why "the"

[sqig]

Does anyone know the background on why sloppy dexes are called "the"?

[Allan]

I once emailed Kenny Shults about this a looong time ago, and he wrote me a nice response which unfortunately I cannot find now. I should dig through my archives and see if I can find it. I somewhat recently asked him about it again via Facebook, and though neither of us can track down the original email where he went into better detail, here's his response:

I wanted to write a blog post about the concept of "the" in freestyle, but I seem to be at a bit of a loss; I've been told (I can't remember by whom) that you coined the term based off a similar concept in freestyle disc (perhaps spelled thuh?). Was I misinformed? I've done a bunch of searching to find references, but nothing is turning up. I figured you'd be the guy to ask ...
Thanks Ken.

yes. that is the origin and probably the single most important event in the birth of modern freestyle. I met a guy named Bob Coleman in Austin TX my freshman year in college. He was a world class freestyle disc player, one of several in Austin at the time. He told me about the concept of not doing 'The's' in freestyle disc, which was basically avoiding a delay of the disc that didn't involve a restriction of some sort. In other words there should always be a spin or a leg over or some form of restriction to add difficulty.

I took that idea and applied it to footbag by thinking that tricks should be linked together without basic kicks in between. I know this probably sounds like 'Duh' now but at the time it was truly revolutionary and changed the way freestyle evolved from that point forward.
Kenny

[sqig]

So the term "the" originally referred to basic stalls and kicks between tricks?

[Allan]

So the term "the" originally referred to basic stalls and kicks between tricks?

Yeah, that's what Kenny said

I've just ask Rippin' for his perspective to see if he can fill in some of the evolution between that concept and unclean dexes. He said he'd think about it and get back to me. When he does, I'll paste it in here.

So, Outsider you seem to be quite the freestyle historian; any input here?

[Outsider]

Well, this stuff is really well before my time in the game, so there is no way that I can contribute any info that Kenny or Rippin' wouldn't already know, and know better than me...

A few years back I did have the opportunity to shred on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin... you could still feel the special magic in that place, even though the Enforcer hadn't been there for a while.

Of course this may seem very obvious already, but I can't hold myself back from pointing this out: from the preceding account, the concept of "the" in freestyle disc is not exactly the same thing as the concept of "the" in freestyle footbag. "The" in disc sounds like it's really a closer analogy to "tiltless" and "guiltless" in footbag in that it refers to a maintaining a certain level of difficulty in the flow of tricks rather than a trick that is poorly executed. Not having any real knowledge of freestyle disc, I just don't know if there is any equivalent freestyle disc concept to the concept of "the" as it is understood in footbag.