SandWraith's Footnovel: Now with more footbag!

[SandWraith]

Hi there. I'm Zach Marine, from Marshfield, Wisconsin. I've been playing footbag off and on since last summer, but I was into hacky sack as early as freshman year (I just graduated high school). The off and on part of it was due to varsity soccer (during which time I didn't even pick up a footbag) and school. I will be going to Washington University in St. Louis next year for college, and hope to get a small ring together down there.

I'm making this footblog partially cause it seems like an interesting idea, partially to put my goals into a public light so that I'm more accountable for them, and partially cause I think everyone likes to brag a bit about something, and this is something.

I'm also a bit of an organizationalist, so I have been keeping tabs on my progress since early January. If you really, really, really want to see what I was working on back then... enjoy? DOWNLOAD THE EXCEL FILE HERE

I can at present do an ok stepping set, an ugly and inconsistent pixie set, a decent gyro set (though I've only worked on it for 2 weeks), and ducking and diving. I'm sure I could crap out an atomic or quantum with a day's practice, but that'll have to wait till I make my current sets slightly less craptastic. ^_^

On that note, I spent today working on my stepping set as per Nathan Pipenberg's comment in his blog from the days of yore. At least I thought it was from his, but then I went looking for the exact post and can't find it. Oh well. The point is that I'm gonna school individual sets, one per day. I really like stepping and so today was devoted to her (him? it? you decide!). I hit:

Stepping SS Clipper (same side)
Stepping OS Clipper (op side)
Ripwalk
Sidewalk
Schmoe
Blur
Stepping SS Mirage

Also did:
Butterfly > Barrage > repeat
Torque delay (the osis part of my torques generally is more of an upward kick that lacks much control, making it so that I can only do butterflys or ducking out of torques, so consciously holding the end of the osis should help)

Some of those I do pretty often, like ripwalk and sidewalk. After I hit them all, I went back and hit them again, and then did them all out of butterfly. With any luck, the sheer volume of stepping will help me improve. I'm not sure what tomorrow will be, perhaps pixies and gyro? Or maybe drifters, torques, and reverse swirls? Ahhh well, such big things to ponder. If you're still reading at this point, rest assured that I'll try not to make all my posts this long and drawn out. But hey-- reading's good for you!

And finally, the current goals
General goals:
-Average of 25 BOP run by October 1st (averaged 4.6 today) NOTE: Changed to hitting a string of at least 25 guiltless


COMPLETED GOALS:
-4 consecutive ripwalks by September 1st; completed August 18th
-zulu clipper back to back by September 1st; completed August 21st
-3 consecutive spinning clippers from left foot clipper by September 15th; completed August 21st
[/b]
And finally, me during Summer '06:

You stay classy, modified.

[SandWraith]

So today at work I got to shovel dirt into potholes for 8 hours. Whoopey! Then again, that's the kind of stuff I've been doing for the last two weeks-- weedwacking, lawnmowing, heavy-stuff carrying (and dropping, on occasion), etc. I originally signed up to be a janitor for the school district over the summer, as in cleaning walls, cleaning desks, cleaning chairs, cleaning tables, cleaning floors, cleaning lights, and cleaning just about anything else that can be cleaned in some way. However, one of the two grunt labor workers quit cause the job is pretty sucky, and so they moved me to that. At least I'm getting a good upperbody workout, I suppose. However, coming home to footbag after that means very little energy and consequentially I play like crap (don't know how Maraxus does it).

I decided to work on my pixies and gyro today, along with the requisite BOP practice (cause my string length is crappy). My average BOP length for the day was exactly 4.6, which isn't an improvement but I doubted there would be a noticeable change after only one day. I am looking forward to plotting the improvement graphically once the month is done (if anyone downloads the excel file I have, the third sheet has a random table that was the ratio of ankle circumference between my sprained right ankle and my healthy left ankle for the first week or so-- fit a decay regression really well).

For gyro, I managed to do (everything is both sides unless mentioned otherwise; bold is stuff I can barely do; ! is for new moves):
gyro clipper
gyro mirage
spinning osis (!)
spinning butterfly (!)

For pixie:
pixie
pixie same clipper (same dexing leg delays)
dimwalk
paradox mirage > pixie same clipper
pixie osis (!) <----- uuuuuuuuugly
pixie legover

As you can probably tell, my pixie set needs a lot of work

I also hit barrage BSOS twice (in two strings, not 4 barrages in one string) and ripwalk > blur, but only on one side.

[SandWraith]

~~~~~~~~ Aesop's Fables: The Wasp and the Angry Youth ~~~~~~~~

A wasp, fluttering about to find whatever it is wasps find, happened into the garage of a young man, who was jumping and cursing viciously at a small cloth bag. "I'll just fly around here like a lunatic and then leave after doing nothing at all," thought the wasp. The young man, seeing the wasp, and fearing him as most humans do, swatted his arms and bade him leave, which the wasp soon did. Shortly after departing, the wasp decided he should return to see if there was anything he had missed. So the wasp meandered into the garage again, mucking about and sauntering from one item to the next. "Go away," shouted the youth, who seemed angry at the wasp's seemingly incessant saunter. With a quick movement he swung at the wasp with his shirt in his hand, scaring the poor wasp, who flew out as quickly as he could. But wasps nary heed the greater side of caution, and soon after the little wasp flew back in. This time, though, the youth was prepared, and as soon as the wasp landed on a shelf, the boy swung his shirt down upon the wasp, sending it painfully into the ground. Gasping and writhing in unimaginable agony, the wasp watched as the young man picked him up, took him outside on the pavement, and dropped a rock on him. The moral of the story: wasps better stay the fuck away from me when I'm shredding.

[SandWraith]

Well, I didn't get a chance to post yesterday, so I have some ground to cover. Because I'm trying to update this daily, we're gonna pretend it's yesterday when I wrote this next part.

8/4 It's yesterday today. First off, I managed to get my work schedule cut down to 7 am to 12 pm, so then I can come home and sleep/recuperate/whatever. I'm really enjoying it today, the first day I knew about it, since it's not tomorrow. After my session yesterday (8/3), my knees were beginning to bother me. They had been a minor nuisance for a while, but only on occasion. However, I think only gonna get worse unless I change some things. So I went out and got myself some new insoles, and plan on sending my old ones to Caleb Abraham, because he apparently wants them (as he describes here). Unfortunately, since the new insoles were bigger than the standard issue ones, my feet were higher up in my lavers and my clippers were all sucky. That made the whole session a bit of a drag, cause I was dropping just about every osis and a lot of butterflys. I still managed to hit 6 ducking (I usually can get 8 or more with little effort), and my usual blurs/barrages/toe drifters, all of which I am consciously trying to practice a bit each day. My BOP string length went down, although not as much as I would have imagined given my butterfly/osis condition. It was a mildly-crappy 4.3 The only real highlight of the day was that I had one BOP run of 15 contacts, which was butterfly>butterfly>osis>repeat. I don't do same side butterflys by the way, cause I never thought they looked good.

8/5 It's today again, but not yesterday-today. If you're still in that context, then it's tomorrow-today, but not tomorrow-saturday, more like tomorrow-friday-cause-yesterday-today-was-thursday, if you get my drift. I broke down and modded my lavers last night, since I wasn't gonna take out those nice new insoles (which really help, by the way). I did the broka mod and cut out the inside layer of canvas on the inside of my lavers. I might cut out the inside on the toe and outside, but not for skill related reasons, just cause they seem to feel a lot cooler that way (more air flow). I didn't notice a huge increase in skill, but it seemed to cancel with my insoles, so it's all good. I was going to work on torques and drifters today, but I decided just to focus on what I enjoy. It's supposed to be fun, not work. Now work, that's supposed to be work. That's why they call work work; if it were supposed to be fun, they'd call work fun. (Since no one is reading this anyways I'm just gonna babble like that whenever it strikes me.) My BOP string length is still lower than it was two days ago, but I can feel the improvement (irony, I guess). The average run was 4.56 moves long, with the high being 13. Highlights of the day include (as always, everything is both sides unless otherwise specified):
Merkon (!)- not too hard, amazingly; hit on the first try flipside, 4th or 5th strongside
Gyro Mirage back to back (well, there was obviously the toe to clipper link in between, but as back to back as possible)
Osis>Torque- been doing that for a while, but I still like it

Since I enjoyed my stepping session so much, I decided to go back to it, which resulted in all this both sides:
Ripwalk > Ripwalk
Ripwalk > Sidewalk
Ripwalk > Schmoe
Ripwalk > Stepping SS Clipper
Ripwalk > Blur - hell yeah!
Ripwalk > Stepping Op Clipper

Only thing I couldn't get from ripwalk was my Stepping SS Mirage, but I knew that was gonna be a no go so oh well (ho ho ho).

I also tried to see if I could get three consecutive whirls on each side, since that was a challenge I set for myself before spraining my ankle in mid April. I got 4 whirls strongside first try and 3 whirls weak side in about 4 tries.

I'm really happy that I could get the ripwalk > stepping thing to work for me on both sides. Maybe eventually I'll be able to hit some decently long stepping runs! ^_^ Oh, and that 25 average BOP goal seems a long way off, but I'm confident I can at least get to 10 by the end of the month and we'll just see where it goes from there.

And with that, my efforts to compact two posts into one have failed miserably and everyone that at least views my blog runs in fear at the large block of words. Damn words and there damn... damnness.

EDIT: 4 posts and 1900 words. You can expect my full-length novel out within the next year or so.

[Nathan]

On that note, I spent today working on my stepping set as per Nathan Pipenberg's comment in his blog from the days of yore. At least I thought it was from his, but then I went looking for the exact post and can't find it.

You mean this?

today is BOP's

tomorrow is torques and drifters

thursday is dlo's and eggs

friday is stepping and atomic sets

saturday i will review them all

sunday i shred, and see if i notice any improvement

Nice blog, I like reading the longer ones, it seems more personal than all the ones with highlights listed and nothing else!

[SandWraith]

Thanks, Nathan. I read yours all the time.

Today my friend Brian (MaelstromEx) and I started filming a short 1 song video for last year's gym class. Well, it was actually first semester of last year. Our teacher was so impressed that he wanted a short diddy to show the kids in the future. From what I've heard, he also talks about us incessantly. If he only knew how many much better people there are....

So as far as the video goes, it wasn't great and it wasn't bad. I had some strings of 10 moves or so, but I always felt awkward. Usually I just kick in my garage and can roam whereever I want whenever I want, but with this camera on a tripod, I felt cornered. Not only did I have to concentrate on the moves, but I had to concentrate on not drifting to one side or the other. All the same, it was more or less our skill level-- some interesting 3 moves things and a couple longer pieces. It just confirms to me that I'm working on what I need to-- LONGER runs.

We're thinking of using the song "New England" by Big D and the Kid's Table, and taking footage from around Marshfield to splice into our ridiculously short runs. It should really screw with some people.

The problem comes from the fact that the camera my friend owns connects to the pc with a/v jacks (the yellow, red, and white cords), and neither of us has a media card. You'd THINK he would have that, since they own that camera and all. Weeeeell, that means I have to find someone with a mini DV camcorder that has a firewire/usb connector. I'm thinking I'll try to borrow one from school on monday, seeing as how I janitor / slave there.

Oh, and I footed mobius like 3 times on camera. What's weird though is that it was all flipside. My strongside (based on the fact the only mobius I've hit was on that side) wasn't working for me today. Ob la di, ob la da, I guess.

[HG]

Nice Zach! That video sounds PHAT.


If you get it onto computer please post it on modifififififififified

[SandWraith]

Ended up spending 2 hours tonight waiting for Rory (SlashC) to show up so we could play some Worms Armageddon. When he finally did show up I had technical difficulties. As soon as I got them resolved he logged off. On the plus, I found this super schwag flash FPS.

On the plus-plus (or plus squared), my friend figured out that there IS a firewire port on the camera he has, it's just very hidden. We both had spent about 10 minutes looking all over the thing, but from what he described on the phone, it was a little piece that looked like you'd break it by tinkering. Joyz! So now I don't have to try to borrow one from the school or mooch from a friend (errr... another friend).

[SlashC]

sooooooooooooorrrrrrry

here's a treat:
www.shredmonton.com/media/rory_autumn_shredventure.wmv

Can't wait to see your video!

[SandWraith]

LOL that ending part was hilarious. Especially how you tried to act like nothing happened when your mom came in. I also thought the random stalls on random spots thing was humorous.

Your toe spinning is awesome, and your pixies are WAY better than mine. However, that reminds me that yesterday I told my friend how I was moderately close to smear, and then proceeded to hit it on my second try! Well, at least on my strongside... guess I have to work my weakside pixie sets a bit more before I'll get that.

My favorite run was the 23 move string at the 2 minute 11 second mark that matched SO well with the music. It just flowed really well.

Thanks, now I can put your name to a face.

[SandWraith]

I was reading Henry's blog and I feel really shitty that I missed Midwest Championships. Sounds like it was pretty awesome. What I miss most is that I didn't get a chance to kick with Mike Hansen, cause he's been kind of an inspiration for me in some way. Instead, I'm sitting here watching 2 and a half hours of video footage. It's got about 5 to 10 minutes of moderately decent stuff, and the rest is crap. Yeah, I DEFINATELY have to keep working on runs. To completely contradict that statement, I came really close to hitting blurry whirl on camera though. Tomorrow I want to hit blur > mirage > toe drifter > paradox mirage, and far osis > osis > repeat as many times as I can. Also, I'd like to get a couple runs with gyro mirages or merkons in. I have no idea how the footage we have could make anything other than a train wreck. But it's gonna be a train wreck with a kickass soundtrack

[SandWraith]

So we filmed again today. Well, actually I filmed alone with Brian's camera. His family has trust issues so I'm pretty surprised they left me alone with it. To give you an example, I can't have it overnight. Even though we filmed on Monday, and he knew I would be using it Tuesday, he had to take it home and give it to me again today. When in Rome....

Overall, I played like crap today. I managed to hit bubba on both sides, which is due to the fact that I have been doing clipper set reverse pickups for a long time (though I found out that on video my clipper set pickups and reverse pickups look really ugly). Speaking of the video, we found out that it doesn't look that bad! Sure, there aren't a lot of hard moves, and there's only one or two fives which are hit as single moves, and the runs are pretty short, but with the right music it's looking ok-- much better than I (or Brian) had expected. We unfortunately had to nix the "New England" idea, because the song is too fast for our shred. It's the type of song that every move would have to be two dexes, and we frankly aren't that good. On the flipside though, we found 3 songs that should work really well. Even just running the clips through with the music in the background sans editing looked somewhat professional-- which is good given that there ain't gonna be much more in the professional category with my Windows Movie Maker skills at work.

On that subject, anyone know how to cut the audio from the clips in WMM? I don't want to have our talking or footfalls or the music we were playing bleeding into the song.

------
And now for something completely different...
This morning I work up and got ready to go to work as usual, but when I got out to my car and put the key in the ignition, all I got was a "click, click, rrrrrrr (fade to black)". Ok... so I tried again. Same result. Well, on the upside-- no work! Woo hoo! Wait a sec-- that's a bad thing; I don't get paid. --< So I had to get a battery earlier tonight, which surprisingly only ran me about sixty bucks (we're selling the car soon so the battery just has to work ok, not super awesomelike).

[MaelstromEx]

Just a note: Don't blame me, my dad still has severe influence even from 3 hours drive away. Fear him Zach

[SandWraith]

So no shred today-- I'm drained from being in front of a camera. I find I shred a lot harder (though worse) during filming, cause I think I'm afraid to waste camera time. Therefore, not a lot new to report.

...but I did get a 55.536 on crazygame-- only 7 seconds off my record! So close! [EDIT: you must right click and choose "save as" to download the game, otherwise you will be redirected to this page]

While I didn't actually kick today, I spent a portion of the day (while lugging around a lawnmower ) thinking about toe drifters. I think I have found where my problem with my flipside toe drifters comes from, and that is my paradox mirages. Here's my reasoning, it is kinda longwinded but makes sense to me:

Doing many moves from toe to clipper requires, or at least is facilitated by the move being entirely downtime-- whirls, drifters, torques, etc. This is one of the ways that I work on learning paradox versions, because paradox almost mandates that the move be completed downtime (with the uptime used to maneuver into position to do the dex(es)). Since, in this regard, toe and paradox versions of the move can be seen as equivalent, with the only difference being the uptime movement requirement of the paradox version, it seems that the dexing could be viewed as the same. Here's where the switch is-- the paradox-to-dex motion of a paradox drifter, that snake-like motion where your leg wraps around your support leg and then S's around the bag, which should be as minimal as possible to allow for maximum time to complete the clipper, is identical to that of a paradox mirage. The only real difference is that whereas in a paradox mirage the snaking motion ends on the support leg's toe, the paradox drifter keeps going back down to the original clipper. All of this is obvious, but I never noticed that what is likely the cause of my toe drifting problem is that I never made the motion of my paradox mirage as succinct as possible. Watching footage of me from the last couple days, I see that my dexing leg goes MUCH farther around the bag than it needs to. It does not move, nearly vertically, in a close circle and come back down, but instead shoots out at a 40 degree angle. So, therefore, in an effort to improve my toe drifters, I plan to work on my paradox mirage form in the near future.

Also, I have been doing some research to see how I could improve my stepping sets. As it stands, I can almost duck my stepping at times, but the set as a whole is a bit unreliable side. I think I may have pinpointed this problem. I currently have only decent form on my stepping: I bend my knee, lift the bag upwards and then splay my support leg towards the ground while my dexing leg goes the other direction. As a result, my dexing leg does not go very high up, because there is no upward momentum for it-- just for the footbag. I was looking at others advice on the matter, and came across this piece of advice from last november. The important point is Jeremy Mirken's 4th tip-- to jump HARD off your support leg. I have been thinking about how I do it, and I can't really recall ever putting a lot of strength into an upward thrust. Hell, I don't think I really "jump" off my support leg at all. I hope that I can put this difference into effect quickly and get the height to make my stepping more consistent.

Although, I can't say if either of these two things will make much of a difference in the long run, since it's all theoretical. Give me a couple days to try them both out, and I'll tell you if I see any difference.

I also went back to all my other posts and removed my signature from them, cause this blog ain't 'bout no frills, yo-- this is straight-up gangsta.

[SandWraith]

Well it's midnight... crap, I failed to go to bed when I had hoped. I got home from work today and ate lunch, then slept (as usual). When I got up, Brian and I had our third and last day of filming-- 3 hours. It was a long time, but I can honestly say that doing runs for three days has really helped both of us out. Just watching the video I can see vast improvement. I'm hoping to have the whole thing edited by next wednesday, and it likely will be done before that. The bigger issue, however, is how to host it. I'd like to put it up on modified, but I don't have any webspace for it. I guess I'll be begging soon.

Brian and I had a very good day in several respects. First off, as I said, our runs were significantly longer. For example, I had an awesome 17 contact run:

Butterfly > Diving Clipper > Osis > Butterfly > Far Legover > Clipper > Pickup > Clipper > Ripwalk > Osis > Osis > Paradox Mirage > Clipper > Whirl > Pickup > Clipper > Drifter

Actually, looking at it, there were a lot of oses and clippers in there. Eventually I suppose I'll have to weed those out, but at the moment I am more concerned with my crap-ass far legovers. I don't exactly dex around the bag horizontally-- it's more of a vertical dex that looks very ugly. More embarrassing, my arms flail into the air for god knows what reason. That move has become a stock bail for me, and I'd like to replace it with a 3 add. I'm hoping I can get down reaper, which would be a logical progression towards barflys. Someone recommended to me, upon my stating that I might get back into paradons but that they're dangerous for me to learn, that I should work on doing double switchovers and DATWs first. Once I get those down, then I should be able to replace that far legover.

The real highlight of the day was two-fold:
-Brian hit phoenix (strongside) for the first time, and on camera!
-I hit blurry whirl (one side) for the first time, and on camera! I also footed it twice on the other side, but didn't manage to land it.

Not quite as amazing but still a good thing:
-I hit mobius on camera this time, though I like the mobius kick I had on day 1 better, because today's ended up hitting me in the chest, which doesn't look too good.
-I managed to do stepping ducking on one side

That tip about pushing off hard from the support leg on a stepping set did really help me. I'd say my stepping was about 50% better when I remembered to do that. It is a bit hard to incorporate though, since my current way of stepping is a habit. The more I work on that, though, the easier my stepping should get, so I'm pumped.

I've been sitting here going through the 2 hours of raw footage of today, and I'm not through the first hour and a half. I guess I'll do the other half hour after work tomorrow. Woots. Then to the hard part-- editing so the kicking works with the songs.

Brian and I also decided today that, since this video is for both instructional purposes (for our gym teacher to show his classes, basically) and to show on modified, we're gonna have two versions. The first one, for school, will be one song and just be us hacking. The second one will have the same one song of shredding, but also a 'special edition' ^_^ extra, which is pretty much all the random crap we dicked around with during our 3 days. Some of it IS somewhat funny. Well, so that's the plan at the moment, but of course it is subject to change. Maybe we'll just add it right in with the shred, to add intermittent bits of humor and lighten the mood.

I guess we'll have to wait and see....

[SandWraith]

I realized today that I start all of my entries out with 'so' or 'well'. I almost started this one that way as well. Today I finished importing footage from yesterday, which has some interesting and funny stuff. I wasn't able to kick, though, because I had to take a preliminary chemistry test for Chem 111A next year. With that, I am finally done with the homework I have for WashU before I get there. As far as the video goes, I still have to find a good song that fits our style and string length, meaning slow beat that fits with short cuts. However, I did already find someone to host it, which leads me to say
MIKE HANSEN IS A GREAT MAN

I had wanted to kick some today, mostly because I was excited to work on whirling stuff. That blurry whirl I did really excited me. I'd also like to try to improve my form on stepping more a la my 4 consecutive ripwalk goal. So tomorrow, stepping and whirling will be on the agenda, as well as DATWs and/or double switchovers. Here are the components that I am hoping to work on in the near future, as well as the specific moves I plan on attempting and the tips I have received/read related to them (this is more for me than you, so sorry-- I'm selfish like that*):

*feel free to comment if you disagree with any of the advice that I am planning on trying to follow, or just have some other suggestions that might help; I'd appreciate it

STEPPING
I've seen lots of the stepping ducking -- it's
important to set the bag FIRST and then just dex ridiculously fast. Maybe
think about setting the bag straight up, but at your side, and then once
it's set, step into it, instead of thinking of setting the bag directly
between your legs (more vulnerable to "pulling") -- does that make sense?

-stepping ducking clipper / ripped warrior
-blurry whirl
-fog
-stepping whirl
-blurry torque (yeah right)

PIXIE
# Tips Keep the bag close to your body.
# Keep your toes pointed up for a good set, until you release the bag, then
point your toe more downwards.
# If you have a hard time clearing the bag, either release the bag lower,
or bring your legs up higher to dex.

I really only want to cement a couple pixie tricks, since I don't like how pixies look too much. These tricks are:
-pixie same clipper
-pixie legover
-dimwalk (flipside is bad)
-smear (can't do on flipside yet)

GYRO/SPINNING
-Gyro Mirage (improve)
-Mobius
-Vortex

WHIRLING
I know it's not a set, but it is a component I'd like to improve
-paradox whirl (improve)
-whirr
-symposium whirl (work on form)
-paradox symposium whirl (once my symposium whirls become proficient)
-tomahawk
-hatchet
-blurry whirl

OTHER RANDOM STUFF
-bubba (I can hit it both sides, just not very well)
-twirl
-swirl
-refraction (I'd love to incorporate these; they look so cool)

So yeah, I hope to work on one or two of those sets each day and try to work towards those moves. Any advice/comments would be appreciated. As everyone does at least once in their blog, I'd like to see if anyone is actually reading through this.

[SandWraith]

Today had some yin and some yang. As usual, I got up and went to work, though it looked pretty dismal out and I really felt like sleeping. Then again, I thought, it was a friday and nothing gets done on fridays anyways. I was right. We spent two and a half hours disassembling/moving/reassembling a large room built as a temporary prison for kids that misbehave in a kindergarten class. It cost nigh on a thousand bucks to build the damn thing and yes, it is absofuckinglutely useless. The school system isn't even allowed to lock children in places, so there's no door. THERE'S NO DOOR ON A ROOM THAT'S SUPPOSED TO HOUSE NAUGHTY CHILDREN. Anyone else think this is bound to fail? And the ceiling is mesh, so you can hear the screaming loud as day. Great call, that one. It also takes up about a third of this room. C'est la vie, I guess. After that we did the 'mail run', as they call it, which makes me think of a video game, and then went home. It was 11 (good thing).

So after a quick nap I went out to work on whirling and stepping. That's where the yin comes in-- after stretching and doing some BOP's I went and started doing gyro mirages, and somehow I strained/pulled my tensor fascia latae m. (as it is apparently called, per this site). The worst part is that I didn't pull it on the miraging part of the gyro mirage, it was on the 'gyro'. How the hell do you pull a muscle by turning? Man, I feel old and broken already. But I kept playing-- cause I'm hardcore like that.

I managed to pull off a couple good things, despite the minor nagging of my 'tensor fascia latae m.' They were:

-cloud set op butterfly-- I usually just do cloud set same-side pickups, so that was quite random
-3 consecutive ripwalks-- twice! that 4 ripwalk goal is so close I can taste it
-whirl > osis > repeat -- not that amazing, but a good warmup and it'd be fun to throw into routines
-paradox whirl-- three times from left foot clipper and two times from right foot clipper. The issue I have with it is that I dex too early and often kick the bag behind me, so I have to consciously wait longer
-bubba BSOS-- I'm starting to like bubbas a lot
-double switchover-- only from R toe to L toe, but the other side is close
-clipper set op refraction-- I want to work refractions so that I can do routines of just butterflys and refractions. They're definately a beautiful move, in my opinion.

I'm gonna try to get a lot of sleep tonight to help my tensor fascia latae m heal. If I don't do spinning though, I should be fine. It only nags a bit on hip pivots, which I guess is something that's unavoidable.

Oh, I ducked a couple more stepping sets, but didn't put too much effort into catching them for some reason. Wonder why... Surprisingly, they aren't too hard now. I probably could have hit whirr at least once, but the double dex on the outside aggravated my hip, so I didn't.

I hit symposium whirl a lot on my left clipper, and found that it was best to actually set the bag and wait a second before doing the dex; it looked a lot prettier. On my right clipper, though, the bag goes too high and I can't dex it fast enough. I asked David Clavens and he said I was still setting it. So I'm gonna try to drop my clipper foot as I jump off the support foot, in the hopes that it will cancel and give me a good set. Either way, it's just tweaking and I should be close.

Tomahawk wasn't that close, but with some paradox whirl practice it might be. Hatchet was footed once or twice, and I cleared the dex almost every time but didn't have my clipper in the right spot. Practice I will.

My BOP average for the day was 5.76 -- a significant difference from before our 3 day run stint. I had 3 runs of 10 BOP's, in fact. I guess if I want to work on my runs in the future, I should just make a short footbag film.

Oh, and we sold my car today. Yippee! Soon I will be officially kicked out of this house and sent packing.

[SandWraith]

Definately more yang than yin today. My tensor fascia latae m. (wish I knew what the m stood for ) felt a little better early on, but I just sat on my ass watching tv and stuff like that. I decided the only way to make it feel a lot better would be a walk, so I went disc golfing with my friends Brian and Sixing (pronounced Shi-shing). The course is awesome-- it's set in the middle of a forest, so you either get good enough to dodge trees or you hit a LOT of them. I was hitting a lot of them. :/ After the front 9, Brian was destroying. He was at -5, I was at -1, and Sixing was at +12 (I don't think he'd ever played before). However, on the back 9 I caught back up. The back 9 is unanimously agreed to as the harder half of the course, because there is more foliage and less fairway. Sixing didn't improve much, ending the day at +18, while Brian finished at -4, and I finished at -5. I didn't feel like a winner though cause Brian got stung by a wasp again (same thing happened like two weeks ago).

When I came home I felt refreshed and-- ta da! -- my hip felt great! I started sessioning immediately, and in short time began work on my gyro. Really, you would think the day after injuring myself on gyro I would shy from it, but it didn't hurt at all so I rolled with it. After a couple gyro clippers I went out on a limb and tried spinning clippers... and hit them on the second or third try both sides. Not hard at all and a very good bail with some practice. After doing a whole bunch of spinning clippers, I went ahead and tried to duck them, which happened with a bit of time and effort. Yay! Now if I can just add a dex on the end, like maybe spinning ducking butterfly or spinning ducking paradox whirl (ha ya right), I'd be in good shape.

Other highlights of the day include getting 3 ripwalks again two times. The second of the two I hit ripwalk > ripwalk > ripwalk > stepping op toe. Oh! So close! If I keep working on it every day I'm sure I can get to the point where ripwalks become second nature to me.

Both sides if not otherwise mentioned:
-Butterfly > Refraction
-paradox whirl-- from LF clipper to RF clipper is fine, but from RF clipper to LF clipper is a biatch. I either have to dex farther, deeper, or later... or all three.
-spinning butterfly and spinning osis-- not hard at all anymore because I figured out how to make gyro easy (more on that in a minute)
-ZULU CLIPPER x2-- I tried to bold this twice cause I'm so happy. I love zulu clippers, but after failing at it a couple months ago I sorta forgot/was discouraged. I hit these after the third or fourth try on each side (seems like I'm saying that a lot, though it didn't used to happen much).

I took the day off from BOP's cause I just didn't feel like doing them. 'Nuff said.

Now for what I learned about gyro:
A lot of times in videos it looks like the set and the turn are all one thing. While this may be true with great practice, it is like any other set-- pixies look like one fluid motion, but definately weren't as flowing originally. The trick, as I now remember Eric Wulff describing as a tip for learning mobius on footbag.org's move list, is to set the bag straight up and THEN do the back spin. All of this can easily be done uptime. When I try to do it in one solid motion, I more often than not end up dragging the bag with me and dropping. Here is how Eric put it:

*Watch your set leave your foot. In theory, you should do this for all moves *especially spinning moves*. *Break it into 2 parts - set and spin STOP! torque (in the end it won't look like this but this is how you should think about it when learning) In building for this move you want to learn spinning osis and gyro mirage.

Now, it's not like I set a clipper straight up, wait a minute, and then turn; it is almost as fluid as if it were one motion, but just thinking about it that way helps make the set much more consistent, for me at least, and hopefully for anyone else that reads this tip.

Other big news is that I finally have the song(s) picked out for the video we're making, and am in the process of organizing the footage.

[SandWraith]

I didn't kick today because I could feel a weakened ligament in my left knee. I am almost entirely positive it is due to attempting symposium whirls on my left side (meaning the left leg does the support). I'm sure that if I keep doing them I will ruin my leg, so symposium whirls are definately out of the picture. Actually, I swore off symposium moves long before I was even close to doing them-- back when I was learning butterfly-- because I inferred that they were one of the most likely components to result in knee injuries, which I noticed many players had developed. However, I made an exception for symposium whirls cause they're so damn pretty. I will still do them on my strong side, because I can do ten or fifteen of them in a given session and have no problems, but doing even a couple attempts flipside wreaks havoc on the left (either the anterior cruciate ligament or the posterior cruciate ligament, via this diagram). I found Maraxus' advice on this matter a great guide-- he said how players often don't quit doing moves that hurt, and that those players don't play very long. He said that he doesn't do PS whirls on his flipside for that very reason. As he is one of my favorite players, it's relieving to hear that sort of advice from him.

Just to make sure I didn't hurt the ligament any more, I am taking today off, though it seems to be pretty good-- after disc golf I didn't feel it at all. Speaking of disc golf, we had a huge get-together today-- Brian, Sixing, Joe, Eric, Darren, and myself. Almost every hole we were looking for someone's disc. Joe rocked everyone with a 10 under (he's awesome at disc), I got a 2 under, and Sixing got a 19 over (he's not awesome at disc).

The big highlight, you ask? Why, the video is finished! It is 6 minutes 7 seconds long and will probably be 27.1 megabytes, since that seems to give good quality for the relatively low file size. Tomorrow I will be showing it to Brian at noon and then I'm gonna upload it to modified right away! I sure hope a couple people watch it and give feedback-- lord knows we need it.

Oh, and if anyone is actually reading this, could ya please just drop a hello? Part of the fun in blogging, no matter what the purpose, is to know that what you're writing is being read. You can give advice, feedback, ask questions, criticize me scathingly-- whatever. Cause you know--

We all neeeeeeeeeeeed somebody, to leeeeeeeeeeeean on

[SandWraith]

Yay! The video is now fully ready to be downloaded. Brian came by around an hour ago and gave the final approval, so you can now download it here.

I also just got my DocBag in the mail, and it's so small! It is probably 2/3 the size and twice the weight of my Mr. Sandbags, and I can't wait to try it out later.