Israel Footblog - Training program

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 05 Aug 2011 13:09

Thanks! I was a last minute entry, and wasn't nervous at all. I'm definitely glad I have something to show for being at a world championship for a change.

Asmus · Post by **Asmus** » 07 Aug 2011 04:02

Congrats World Champion!

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 07 Aug 2011 06:27

I have some time to burn so I might as well write down some impressions from worlds. Let's start with the rants.

Worlds organization was well orchestrated in terms of timetables and general handling of the events, but very little thought seemed to have gone towards players' welfare. We didn't get any meals, we had to fill our water bottles in the toilet, and there was no where to wash our clothes. A small fruit basket was brought out a few days into the event, and there was only one small area with bad lighting for sideline shred (I only got to see serious shred on the last day). Since the weather was great and the shred spot in the event site was depressing, I spent most of my play time at the legendary amfi shred spot outside the event site, with various players I managed to rally to come with me. Most of the sessions there were great, but I had to actively pursuit people to get a session, and most of the time I got to the same people, so I hardly got to meet many of the other players.

Since both worlds I attended before did have food, I kind of assumed we'd get taken care of and didn't bring enough money to pay for 3 meals a day. Also, our hotel room was cleaned only once during our entire stay. Having 4 players in one room (me, Matt, Pawel and Olaf) and having to eat about two meals a day in the room and store food for the third, meant that our room was littered with food leftovers, dirty clothes and towels hung to dry.

The parties each night took place in places that were more like pubs, there was very light music in the background and only sitting areas. I personally only enjoyed the final party night.

The intermediate routines finals took place on a day where no other freestyle event took place. I went there because I lent my favorite bag to one of the players and wanted it back. As expected, no one was there, and they could hardly scrape judges for the competition.

Finally, the finals day was fragmented to alternating events between freestyle and net. So every time we saw a freestyle event, we had to go somewhere to burn an hour/hour and a half of the net event. I just can't sit through so many net games. I like the sport and I appreciate a few rounds, but I was hyped about finals and this fragmentation was very annoying.

I'll clear my head a bit and post about the good parts later.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 07 Aug 2011 10:05

Now the good parts.

Just like in every other worlds, the best part is the people. I was fortunate to have great roommates, and got to hang out and shred with old and new friends. Others already wrote that most large communities kept to themselves, which is true. I've seen a lot of faces that I only knew from videos and modified, but didn't get to know a lot of them personally. Since worlds is only a week long, however, there were enough people outside these communities to get to know. Within the large communities, I believe the Finns were the most open. Tuukka, Mikko and Toumas and Mikko's girlfriend were nice and friendly as usual. The director of the event, Jukka, befriended me before worlds and gave me a great travel tip. Felix Zenger was friendly too (relatively to a camera-shy superstar), even though I gave him a few reasons to be annoyed with me. If he was, he didn't show it.

I mentioned earlier that the organization of the event itself was very neat. I really liked having the schedule of the events available on my cellphone, so other than for discounts I didn't have use for the player's booklet, an item I've consistently misplaced in previous worlds. Results were usually given out instantly, and the organizers kept the rest of the world in touch, so my attempts to post stuff online always felt a bit redundant.

The weather was simply perfect every day except for finals day. 25 degrees, sunny, breezy, sun sets very late. I realize that rain is a hazard in European countries, but it was so good here that I wish the entire event was outdoors.

In a more personal perspective, worlds really opened my eyes to where I am in the game and where I want to be. I've resigned to completely change how and what I practice. I'll share more about that once I have a game plan.

On an interesting side note ,this eye opener made me think that I ought to reconsider my serious involvement in freestyle if a new approach will prove futile.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 14 Aug 2011 23:48

I am THAT person now. That, being someone who's going back to working on his basics. I did my best to be double sided from day one to avoid this moment, but apparently there's more to it than that

I got some inspiring advice from a good player & friend, and I'm working on clippers and bops almost exclusively.

boyle · Post by **boyle** » 16 Aug 2011 04:24

It's always good to work on the basics, as having them stronger improves everything else, also gives better chances to hit the next tricks as well.

Wish I had have got to Worlds this year...you had a cool room, I shared with those 3 in Berlin. There was no food at Oakland either....I guess a problem with Berlin is that nothing seems as good in comparison....

What's the word for worlds next year?

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 21 Aug 2011 12:48

Word is either Paris or Warsaw. On the one hand I've never been to Poland, but on the other, I've only been to paris as a kid and would love to see it through an adult's eyes. Not sure who I'm rooting for..

The advice has been working well so far. I feel my game has relaxed a bit and some tricks I had problems with are becoming easier. When I played by the beach some people went "wow" when I simply did an infinity based run.

I've noticed on video that my right clipper is shit when doing infinities. Liliana suggests shadow shredding with a mirror to fix that.

boyle · Post by **boyle** » 25 Aug 2011 07:38

I would be happy to go to either of those places, hopefully and can get some money and get there (let's see, I'm not really doing a whole lot in the "getting money" phase at the moment...).

Try just doing the trick in front of a mirror...particularly if you can find a big one (eg a full wall size one in a mirror). Of course it's hard to get the placement, but it can help. I have done that occasionally to work on parts of my game.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 28 Aug 2011 03:00

I've noticed that a lot of players do the air shredding thing, as well. I admit I keep forgetting to do that, though, but totally intend to.

I have a friend who kicks with us, whose planning to leave Israel for a while. At first he wanted to go to Australia, so I said "I know lots of awesome footbag people there! I'll hook you up". Then, last session he said "Now I'm thinking about south america". I said "I know an awesome australian footbag player there! I'll hook you up".

I'm now injured, got a mean shoulder cramp that won't give in

boyle · Post by **boyle** » 30 Aug 2011 02:47

being injured sucks! It's 2 weeks now since I sprained my ankle and it was quite a bad sprain so I think it will be 2 more weeks before I can play again

If your friend comes to Chile (from mid October for about 2 years from then), hopefully there will be a developing scene to welcome him....

Dio · Post by **Dio** » 30 Aug 2011 06:04

Hey Roy! Yeah I always air shred - when I brush my teeth, cooking dinner, waiting in lines haha it also helps to stretch your ankles when you have a spare moment too.

Great meeting you at Worlds dude!

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 12 Sep 2011 05:25

I stretched my left ankle too much and it "popped"

only recently I was able to start stretching it again, but with extreme caution... I have no idea what physiologically happened there but it only seemed to hurt when I stretched.

I haven't played in a while, since I couldn't play with the inflammation, and after that my grandfather died

However, now everything seems back to normal. I started practicing at the office roof. We have a nice deck with a view to the sea. I want to see if they'd let me invite people over. It could be a great place to have footbag classes, if I had the inclination to take on a project like that.

I videoed all the single dex tricks I usually hit, both sides. It's a horrible 5 minutes video, really shameful stuff; it highlights how badly I execute many of them. But it serves as a stern reminder where my basics lack and that I should focus on fixing them. It's amazing how single sided I am even though I distinctly remember working both sides almost from day one.

It was great meeting you too, Dante! Canada is quickly climbing the list of countries I wish to be an honorary citizen of!

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 22 Oct 2011 06:55

I caught myself playing alone with such a negative attitude. Angry, unsatisfied game. I think I've been doing this for a while.

When I play with people or in front of people I'm a whole different player, the kind of player I wish I could be any time, anywhere.

It's time to break the angry solo shred habit, and I could use tips because I'm not sure where to start other than not swearing when I miss a link or drop the bag.

Outsider · Post by **Outsider** » 22 Oct 2011 19:14

It's time to break the angry solo shred habit, and I could use tips

I have angry solo shreds too. I don't like that. My angry solo shred are usually when I am in public, and a few people come up and want to chat about the game WHILE I'M TRYING TO PRACTICE. I mean, its one thing that they want to make some brief comment and then stand back and watch, but some people REALLY want to talk alot about the game when I'm really in the middle of it all. If I were NOT alone, it might be okay -- I'd take a break and talk while my friend keeps playing... but when I'm alone and somebody wants to talk, now the game stops entirely because this person wants to know all about me, and can't wait until I'm done to find out. Annoying. Or, more commonly, I'm not being bothered THAT much, but I'm playing very poorly, so I'm annoyed, and any person who comes along and compliments me only makes it worse, because I know that they mean it but I also know that they don't know what they're talking about.

Anyway, one thing that seems to help me alot to maintain a good mental state when I'm playing alone, both in private AND when I'm playing solo in public, is to start-out my session with a half-hour of basic kicks. I've described my routine in another thread on this forum recently:

http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.ph ... sc&start=0

There is too much to read there, but, if you are interested I have described my warm-up in minute detail.

Anyway, I don't expect that you would want to do as much warming up with basic kicks as I like to do, but, I'd say try doing ten or fifteen minutes of just really basic non-stop kicking. I think that ten or 15 minutes of easy easy kicking will get you feeling nice and loose and relaxed before you even begin to shred. And maybe that loose relaxed feeling can last through your real practice, the part of the practice where you're doing real tricks and dropping... When I practice solo in private and I've done my consecutive-kicking warm-up, I don't usually get stressed. And, when I'm in public, even if I get stressed and annoyed while shredding, at least its not until after the half-hour where I was just doing my consecutive kicking.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 21 Jun 2012 05:23

I hardly played this winter, it was really long, really cold and my new apartment isn't good for shredding. I Also got back from worlds very disappointed with myself, so I didn't feel motivated to try.

However, after visiting Matt & Flavio in london I got motivated to train again. I have no idea whether I fixed the things that sucked in my game, but I'm working hard on my bops and guiltless strings. Rene Rühr is visiting next month so that would be a test on whether I'm on the right track.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 01 Jul 2012 06:26

Back from a week off due to a strained muscle or whatever.

I'm abandoning work on blenders and barrages in favor of double downs, which are very both sided for me and seem more useful to expand my trick vocab. I've been really interested in hitting blurrier for a while so hopefully this will bring me closer.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 04 Jul 2012 22:44

Had an outdoor session at the promenade yesterday, with music (I'm casually constructing a shred playlist on grooveshark, and then stream it with my phone, works perfectly).

Sport evangelism highlights:
- Sold two bags to a Swedish family, whose kids were pretty talented and enthusiastic. One of them hit atw kick and legover kick.

Some personal highlights:
- Pixie ducking legover->dod
- blur->whirl
-> stepping pickup->swirl
lots of paradon->pdx whirl and pixie paradons, which is nice since I'm working on double downs and pdx whirls.
fairy butterfly->spinning mirage
->merlin

Really trying to play out of the comfort zone.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 08 Jul 2012 23:01

Footbag anomaly: Blurriest is easier than barfly.

I'm interested in improving my ps whirls, and I feel that just trying them is not constructive. I need to remember to practice ps mirages next session, a trick I hardly ever attempt. This and working on p whirl should do the trick, hopefully?

dasreen · Post by **dasreen** » 10 Jul 2012 06:56

for ps whirls: definitely watch vasek videos! but watch out: he sets the bag very high, higher as anybody else doing simply ps whirls, which allows him to prepare the dex by having the lower leg in a horizontal-ish position which makes the trick so cool-looking. he also uses the time to elevate his knee really high, that gives him upward momentum.

so I'll arrive at tel-aviv august 30 I think, early afternoon. I think I use the thursday to go to jerusalem. depending on what your plans are, I either stay the night there or not.

PoisonTaffy · Post by **PoisonTaffy** » 10 Jul 2012 11:52

I have that whole time frame clear, so you're free to stay at my apartment if you'd like. In Israeli terms Jerusalem is considered far from Tel Aviv, but it's about an hour drive, so it's realistic to spend the day there and then return.

I'll watch some vasek then, even though I have no talent for learning from videos. I heard a bunch of top notch players say they do that (Vasek, Jorden, now you) and perhaps that's something serious I'm lacking.

I went to doing toe symp mirages, as it turns out that my ps mirages are not very hot either.

Highlights:
Fairy legover->double down
60 contacts of op clipper->same clipper
lots of mid-run flip paradons

Taught a coworker to do toestalls both sides, and sold him a mr. sandbag so he can play with his kid.

Israel Footblog - Training program

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