Jiawei's footblog

[boyle]

you should come to Australia some day. You are getting awesome. Do you mean you landed butterfly swirl>butterfly swirl>butterfly swirl - or you did that same trick three different times in a row?

[Jiawei]

you should come to Australia some day. You are getting awesome. Do you mean you landed butterfly swirl>butterfly swirl>butterfly swirl - or you did that same trick three different times in a row?

Thanks, I did visit Tasmania last year (before being introduced to footbag) and it was really great. However, I am not visiting Australia this year but I hope to come again next year. Yeah, now that I reread it, is sounds quite misleading, I meant the same trick three different times. I've made the edit for it already

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Wow man. Every time you post in your blog, something really impresses me. You should set your record for Ripwalks and let us know what you get. I think you could hit at least Ripwalk x5. Hit more and prove me wrong

[Jiawei]

Thanks Nick, I will try to update my rip walks

17th October 2014 - CCA

18th October 2014 - Got new fillers for FREE







So I made a trip to a factory which sells metal abrasives. What I had not expected was that the staff offered to give me 2 bags full or 1.4mm steel shots and aluminium oxide steel grits for free! I wanted to pay them but they said that it was fine

I had a freestyle football meeting later in the day but had a little time to footbag. I landed 2 twirls and a spinning clipper. I stopped after awhile because I felt intense pain in my hip from doing Datw and switchovers.

[Jiawei]

19th October 2014 - Weather was too hazy
20th October 2014 - Camping trip
21st October 2014 - Camping trip/footbag session
I came back from my camp today. I had a short footbag session. I seemed to have lost all of my touch, I could not do sidewalks and many other moves.

21st October 2014
I landed 4 twirls and some other stuff which I have completely forgotten about now.

22nd October 2014
I manage to do a proper sidewalk today. Also, my legs felt extremely tired so I trained a little freestyle football. But then I continued again because I wanted to push myself a little more. Nothing much today. I can't seem to remember what I had landed today, maybe it was because I felt too tired?

[Jiawei]

23rd October 2014 - I forgot to update the blog. I was feeling very tired today but tried to push myself as much as possible

24th October 2014 - CCA

25th October 2014 - Boy threw footbag into Swimming Pool
First time trying butterfly swirl and symple swirl after the camp and I took many many tries just to get it. However, I got my first far whirl. I also landed blur and sidewalk. I worked mainly on swirl, twist, whirl and twirl. Something "unique" happened halfway through my training today. A small boy accompanied with his mother, took my footbag and played around with it. I was okay with it at first but then he threw it into the swimming pool . The mother, still looking, did not apologise or help to get it out at all, she just left. What happened next was worst, brown liquid starting rapidly dripping out from my bag. I don't quite understand how my bag, which is filled with just steel shots, which has not been rusted before(because I did not wash), can ooze out brown liquid . I then attempted to clean everything up but it was too difficult because the liquid drips onto the floor everywhere I go. I decided to quickly go home and leave it for the staff to clean because it was not too bad. Incase you are wondering, I live in a condominium where there are staff working in it and has buildings with many apartments in it. I've got knee pain at the end of the session, probably because of the far swirls.

[Jiawei]

26th October 2014
I tried training in my old shoes which where not meant for footbag and I thought it turned out pretty good for footbag at first. It was only after I had drilled so many clipper tricks that I realised that it was actually making it worst. This training was in the morning and I had another session later in the afternoon where I had to drill back my clipper in rod lavers. However, I landed my first butterfly twist. But that was it, nothing much new.

[Jiawei]

27th October 2014 - CCA

28th October 2014 - Freestyle football meet up. Did not get to play much footbag

29th October 2014 - CCA

30th October 2014 - Freestyle football meet up. Did not get to play much footbag too.

31st October 2014
Finally had a proper footbag session in days. I tried recording certain tricks on tape to see how I can improve it or what went wrong. The tricks were stepping, symposium whip, symple swirl, fairy and double legover.

I taped stepping because I wanted to see how I can get it higher.

I taped symposium whip because I had a lot of difficulty going around and have never landed it before. There was even once where I kicked the footbag at my eye. However, I managed to get it eventually.

I taped symple swirl because I found that the trick along with butterfly swirl is getting more and more inconsistent.

I taped fairy because most of the time, it would fly away, not set high enough or too slow to dex and I could only get it once in a while.

I taped double legover because I still don't know what the motion for it was. I have not been close to landing it before.

[Jiawei]

Update. I just went to try double legover bare footed and manage to land it!

[Add Block]

The best advice I can offer for any downtime component, like Eggbeater, DLO, Drifter, Grifter etc is to set the bag quickly and jump for the dexes immediately.

1) Set the bag up to about waist height, but with your knee/leg as low as possible. Don't raise your knees high, you want to jump into those dexes as soon as possible.

2) Once you land with your setting leg, don't wait, immediately jump for the dexes.

3) The dexes don't actually have to be fast, over time you'll substitute technique for speed. Especially once you improve the timing.

This applies to any toe based trick, even composite ones. So if instead you wanted to hit Pixie DLO, you would set the bag pixie style, and then jump into that DLO instantly after landing with your setting foot.

The jumping instantly after landing technique is good for any trick, while the doing the set as quickly as you can with your legs as low as you can usually makes the difference between a trick with one dex downtime component like a Mirage and a trick with two/three dex downtime component like DLO.

Hope I didn't confuse you.

[Jiawei]

Have been having freestyle football meetups almost everyday so I barely had time to train footbag. There were a few times which I got to train though. The only highlight over the few days was that I touched my first ripstein. I know that it is too early but I trained it because I had to practise quietly. It was about a week ago and I had not tried it since. I fractured my right wrist 2 days ago during my CCA, which is football, and am in a cast now. I can't train either sports for awhile until I recover

[boyle]

Bad luck on the injury, nice work on ripstein though, that's awesome! Just make sure to let your injury heal before you get back into things.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Wow footing Ripstein is big. Props. So bummed to hear about your injury. Get well soon and recover fully.

[Jiawei]

I went to the doctor's yesterday and they said that I would have to keep the cast on for another 4 weeks. I have to refrain from sweating in my cast so I am just going to train simple clipper drills until I can take it out. Also, I will be visiting Tokyo, Japan tomorrow! I saw the japan footbag group and they are having some meetings during the weekends this month, near Tokyo, but unfortunately there aren't any meetings during my stay. Maybe next time

[Jiawei]

Its been a while since I last posted here! In case you didn't know, I have been in a cast since November and only recently taken it out, 5 weeks later. It's been a week since then and over these past 6 weeks, I have had some pretty interesting footbag experiences that I thought were worth sharing.

The first one was when I went to Japan. When I was looking through a football shop near my hotel, I accidentally came across Taishi footbags! It was the first time that had I seen footbags in a real life store so I definitely did not anticipated that! I knew that I had to get some so I chose the colours and got myself two. I couldn't resist getting another so I got a new one the next day .

The second one was when I went to the Asian Freestyle Football Championship at KL, Malaysia. I took out my cast the day before the event Btw. When I was Jamming with Freestyler footballers, I found people doing stuff like Torque and ripstein! I know that there are freestyle footballers that are capable of doing it but I did not expect anybody from asia! We even had a short footbag jam using my footbag! It was really fun!! There was one guy from China who told me that there were many footbaggers in his country, I actually thought that Jordan Chiu was the only one .

The last one was right after the Competition. I was about to head back to the hotel when one of the Judges named Lucaso from Czech republic approached and showed me his phone. He asked me if I knew who the guy was in his facebook messenger. He then told me that he saw me using a footbag shoe (rod Laver) to freestyle and messaged Vasek about it. Woah, he actually recognised my shoe and even told vasek about it! But then again, I think he was quite close with Vasek. Right after that, he said, "Vasek wanted me to say hi to you". I became speechless for a second, I thought I was hearing things wrongly . I was so happy at that moment because I felt as if I was "acknowledge" by the legend. He then went on and told me that Vasek said that I should Footbag more because it is a great sport. Hope you guys don't get offended by my next quote but Lucaso made a joking remark saying, "Yeah both sports are great but you should know which is better".

So this were the highlights of the past 6 weeks . Over this time, I had been slowly separating from the sport because I couldn't train, I even thought of quitting after my cast was removed. I did some self reflection over this time and found myself lost between the 2 sports over the past year. In the middle of the year, I joined footbag and found myself slowly quitting freestyle football but then a few months later, I started getting back into freestyle football but now I feel like I'm going to stop footbag. It was probably because I am unable to focus on both sports at the same time due to lack of time and different types of motivations. And because I stopped for a period of time in both sports, I didn't really go far in them. I know that it was because of my injury that led me to FEEL like quitting footbag but I think that is bound to happen even without the injury because that happened to my case for freestyle football. So in the end, I came to a conclusion that I will try to train both sports but train a little less footbag and hopefully not get too carried away and quit any of the sport like what I had done previously.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Great to have you back! Disappointed to hear a bit of your news about you wanting to quit footbag. However I think you should attend a real footbag event first then decide which one you like more, football or footbag

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Ps. Lucaso sounds like a real asshole

[MetZelRio]

Vaseks opinion is more important to me than Lucasos.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Agreed with Paul ^

[Add Block]

I was torn between the two sport for a while, too. It helps to think in the long run. The winning factor for me was that Footbag has a lot more tricks and possible styles as opposed to Freestyle Football. Hence, you can chose your own style and be famous for it. In Football, whatever style you are doing, 10 other people are doing the same.

Lucaso is the god of freestyle football. He organises most of the event/tournaments in that sport, and he started the sport in Czech Republic and Slovakia, later strongly influencing most of Europe.

Half of the reason their sport is ahead of us is him. On top of it, he is genuinely a really great person. He also works with Dexter, so we can have our tournaments with theirs, much bigger ones. They do not have to do this, they have enough players to fill these large venues, they are just kind like that.