atomic/ducking&diving challenges.

Still haven't bought Worlds tickets yet.

[C-Fan]

I think the atoms ties my record, and the barflies are somewhere around my old record..

New record!
Got to 9 and dropped 10, like 4 different times this session. Feels good to finally make it to double digits.

Still no tickets to Worlds. I need to get off my ass and just buy them.

[C-Fan]

Haven't played footbag in a week. That's pretty bad. Circumstance have gotten in the way though. Last week one of my crowns fell out, and I had to get it put back in after work. Fletch Funk also visited for a night. Then I had to stay late at work 2 nights. Then I had pain in my crown tooth, since they put it in badly. Anyway, for the past week I've barely exercised at all. I did yoga once or twice and that was about it.

The weather is supposed to be crazy nice today, and I'm taking half a sick day to get the crown fixed again. If it doesn't hurt too bad when they're done, I may try and get an outdoor session. We'll see. Here's video of my last outdoor session:
It was crazy windy that day, which was frustrating. But I think it did me good to drill, and drill in frustrating conditions. When I start playing regularly again (hopefully this week), I will try and resume drills.

On the Worlds front, I've started seriously looking at Worlds tickets again. In good news, the prices haven't risen that much since the last time I looked seriously. In bad news, the schedule of events hasn't been released yet. I need to be careful that I don't do something like arrive in CPH on Sunday afternoon, if first round of routines is Monday morning. I need to balance things like jet lag, vacation days for me, and vacation days for the wife, plus wildcards like how much to budget for the trip based on how the housing options look. I kinda wish I didn't have so many other things going on at work and with the house purchase right now, and I could just lock down Worlds tickets to get it over with.

In other footbag news, it looks 98% certain I'll be at Vegas jam, and also very likely that I go to USO as well. I'm also planning on going to East Coasts if they're in NYC in the fall again, so that'd make for a pretty full year of competition. That'd be a nice change from last year, when I only made it to 2 tournies.

[krustykrakk]

Silly rabbit, Jamps is the tournament to go to.



I am bummed to know that we won't be able to share a breakfast sandwich together.. Oh, how I do enjoy breakfast sandwiches with my friends. Maybe we can share breakfast foods in September, then. What's your favorite? I like any kind, really. My favorite are on onion bagels but only if the onions on top aren't burnt. I hate that shit.

[C-Fan]

Favorite breakfast food? For a sit down breakfast, eggs sardou with grits is pretty amazing. For a portable breakfast, I'm a sucker for chocolate babka. If East Coasts is in NYC again, you should come with me to the hasidic part of Brooklyn to this jewish bakery that makes THE BEST babka. Trust me.

Still no Worlds tickets, but I'm getting ready to pull the trigger. Asmus said there'd be a schedule announcement soon, so I'm going to plan my flights around that. It'll be nice to just cross that off. I feel like buying flights is usually the step that makes a tournament real in my mind, and motivates me to start training in earnest. At the moment, I feel like I'm just playing to keep the footbag muscles active, and with no real competitive purpose. Which isn't bad, but who knows if any of this will help me at Worlds.

On Monday I went to the dentist, and took half a sick day. The temperature had to have hit 70 degrees. It was amazing. Such a luxury to take my time warming up, playing, and then stretching down. Here's video:
I felt a little out of shape, but not too bad considering I hadn't played in a week. I was pleased that I hadn't lost all progress with swirls, and the montages were a nice surprise. I played again the following day, and my hips were all sore, despite the stretching I had done. I didn't bother filming, and just tried working on basics like osis and tiltless. Got up to 90 osis. I think my record is around 240, but that was a bit of a fluke.

Gonna continue drill sessions this week. I'll be in Vegas in a couple weeks, so it'd probably be good to get in better shape so I don't embarrass myself playing with Evan. Cassy will also pay a visit in March, but I'm hoping I'll be sharper by then anyway, cause I'll be training for Vegas Jam at that stage.

[h0ag3yb3atZ]

loved the geniune seal from montage. nice stuff bud.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Love that Spinning Butter> Tombstone drill. I don't think I could do that, myself I see you've made some progress with my 2015 goals The Pdx Drifters looked awesome. And yes, I agree, Montage> P DLO was gnarly.

[Cass]

Swirls!

[C-Fan]

Comments! So many comments! Thank you all for taking the time to drop in and post.

Kevin: I think the best seal I've hit out of montage was pdx torque, but I bet I could get PS egg or a spinning 5/6 out of it if I schooled it some. Maybe next session when it's clicking, I'll go for something bigger.

Nick: I really liked your 2015 goals, and they've helped give structure to my recent sessions. Unfortunately, during the "windy outdoor drilling" session, my printed list blew away in the wind. Which is crazy, because they were parked under my walking shoes; that's how strong the wind was. But yeah, I hope to continue working some of the basic concepts you laid out, since I figure it can only help solidify the foundations of my game. When the weather forces you to play indoors in bad light, it's always a good excuse to revisit the foundations.

Cass: Swirls indeed! They still require a lot more concentration and effort than I'd like, but that probably means they're helping me. I still think the benefit of drilling swirls is going to be something like, improving my balance and clipper control. I don't think I'm going to be one of those guys throwing ripsteins left and right, or even normal swirls in most combos. I am hoping though for some indirect benefits from drilling them.

On Friday I'll be flying to Vegas. I'll be there for a week for work, but hopefully I can hang out with Evan (and Tom Kotsakos!?) in the evenings. I should use that as motivation to try and play more in the next week. I've been stressed out lately, and I'm not 100% sure why. Part of it is the house buying, part of it is work, and I think part of it is not being able to lock down all the logistics for my trips this year.

While Worlds schedule hasn't been officially released, I decided to go ahead and buy my tickets. I figure the amount of time I can take off work isn't that flexible, so regardless of how I do in comp, 1 week will have to suffice for tourism and competing. I think it'll be fine. Now that tickets are officially bought, I have to find a song, and start getting more serious about training. My gym is currently undergoing some construction, so I've been forced to play in the basketball area, which is incredibly slippery. Hopefully my trips over the next couple months gives me a chance to train outside some, and then it'll be warm enough in Denver that I can get to normal training at home.

[Asmus]

Favorite paintings is a great idea. I sooo wanna get top post in here.

Can't wait to welcome you to Copenhagen buddy.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Hopefully my trips over the next couple months gives me a chance to train outside some, and then it'll be warm enough in Denver that I can get to normal training at home.

Hopefully there won't be any trips like that Montage> PS Egg trip for you in the future

That one seriously freaked me out though. I'm glad your ankle isn't busted up from that. That link was enormous. Also Nice job on the sauced LOTW.