the Pfootblog

[DTank126]

So I finally had a session and I managed tap>atomsmasher>rpt















































....with mirages in between each contact.

I'll race you to tap>atomsmasher>rpt! (No filler tricks)
Can't wait for winter break! And can't wait even more for NYJ! Huzzah!

[slapdash21]

doug youre such a bitch. haha just man up and hit it.

yo ian if you arent coming to the boston jam in april ya should, and if you are...well good then. because its gonna be sick.

[century264]

Wow all of a sudden I have a popular blog haha. Alright let's see, responding in order:
I'm going to NYJ with Doug and most likely Chris! I got rooming with Nate. Cool beans!
Pat, of course we'll play over break. I'm home around the 19th or 20th. we'll have a week to find time to play.
Doug, you are a bitch. I know I've hit at least atomsmasher>mirage>rpt>tap>ss mir>rpt. I guess I know what I'm focusing on in today's session. I'll see you at the finish line, biatch
Pete, I'll be there. Don't worry. Depending on how things work out, like when my finals are, I may be late arriving or something, but expect the green mountain boy to get psyched for this crap.

haha that felt good. Well I had a session yesterday. I was working string length and complexity. I hit both pretty well, actually. a ton of I'd say over 30 contact strings with a few BOPS in there, a bunch of 15-20 contact strings with some genuines in there, like a bunch of fears and a lot of symp mirage. Turns out they aren't hard haha. I don't think I hit any new records or anything but it's really encouraging to be able to play and hit what you expect to hit at least. I know I need to progress soon, but I also need to work my consistency, so I'm kind of working that angle at this particular moment. Not to fear, I'm working drills too but I like actually not dropping every 3 contacts until I get the 4th or 5th. It feels good. Alright that was kind of an entry. peace out modified!

[century264]

played again today. Won't be able to tomorrow because I have to go hiking for a long time saturday and I want to conserve my legs. Maybe I will, who knows. I just don't want to be the leader who can't keep up with the group. But, then again, if I do work out and then I'm on the trip and someone seems tired, I won't be lying if I call a stop for them and tell everyone I'm the one who's tired.

It was an alright session today. I really only had two goals. After Doug challenged me in an atomic off I couldn't let him get Atomsmasher>tap>rpt before me. So I did it. It was a real good time. I jumped around alot after I hit it and tried a few more times to do it again, but I was happy enough I did it once.

Second thing was I worked on osii, and it was pretty good. It turns out a big factor as to why my flip osis wasn't working was because I left my planted foot as it was but twisted my body, so I was all coiled up and couldn't turn enough to catch it well. After some work on that, I was really seeing some improvement. I quick busted about 16-18 contacts of Osis>ss clip>rpt, which was good. Then it quickly fell apart and I think I just wasn't focusing enough because I just kept getting sloppier.

That's pretty much the size of the session. I have a test in two hours and I need to study for that, do some homework and go to a packing meeting for the trip on saturday. Woo! Alright. I'm out

[century264]

So I played yesterday and sunday, meaning that so far since break I've only not played on two days and one was because I was hiking. I feel so fit!
Sunday's play was really substandard, just not good, so I won't get into it.

Tuesday play. I went to the gym and played in a racquetball court. It was good, if a little slippery. But very bright so that helped. Osis is getting easier for me finally. I'm actually making progress there, I can feel it. Thank whichever entity you choose to worship, if any. I was there to work on string variety and length, because I think my trick selection can be very broad with the things I can land pretty easily in drills, but I can't put them midstring easily yet. So it was devoted to putting in symp mirages, BOPS, Drifters, Taps and fairy whatevers. In this aspect I succeeded. I really had a great time doing long strings and learning how to breath while I did them. I think the record string of the day was only about 25-30 contacts but it was so much more advanced than most all of my strings a month ago even. started with toe ss butter>osis>pdx mir>rpt and then into roughly 20 contacts of more advanced tiltless, a paradox illusion, some symp mirages and a couple fear and tap things. A great string for me. I was thrilled. Not too much else to report except fairy is getting easier. Hit Fear>fairy ss mir>rpt first try this time. WOO! Footbag.

Pfeiffer out!

[century264]

well i had an interesting session today. I had some good strings and such, but just as I was hitting warmed up, all the lights went out in the gym complex I was playing in. I was in a racquetball court, so it had no windows and I just sat there and said this stinks, I can't play in the dark. I went one over and the emergency light shining in from the second floor enabled me to play for the next half hour while they got the lights back on. phew.

Some fun stuff: I hit pretty much all medium length strings, so it wasn't a terrible day but my legs got tired more easily than yesterday, of course, since I actually worked out yesterday and my legs are all tired and stuff. However, I had a few fun links like I hit stepping far clipper>osis on both sides to start off a few strings, and clip set ss lo>smear to start another. I wish I could progress so much faster than I'm doing though. An hour a day isn't cutting it so I'll have to up the dosage. Need to get good enough to actually not embarrass myself at NYJ unlike TOJam. I'm pretty sure i was close to dead last in competition. Woo. haha but it's also just fun to play footbag, there's just so many tricks I don't know how to select which ones to use in each string. That's the real problem. I want to go in every direction and i focus very little on one. Except toe to toe moves, I'm not terrible at that. K cool that's my session. Peace out modified

[DTank126]

Yo I know exactly what you mean about wanting to work on every concept. There's just so many god dam moves! Too many! Gah!

Anywho, only 8 more days! !

Peace

[mc]

yo ian,

I was reading what you were saying about some frustrations you had with your game.

want a quick tip? practice long tiltless strings with smoooooooth motions, and smoooooooooth stalls. if you work hard on your control, you'll find that the bigger moves and bigger strings you want to hit will come a lot lot easier.

try to play like mike, always smooth, always controlled, always precise. never faster or slower than he needs to be.

[century264]

well, two things. I just checked last year's footbag resolutions. I actually made them! haha! I did pretty well at them, too. 50 tiltless was in august, 25 BOPs I've done a couple times with drills I've repeated, although it's a little shenanigans because most of those haven't included all of them. I think I did 27 contacts of butter>pdx mir>rpt and things like that. Oh well. This year. stronger sets and finishing all my reasonable challenges were the other two and I've done that. Awesome.

NEW NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS
50 BOPS
Rubberman
Get guiltless. By that I mean in most strings of 20 or more contacts, only 1 or 2 of the tricks are tiltless. Tops 1 or 2 and that's when I'm bailing.
Go to more tournaments than any year before. It won't be hard. I just have to go to three haha.

I think that'll do it for now. Now I want to talk about NYJ.

Day 1 of the adventure: Dec 26th
I woke up at 9 am after a pretty late night over at a friend's house. I got packed and started stitching a few more panels of a bag I had been trying to make before the jam so I could sell it. Things got shifted around and eventually I got Doug to come and pick me up and get out to TGI fridays where Matt Cross was ready to pick us up. We get there and there's Matt and we load up the car. Matt's muffler had fallen off on his way over to rochester, so when he started the thing up it sounded like a muscle car. This was no muscle car though. It was a Ford Taurus, and i wouldn't place it at much younger than a 94 Taurus, having had one myself not too long ago. So without a muffler the best thing we could think to do was blast hendrix until we got to Tom's car in Fredonia. So I finished my bag about halfway to buffalo and it looked pretty dang good. I'm pretty happy with it. then we got to buffalo and parked at the airport parking lots for a while while waiting for Chris Dean to show up and load up the car. We played some hack and it turned out that Matt had bought Macbeth's to try shredding in because he wanted to look for sponsorship from them. He wasn't terrible with them. Then Chris showed up and R-U-N-N-O-F-T to fredonia to meet tom. Tom wasn't there yet when we got to fred, but we hung out for maybe 20 minutes and he showed. We loaded up the car pretty quickly and went off to Tim Horton's and got some quick Brekky or lunchy to satisfy us for a while. I got a peach passion drink and started the driving shifts. And so the journey began. Little did we know what lay in store for us.....
So my shift went pretty much without a hitch. I drove until we were outside of the major cities in ohio. Then Tom took over for a while things were again quite fine. Then came Chris's turn to drive. WaNaNa! For you see we had been getting reports of terrible weather near chicago but believed it not a whit and so pressed onward. Into some pretty crazy rain, but that passed. Into some fog that was pretty hard to see in but not terrible. But then we were almost out of gas and the fog had rolled in to the point that we literally, I crap you not, could not see 6 feet in front of the vehicle. The gas station we stopped at, we couldn't see the gas station across the street. In fact, we didn't even realize there was a gas station across the street until the next day when the fog cleared. So we gave up on driving for the night and decided instead to just shack up in some hotel somewhere. After some fighting the GPS, we found a red roof in not too far down some terrifying smoky foggy roads.
They let us stay there for 80 bucks though, so that was incredible. as soon as we got out of the car, we noticed something very distinctive about the parking lot. THere was none, because it was covered in exactly one entire sheet of ice. No fooling. we had competitions who could slide the furthest from a patch of snow near the light pole. tom won, I was second but fell so I lost style points and got my bum wet because the temperature was something just above freezing and so there was water on the ice, making it even slicker. Then we went inside and decided to have a shred session. WE couldn't find a good place for a while but then we did, we moved all the beds apart and had a space for everyone to sit while one man played in the middle. We Ustreamed it too. It was quite a good time. Eventually people were done playing and so we chilled for a little. Matt tom and Chris went out for a little to smoke or something and during that time held the first historic race. The race involved running around the entire parking lot, which was all ice aside from the one patch of snow we started on, so we had time to speed up. I caught the second race when they all went back in to get me and doug in on it. Chris Dean is the man at Ice racing. Hands down, knock down drag out the man. He destroyed all of us at it. After a quick shower that was the first day.

Day 2: the 27th
The day we actually made it to the jam. We got up at around 11 and got some quick complimentary breakfast from the hotel and got on our way by 12. Then a quick two hours or so later we got to the jam. We parked in a garage real quick and hightailed it to the tourney. The convention center is HUGE! it was awesome to see. THen we eventually found some kids who looked like they were doing traditional tribal dances but it was actually kids playing footbag! so we went up and took off our pants and put on our shorts and got playing. I met, in pretty quick succession, Waylon Lew, Eric Chang, Eric Chan, Julien Cote, Eoghan McDowell and a bunch of other guys. It was pretty crazy. We eventually got all of our stuff back to the room and things get hazy from there. I met alot of awesome people, chilled with them and played with them and had a great time at the tourney. Played scrabble with Ken Somolinos and Adrienne Dukes, watched Dave Clavens doing card tricks. I still can't see how he did a few of those. They're ridiculous. Then what? I don't know. Played in intermediate circle and got pretty well owned. I guess i just didn't know what they were looking for. I went for really long simple strings while others went for shorter more complicated ones, and I guess that's just what they wanted. Oh well. What will you do? I had great fun in general. Thanks CIC for making it an awesome tourney

[Frank_Sinatra]

Hey Ian! I enjoyed meeting you & hanging out in the suite. I hope the circle comp wasn't too disappointing or you don't feel screwed over by the judges. I understand exactly what you mean about not knowing what we wanted.

IMO: the competitors in your pool had more variety (generally shuffle stuff/guiltless play) & did a pretty good job at it. You had longer runs than they did, while they did more difficult tricks. Generally speaking I felt the competitors had long enough runs to demonstrate that they were consistent/competent with a variety of harder concepts than you demonstrated.

For what it's worth, Ben gave you 1st place in your pool, which I'd feel good about. But I understand if it only makes it more confusing to get such different results from the judges.

EDIT: Also, like I said afterwards, I felt like you played at a truly intermediate level, while IMO a couple of the guys should not have been competing at intermediate. This definitely pushed the level higher than I would have expected from intermediate circle comp.

If you don't want any of this in your blog I'll edit it out & pm you.

Really wish we would've been able to play together more than the brief circle where we both seemed out of it. I know I was out of it. Seems like we're at a pretty similar place with our games.

[CIC flurry]

Yo Ian,
It was cool having you in the suite fo sho. You and Doug are quite chill.

[century264]

Hey thanks, man it was great to be in the suite and have a place to chill

great session today working on some new concepts and refining old ones. there were a few highlights but i pretty much just involved myself in routine.

10 sets of ducking clipper X2, hit X3 set from both sides a couple times
10 diving clippers on both sides, got X2 on both sides and that was pretty cool
10 drifters on both sides, a couple b2b
10 whirls each side, X2 on both sides
10 spinning clippers bs, X2 on both sides too. That was really thrilling. tried for spinning osis and footed it a bunch but never quite got there
atomsmasherX3 again
atomsmasher>tap>rpt again

I think that's about it, but it was good to work on a lot of clipper game that I don't have. who knows? maybe i'll be able to bust them out soon.

[DTank126]

Hey man, cool write-up. I like how you played up the first day a lot leaving mucho suspense for the actual event, and then summarized the event in a paragraph. Seriously though, I enjoyed reading it, brought back some good memories.

Nice to see you drilling some guiltless clipper stuff and hitting repetitions. I can't wait to see what your game looks like once you're fully guiltless.

By the way, any update on operation: Christmas Tree for Santa Clause?

[century264]

Yeah yeah, I've been playing but not as much as I should be and I'm not updating nearly enough.

played yesterday, though. hit ten whirls and whirl*2 bs, 5 toe drifters, 5 clip drifters, pdx drifter bs. five sets of two ducking clipppers, five sets of three ducking clippers, alternating sides. Hit four in a row at one point, so that's coming along. Hit diving clip*2 bs, hit diving clip>ducking clip bs, hit diving clip>ducking clip>rpt set from one side. Hit 10 spinning clips, with *2 on bs and spinning clip>ducking clip bs. That was pretty much it in my world. It wasnt a hugely long session or anything like that. but it was good. the new stuff's getting a little easier

[century264]

played a couple days ago, probably going to again today, but i thought I'd post those highlights while I'm here at my compy.

I worked on downtime toe stuff, so I hit ten dlo's bs and realized that my right side is stronger, because I managed three in a row rather than just one in a row like on my left side. Then I did five eggbeaters both sides, which was really surprising to me haha. I finally get the trick better, but my illusioning dex on my flipside is really midtimey still, not downtimey. I started thinking of them as two separate tricks and it really came along. Is it right to think of an eggbeater like an illusion and a ss symple legover combined? because that's how it makes the most sense and after practicing that lo, the beaters really came along.

also hit five merlins solidly strong side, none weak because my crap was bothering me.

also worked atomic and hit five groups of tap*2 bs, and hit atomsmasher>tap>rpt again. That's getting solider I guess haha. Cool beans.

went for a run a couple days ago and man am I sore. Maybe I should do that more often, like an instead of footbag day each week or summin. Either way. Ok, I think I'm getting amped to play again, so I may take advantage of this. I'll update you later footblog. pfeiffer out

[century264]

back after way too long!
If I took one shoe off, I could probably count how many sessions I've had since the last time I posted here, but it's spring, school's almost out, and summer's looking good for footbag.
played a session yesterday and had a lot of fun, but one hour of kicking made me so tired I wanted to throw up. Doing nothing but drinking and snowboarding when I'm not doing homework really hasn't helped out the endurance much.

fun things I did:
ducking and diving osis bs
ducking clip>diving clip>rpt
voodoo, super clean. Been a while since I hit that one
toe barrage
dellusion once, that was funny

I'm starting to get back into the sport, it's been a while since I really WANTED to play, but here we are now. Hopefully it keeps up.

[MathieuGM]

Hey man! I just realised that you live in Burlington... It's less then 2 hours away from montreal. Ever considered to make it to montrael spring jam (weeding bash this year) ? Or even just have a session together?

Mat

[h0ag3yb3atZ]

whats good Ian come back to Boston soon.

[century264]

Mathieu, you know that may actually happen! I have to see what my work schedule will be like, maybe work some extra brownie points hours, but hell yeah I'd love to go to a jam again! And a session is totally in the question.

Kevin, I'll try to make it down there soon, I love Bahstin and at least some of the people in it, you included (feel good about that)

Played again today, after work of all times. Good news, I think my endurance is quickly on the rise, I managed a good few strings over 20 contacts, even a string to end it as my legs were burning and seizing up. I'm still getting back a lot of the old skills so i feel so very limited in variety when I play almost all tiltless without too much creativity, but I'm being patient and letting it come along. I think less than my lungs, this time sore muscles were coming into play. As I type I can feel my legs burnin', which hasn't happened in a while.

That being said, I revisited some old drills and went for some bigger tricks midstring. clip set barrage bsos, fear and ss fear bsos, lo>tap>rpt>string, even threw a gyro mirage in there for fun. why not?

[century264]

Soo glad I played yesterday instead of studying for finals, it was a great session. I've been playing in my house, which has been cramped and the floors aren't level, no good at all. I decided to go and play outside in the sun on level ground and absolutely loved it.
It may have been the newly level ground, or my newly stitched bag (that's right, I'm stitching again! I'm still working on the panel sizes, since I lost my old ones, but I've been trying a higher gather than before and this new one came out super juicy even during its first session. Can't wait to hear other folks' opinions when I get to a jam), or that I wasn't playing after work for once, or even that I was outside and in a good mood, but whatever it was, I pulled down a good few runs that must have been over 30 contacts, and mixing in guiltless like I haven't in forever. I really started thinking about bending my knees more and focusing on how I set my tricks and set up my dexes and it must have helped. turns out a little hop back on butterflies and pdx mirages and a few other tricks make all the difference.
I was working on fairy and atomic, my old bread and butter, but they finally started feeling good again, like I could manage them and still think about what was coming next. Hit a couple dynos too but I have to work rev. whirl, since I can't figure out exactly where to set the thing in order to get over it and then catch it. Anyone got dyno tips? Or stepping tips? I was working on it and got a bunch of step>far toe but I was wondering how close to the body to set it, and is it like clip>same clip set or like clip>op clip set? where's it come from and what direction does it go, in other words haha

in any case, a little list of accomplishments in strings.
atomsmashers bsos
atomsmasher and tap bsos
fear and ss fear bsos
whirl>butterfly>rpt>string
dlos>string