How to Present Footbag to a Group

General footbag-related topics that don't fit elsewhere go in here.
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How to Present Footbag to a Group

Post by mc » 24 Jan 2006 12:15

I just wrote this up in Will Digges's footblog for an upcoming performance he has during the half time of a varsity basketball game, and I thought I'd put it here for future reference.

Occasionally, players will be given the opportunity to present (and represent) footbag to a group of people who have never seen it before. This kind of presentation presents a lot of cool possibilities, like recruiting new players, or sponsorship of a footbag event by the people to whom you are presenting. So, it's important that it go off well!

Positive energy, a loud and clear voice, long strings of basic delays with 2s and 3s, and having your presentation planned ahead of time are ALL of WAY more importance than the ability to bust professional level freestyle. A little fearless is cool to do at the end of your presentation, but if you can't bust tripless, you can still show the world how much fun it is to play freestyle footbag.

It's going to be important that you speak loudly and clearly, so plan what you're going to say before you do your thing. Face the crowd, wave, smile, and say "Hi, I'm [your name here]. My friends and I have a blast playing footbag! I'm going to demo some basics, then do some freestyle for you. When you start, you should just do some kicks." Then do some basic kicks and catch it in your hand. Take a small bow. Then shout, "once you can kick it, you should learn your catches." Then do toe stall > toe stall > clipper stall > clipper stall > repeat > hand catch > small bow, so they've got an idea of what's going on.

Then shout, "once you can do your catches, you can work on some basic tricks." Then do some butterflies, legovers, ducking clippers, spinning clippers, pickups, etc. Basic guiltless tiltless. Hand catch, smile, small bow.

Then shout, "once you've got those basics, then you can do whatever you want with it" and go for 3s, 4s, and end with a big move like spinning whirl or ps whirl, or whatever your big styley move is, if you're feeling confident. Make sure you just do your solid moves, don't worry about guilting, be smooth, have fun, don't worry. When you end with your big move, hand catch. If you drop, smile at the crowd, start again with some kicks, and go back into shred. Just make sure to look comfortable. Smiling, eye contact, a loud voice, and long strings of basic tricks are your friends.

Once you hand catch after your big string, take a deep breath, wave at the crowd, and do a bigger bow. Then shout, "if you want more information, or if you want to play, or if you like long walks on the beach and romantic dinners, come find me. Thanks!" Wave, smile, jog off court.

Remember,

A loud voice and a wave will get their attention first, then the freestyle will hold them.

Smiling will make you look like you're having fun and feeling smooth, so people will like it better.

Small bows are a cue for your audience to applaud, so it will get them involved and watching. Do these after each little section of your presentation.

Long strings are INFINITELY more impressive than big moves.

Double around the world is a GREAT trick because it's comprehensible by non-players, and looks huge to them. Pendulum is the craziest trick ever, way more hardcore than blurry whirl or jani walker.

Try to remember all these things, and most importantly, have confidence. You're going to do great. You'll blow their minds and represent freestyle really well. Practice what you're going to do in front of the crowd for your freestyler friends, your parents, your little brother, the crazy guy at the bus stop, anyone. It will make you more confident when you go up to do the real thing.

If you have more questions, feel free to post them. Good luck! Your presentation might just be a benefit to us all!

Here is a video of me, Tom Mosher, and Adam Greenwood representing footbag at the Canadian National Breakdancing Championships. I hope this is good reference material for someone.

Click Click! Here it is...
Last edited by mc on 02 Apr 2006 11:16, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by SlashC » 24 Jan 2006 15:25

PowerPoint Presentation explaining basics of footbag and tricks/job notation:
http://www.shredmonton.com/media/The%20 ... ootbag.ppt

original thread w/ footnotes:
http://www.modified.ca/footbag/viewtopi ... =mechanics
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Post by mc » 24 Jan 2006 18:54

Wow, I missed that, Rory. That sounds like a cool presentation! Thanks for adding it.

To presenters who check out Rory's, remember that his was geared towards mechanical engineering students. It's probably good practice to not include too much technical jargon about footbag when presenting to the general public. Let the footbag do the talking.
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Post by Faco » 05 Feb 2006 15:45

Matt, I couldn't agree with you more. Long strings all the way and I must say that the power of Pendulum is indeed great 8)

I love that feeling when someone who sees it for the first time just stands there and drools.

But what if you are Vasek and can easily link bigger tricks? Do you go for that or will that scare away potential players, thinking that it is too hard? But than again, those who back out at that point don't have it in them anyway...

Bah, just talking to myself, sorry for that :)
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Post by mc » 16 Feb 2006 14:44

added my link from TO to this thread for reference... I guess some other Mod decided this thread shouldn't be stickied? or did I never sticky it in the first place...
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Post by Caleb » 17 Feb 2006 07:15

I've given a few mass presentations of footbag as well and Matt couldn't sum it up better. Great advice Matt and that was a great vid of your show at York. Props to all 3 of you.

Once, I had an event in the middle of a street festival. After the crowd got into it we were asked to go on stage so we had a tutorial and show and then a fairly disorganized big 3 competition. The crowd really got into the trick names as I was calling them out. It showed that there is some serious organization to the sport. Besides, who wouldn't be curious when they hear "Sumo fairy butterfly scorpion's tail" echoed over a loudspeaker while having no idea about the context?
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Post by BalinorNZ » 06 May 2006 05:51

I just found this that I constructed last year before going to teach a class of teachers at techers collage about footbag, I think it applies to the thread.

How to teach footbag to a group:
1. Make it brief, a few minutes talking is more than enough.
2. Explain that in freestyle footbag the aim is to perform consecutive tricks using one's legs and body, delaying the bag between tricks.
3. Demonstrate the fundamental stalls, toe and inside which leads to clipper.
4. Speak very briefly on the concepts involved in a trick - dexterity (legs) and body.
5. I might mention that the bag's flight between delays is divided into uptime downtime and peak time and dexterities and body concepts can be performed at each of these intervals... but maybe not.. Don’t want to overcomplicate it.
6. I will explain clearly that kicking, while not seen often in professional freestyle is a fundamental building block to learning the sport, much like tiltless play is.
7. Finally I will explain the basic kicks - inside, outside and toe so they know what they are doing in the next step...

8. After the explanation I will get them into small circles, so they get as much bag time as possible each, but can still be social with it and have fun.
9. I will get them to kick for a short time (explaining the no self serve rule) and during that time me and Toby will rotate round the 5 or so circles - this will allow them to get comfortable with the bag, each other and us.
10. When they are starting to get pretty confident, I will stop the class and tell them it's time to move on to the next step. I will explain the change in rules, the bag should rotate round the circle clockwise and each person is allowed a couple of turns each and that the goal now is to try land an inside stall (which I will demonstrate using Phil’s technique). I will also encourage them to help each other stating that we are working together to achieve new moves, not against each other.
11. The class will go back into circles and me and Toby will make our way round for a while to check progress, make sure everyone understands and give advice where needed.
12. If they all cotton on very quickly to the inside stall I will soon after give instructions to the class for inside stall, and a bit later clipper stall, using Phil’s techniques to demonstrate. Then we repeat the rotate round circles and check progress/give advice bit.

13. At the end (perhaps 5 mins before finishing) we will stop everyone and give a demonstration of freestyle footbag. We will begin with the stalls we have just shown them, then move onto basic dexing tricks, explaining briefly how it all fits together and then just have turns doing 20ish contact strings.
14. Finally we will talk about why footbag is such a great sport - as Jon said, injuries are rare, equipment is inexpensive, and within a few hour long sessions one can be competent enough at the basics of the game to teach students in a class how to get started, much like the rest of the sports covered in the New Zealand PE curriculum.

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Post by smokefree » 17 Jan 2007 11:05

What do you do when people accusing you of cheating because of your lavers. hahaha ive been getting that a lot lately when playing in front of people.
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Post by mc » 17 Jan 2007 12:00

tell them that that's like telling an outfielder in baseball that he's cheating for using a big, padded glove with a huge net on it to catch a ball.

Tell them that, like any sport, you've got specialized equipment, and although your equipment is better than the average shoe for the sport, the shoes don't make your foot go around the bag, and they don't guarantee that you can catch it.

and most importantly, don't act sensitive or bothered by their comments. Just tell them it's equipment for the game.

And, also, try cutting your toe walls off. Then they won't have shit to say.

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Post by janis » 17 Jan 2007 23:44

smokefree wrote:What do you do when people accusing you of cheating because of your lavers. hahaha ive been getting that a lot lately when playing in front of people.
last time that happened to me I took my shoes off and busted out a run.

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Post by mc » 18 Jan 2007 09:02

haha, that is a much better response than anything I suggested.

I was going to object to the direction this thread has taken, but I guess dealing with hecklers / challengers / skeptics is a very important part of playing to a group.

Janis gets 2 points for best idea yet.
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Post by CIC flurry » 30 Jan 2007 11:44

Reid has done that before too. he can play pretty well in socks on concrete. it was awesome rebuttal to someone saying, "its the shoes."

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Post by Rieferman » 27 Nov 2007 13:29

Ryan was just asking if I had any pointers because he's doing a demonstration. I wrote this big long reply, and then I found this topic and figured it might be worth including here too.
Demo.. Kenny and a few of us did a really good demo for a non-profit one time. Kenny Mc'd the thing and basically forced us into a good demo format. Things that jumped out to me as being crowd friendly:

- As with any presentation, what you think takes a lot of time really doesn't.

- Also, do your presentation in front of someone a couple times. It's painstaking to do it, but you'll be happy you did it later.

- What seems boring and redundant to you, is not boring and redundant to the crowd. They've never seen this shit before.

- They don't understand what you're doing, so simple with no drops is better than fancy with no drops because the likelihood of no drops is much better with simpler tricks.

- We literally did kicks for a few minutes for the crowd while explaining some history of the game. A few grateful dead and concert parking lot stories mixed in. Crocheted bags. Where you first played. Talk about .org. The consecutive kicks record (that is always a crowd pleaser) etc.

- "As the sport evolved, we learned we could stop/stall/delay the bag" toe stalls, inside stalls, outside stalls, neck etc. As long as you're talking, you can continue to do these repeatedly and the crowd will not be bored. STRETCH the presentation

- "Similar to skateboarding, we also eventually learned we could perform tricks during the rise and fall of the bag. Instead of just an 'olly' (in our case a toe stall) we can do a 'kick flip' (in our case an ATW)" do all manner of ATW's, legovers, pickups, clippers, all separated by a few kicks so that the tricks are emphasized/broken up. They can't yet understand linking tricks.

- "Once we figured that out, the goal became to do tricks back to back rather than kicks mixed in" same as above, but without the kicks in between

- "It wasn't long before we started to realize that we could combine various components together to make increasingly difficult tricks. We devised a points system where you get one point for each layer of difficulty. For example, in this trick (ATW) I go around the ball once and therefore get 1 point. If I want more points, I simply go around the ball twice (DATW)." that should be a crowd pleaser. Continue to break down simple evolutions between simple tricks and their big brothers (example: this is called a mirage.. this is called a legover.. both are 1 point tricks.. if I combine them together (DLO) I can build a 2 point trick)


- "anyone want to see some really crazy tricks? How about something with 3 points? Yeah??? How about 4 points!!!??" this really gets the "woahhhhh" factor. The don't really know one trick from another, so pick bigger tricks you won't miss.


- "The art form of this game is then to 'freestyle' to combine all of these concepts into a freelance dance. I'm going to push myself a bit here to show you how we would really play.. please ignore any drops as this is harder than it looks" and now, you bust out some sweet runs


Does that help?
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Post by mc » 27 Nov 2007 13:36

awesome synopsis, rob. To the point, covers a lot of bases. Tight show. Thanks for your input.
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Post by mosher » 27 Nov 2007 14:42

Wow!

I really liked that presentation format!

Also, it was Kenny saying it all in my head, hahah.

Thanks for posting that.
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Post by spikethespiegel » 01 Oct 2008 10:49

I just joined the forum and this post is really awesome. I have been planning a presentation for a while in hopes of starting some kind of youth footbag club in my hometown. All your points are perfect, thanks a lot.

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Post by F[uns]tylin' Eclectic » 06 Feb 2010 22:26

What do you do when people accusing you of cheating because of your lavers. hahaha ive been getting that a lot lately when playing in front of people.
Some of my friends who I skate with like to give me a hard time sometimes and pickout any little thing, like the cheating with lavers. Then I told them to look at their shoes... skate shoes... YOU CHEATING BASTARDS.
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Post by F[uns]tylin' Eclectic » 06 Feb 2010 22:29

Also, thanks for this, because I'm going to be entertaining kid's birthday parties soon and this section gave me a ton of cool ideas. (sorry for the double post, I forgot to put this in my last one :P )
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Post by Ramen God » 14 Jul 2010 04:27

Useful!

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Post by crazylegs32 » 09 Jan 2011 20:52

that format has been used in Chicago for at least ten years. (announcer explaining history etc...) I dunno if its the presentation but it feels like crap to me.
Nobody cares about the history of something they are stumbling upon. I think it may be better to offer something in the future, (say a tourney is coming up check this website etc) History makes it feel old.

Edit- I think most of it has to do with the announcer.

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