Rad: The Footbag Experience

Rad · Post by **Rad** » 15 Apr 2006 13:43

I. The Intro

I just started getting into freestyle and I'm trying to think of ways to stay into so I thought I'd start a footblog. I just starting getting into freestyle a little over a week ago and I thought it'd be cool to start a blog from the beginning and keep it til the end

. Some background information, My name is Asa and I'm a sophomore in highschool, I'm 16 years old and i'll be 17 in 5 months. I first picked up a "hackysack" when I was later 13 or early 14, that was in 8th grade. I couldn't hit the sack more than twice but I got better since we played this dumb game all the time (called killer). I hackysacked off and on for a while then I got a little more serious and started delving further into this hackysack thing to see what it was all about and discovered footbag.org. Read some stuff, watched some shred vids and then ordered a dirtbag and this bag called a free add. The passion quickly died because the bags weren't very good. But something recently sparked my interest and I found my old bags and got kicking. One was stolen and the other one was made of terrible material (dirtbag) and leaked filling. So I ordered a facile mr.sandbag and it became choice just last night and now it's an excellent bag all around.

II. The Beginning

I got my real bag on april 6th and I've been kicking with it ever since. I still don't have a good pair of shoes and it's really bothering me(I'll be using these wretched stan smiths or these adidas adiprenes I have). When i first got my bag I started reworking the basics. So I've got my alternating inside kicks down and I can get toe kicks when I need to use them. I can outside kick pretty well with my left foot, but not that well with my right. So now that I got my kicks down fairly well I needed to work on my basic stalls. As of now I can inside stall almost perfectly with my right foot and almost nonexistently with my left

. I can also do toe stalls well with my right foot almost perfectly depending on the shoe. I'm not that great at toe stalls with my left once again, but it's manageable. I can sort of outside stall with both feet but not consistently enough to count.

III. What's up now

What I've been working on has been toe stalls, inside stalls and most often trying to get the ATW down and my clipper down with my right foot. I need to work on getting the bag off my toe and into the air with proper technique. I spent the first couple of days on the ATW and then figured out i was doing it wrong

I was going up and over the bag vertically instead of horizontally. So now I realized the toe box on these stan smiths is too slippery to get the bag off the shoe right and I'm working on my left foot inside stalls, toe stalls, and my right foot clipper and ATW.

More updates to come, I need to go practice right now.

Rad · Post by **Rad** » 15 Apr 2006 20:48

I'm pretty disappointed about my practice today. It was a half ass practice session at best. I went outside kicked it for a bit, practice some stalls, did shitty, got frustrated, hot and tired then went inside and lazed around and ate. I did this about 5 times throughout the lovely day at about 20-25 minutes per session. My moral is at an all time low right now so I need a break through of some sort or this'll end as quickly as it started. I got a strong start getting into freestyle footbag, I bought some microsuede, floss, needles, various fillers and stitched some of my own bags, read a lot of tutorials and did a lot of research. Then I bought a good bag and tricks of the trade 1. My only mistake was buying these stupid stan smiths. I think it was partly because I didn't get a good night sleep, slept in an uncomfortable, foreign bed and didn't have a great breakfast. I think it would help to also have some form in my practice like, start out with a small warm up to get the muscle temperature up, then stretch and begin practicing. That's how I usually do it but the term practicing is used loosely and I usually practice random things. Tomorrow I'll add some organization to my practice and see how it goes.

Day Rating: 4/10
What I did: Alternating kicks, worked on which form works best for my left inside stall, a little clipper practice, some toe stalling.

I would like some feedback on this though: Should I get the two basic stalls down pat on my left or move on to bigger and better things with my right i.e. clipper and ATW?

Iron Clad Ben · Post by **Iron Clad Ben** » 16 Apr 2006 20:09

Rad wrote:I would like some feedback on this though: Should I get the two basic stalls down pat on my left or move on to bigger and better things with my right i.e. clipper and ATW?

Yeah get basics down on your weak side. You can still go for ATW and clipper, but focus on the most basic things on both sides first. How many B2B toe stalls can you hit?

andr00 · Post by **andr00** » 16 Apr 2006 20:42

dood - drill stalls.

how I skooled delays: 10 consecutive toe delays. Dont cheat. Try it. Count up to 10 and when you are done you will realize whY I suggest this. you get SO much training on your delays by the 10 system, because you keep building on yourself, but the urge to get 10 in a ROW (consectuive) makes you start over, thus getting lots and lots of good skooling in.

also, wait until your left and right feet are equal until you move on to the next step. its frustrating, i know, but you have to wait. believe me. you cannot excel in footbag without being ambidexterous in your feet.

enjoy.

Rad · Post by **Rad** » 29 Apr 2006 21:08

Well, I took a break for a while because I thought I should be doing something more constructive but that went down the shitter as usual. Thanks for the feedback though guys, I appreciate it.

Where I stand now:

I have a better grasp on the ATW with my right foot now, still not "schooled" but I'm getting there. I can inside stall on my right about 85+% of the time. My shoes aren't the greatest for toe stalling but I traded it with a near impossible to miss inside surface and decent outside surface. I can do the clipper about half the time with my right foot now that I use these shoes. I also started working on ATWs going the other way and I gave the mirage a shot. It's not very hard actually I just have to get my timing down I suppose. I think I found the very root of my not being able to do the ATW and the mirage. It's my toe stall. My toe stall looks right I suppose, but I noticed it never goes straight up and down. If it went in a straight up and down, predictable pattern most of the time I think I could get the motion down for the ATW and mirage and other basic toe stall related tricks. Any thoughts on my toe stall theory?

Rad · Post by **Rad** » 28 Mar 2007 13:19

Pretty sweet, it's been almost a year. I just picked up the footbag again and I'm going to be doing more of it. Maybe around this time of year I get footbag fever I don't know. But now I can do clippers on both feet, inside stalls and toe stalls very well on both feet. I'm still trying to get my right foot ATW down and doing mirages and the likes. More to come. Feels good to be back after 10 months.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 28 Mar 2007 13:22

Glad you are back. I definitely recommend you get your basic stalls completely equal and completely dependable on both feet before moving on to 2 add tricks.

Good luck.

Rad · Post by **Rad** » 01 Apr 2007 16:59

Well, a couple days ago i got a good 80 minutes of solid drilling in. Just working on getting my stalls dependable on both feet. I also think I need a dependable place to see how to do tricks. I have Kenny Shults tricks of the trade but i've heard it's a little outdated, the form and stuff. Plus theres a lot of new things that have been added to the game since that was made. I might invest in Jordans new video. Or just search the internet, I know theres some good sites. Regardless, I need to practically perfect my stalls so I can hit them out of nowhere.