Muffinman

Keep a diary of what you're hitting, what's frustrating you, and your goals.
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Muffinman
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Re: Muffinman

Post by Muffinman » 25 Jan 2014 16:42

Sooo sore.
Had an incredible session with Johnny and Adam today. I think it was the best I've played in a year, if not years. Everything that I complain about came together for this session. I'm not sure if it's luck or what, but it felt really good and made me happy. I was understandably expecting to be the worst player there but.. kind of a long shot, but I think I may have played the strongest. To be fair I don't think either were on top of their games.

Let's see if I can recall some highlights:
-ripped warrior and then blurry ducking whip same run
-some long 20-ish super dense runs
-lots of double downs
-blaze > rev reactor BSOS after only a few tries (BSOS is new)
-spinning DLO BSOS
-marius (first try?) -- footed other side in the same run? (This felt super cool because I had just finished telling Adam that I had only ever hit it once each side -- although maybe slightly more than that, actually)
-lots of 30-ish contact runs without much filler
-a run with vortex > spinning whip > spinning clipper BSOS... and other neat stuff in that run
-blurry whipping swirl
-far whipping swirl BSOS

I dunno. Mostly it was just long-ish, dense runs with a lot of my usual tricks and combos. But pretty consistently, which was cool. Oh, one run that opened with bedwetter BSOS and then, like, spinning whip > blurriest BSOS and rev whirlygig > ps whip > rev mullet and then some other stuff? I know those weren't the combos, but something like that. I had my camera, but didn't want to kill the flow by bringing it out and setting it up and stuff.

Johnny only stayed for like an hour or so, like super short. He probably spend 3 times longer driving here and back. Maybe it was because he was feeling frustrated about his game. Everything about the session for me felt really great though, even though I started out killer sore. The session length was perfect, the company, my ability to kick a hacky bag...

For the blaze > rev reactor, I was explaining my trick for blazing to Adam, which I felt a little weird about because I think he's better at it than me, but we were both trying some tricks, and then right after I explained how I envision it, I hit that BSOS. My trick, after trying some things in my last video is to think of the set as if I'm just doing bling blang, which practically doesn't require a set. When I do that trick, I'm dexing a bit behind me and a little further away from my body. If I think that for the set and then twist my hips to adjust for a far component after the set has come up, it defeats the mental block of not being able to do it at all. Not sure if that's helpful at all for anyone, and I'm not by far great at blazing, but I can bling blang on command, so that tip really helped me in my session previous to this one...

Adam's out of town next weekend, but I hope I can coax Tom into another duo session! That one day was really fun and he wasn't able to make today's.

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Re: Muffinman

Post by Kljopa » 26 Jan 2014 01:46

Gotta love when sessions like these occur!

Your game is looking fine Erik! I watched yours and Moshers video, you're busting out well!

I have just been thinking about whirling set, maybe your tip works for me! At least it should for bling blang, which is quite a neat trick.

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Re: Muffinman

Post by Muffinman » 31 Jan 2014 13:39

Thanks Aleksei :)
I always forget to post my videos here. I post them on my Facebook and kind of intentionally not in the Freestyle Footbag group so I forget that most people here probably won't see them either, since I'm one of the few footbaggers who doesn't just add anyone who plays to my Facebook friends. So this is everything since the last video digest I posted a few pages back:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbTqvNRB-Wk[/youtube]
That sun really messed the video, but you can still kinda tell what I'm hitting.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSxNjBOFSJU[/youtube]
Summer FAT session post-Worlds. I forget how I got to Toronto. Oh, I think I was in Ajax for a few days or something at Jenn's parents'. Great fun and hang out after, but it hurt so much to not be able to play. Great to see so many amazing people though :)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Tu4NDxClIE[/youtube]
Last outdoor sessions in London? Oh, right, I've been slowly working on putting together all the indoor session footage with Alex and Zach and myself, so that will be a video or so some time...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AswXzvSkQrg[/youtube]
A highlight from that footage I just mentioned above. Not many Johnny sessions, and him and I were both quite out of shape for them.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOIVXHOOV40[/youtube]
First session in my new place in Toronto. Bad shred, but a couple highlights to christen the place.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTLN3dQUGVk[/youtube]
Second shred in new place, and most recent footage from not my last session post, but the one before.

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Re: Muffinman

Post by h0ag3yb3atZ » 01 Feb 2014 11:34

big g and your style go together so well.

loved all the blazing rev whirls and all of the dope combos. ripped>haze bs stood out to me will steal :D

that may have been the hardest ive seen you play (in the short time ive been playing footbag) the whirling, hard stepping tricks, double downs and whipz are all looking fresh, good shit i really hope we can shred soon.
Kevin Hogan

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Re: Muffinman

Post by Muffinman » 01 Feb 2014 15:53

Thanks Kevin :)
I take that as a huge compliment!
I wish I could trade the intensity for longer runs though. I've forgotten how. I had bad consistency again today.



It was a super great turnout:
Me
Camille
Cassy
Tom
Sam
JJ
Johnny

I arrived 10 minutes early and nobody showed up for another half hour after the hour, which was super discouraging. It takes me almost an hour to subway out to downtown. So I definitely feel Cassy's frustration there when she's coming all the way from Oshawa and paying $26 just to get to a session. I think I will stop caring so much about being punctual unless she is coming, 'cause it seems like nobody else cares? I think Adam comes on time, actually. I won't be late, but I'll stop stressing over being like 5 minutes late or something...

Anyway...
It was nice.
I started the session pretty solid, with long warm-up runs, but then I only had, like, 1/3 of the session somewhere in the middle where I played well. A couple people were filming sporadically, and I couldn't hit more than 2 tricks whenever that happened, even when I didn't notice they were filming until after I passed.

It was really great to see Sam. He brought a really positive energy to the circle, even with talking down about his own skills, which were super impressive considering the time he's taken off. I hope he comes out more often! I hadn't seen him since, like, 2009? Camille seemed pretty on, though I'm still not familiar with her style. Cassy was playing really well, despite her clipper pain. Johnny was... Johnny. I don't think Tom actually played a ton. He was filming a bit and stuff, but his style is impeccable as always. And JJ was typical JJ.

The only thing I really remember was my first run when I moved to the circle with Sam was hitting some intense run with, like, spinning whip > blurry whip [repeat] midstring. I got lots of props from him that circle :)


I hope more people can make it out regularly like this. And Tom said he wants to duo session with me more at his place, which would be cool. I really like chilling with him and Marni. We all left in completely different directions and Cassy, JJ, and I walked to the closest subway while JJ told some ridiculous stories about his life. Intense. Then Cassy went one way and JJ and I went another together for a while. He told many more stories. But we also talked about hack a bit and I gave him some homework, and printed out a chunk of my website (http://footbagfoundations.erikchan.ca/) as homework. We made a deal that if he learns to play tiltless, I will play on the subway with him. This is him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2EqFb7xByQ
Part of me kind of hopes he doesn't get tiltless :p Haha :oops:


EDIT: Oh yeah!
I had a decent look at flurry > paradon > blurriest [repeat]. I only tried once, but first try I got into the barraging dexes of the second half. I think I could do it with a little practice. Also Johnny said my flurries looked good, which is super cool, 'cause I try really hard to not the them (a big struggle! which is why I don't do them much)

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Re: Muffinman

Post by Cass » 01 Feb 2014 18:24

You're pretty consistent for someone with poor consistency :P

Sucks that everyone is always late but I guess that's just how it is.

It was really good playing with you :) Hopefully we can hang out more next time since we didn't get a chance to talk much.

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Re: Muffinman

Post by Muffinman » 09 Feb 2014 02:29

Thanks Cassy :)
Nothing too notable today, but we had a great turn-out. 9 people. Great sessions lately and positive crew mentality. Most people showed up on time too! I also had kinda weird foot pain, like on the soles of my feet. Maybe too much high-impact. Or lack of insoles. Or both. I'm excited to try to play more often now too though.

One highlight I remember: quantum whip BSOS (the first one was to flail, which I thought was a neat combo of 2 tricks I never do). Oh, I also hit scorpion's tail BSOS. I think it was in a run with a bunch of other double down stuff? Don't remember. Oh yeah, and I thought to convince Nathan to come out, which is apparently all it will take to get him to come regularly, so that felt like a big highlight too :)

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Re: Muffinman

Post by Muffinman » 10 Feb 2014 16:53

Tried to solo today.
I think I had the energy and motivation, which is usually the hardest part for soloing in my basement dungeon. But my body was still pretty sore/weak from the last FAT session. That weird foot pain, a little bit of a tweak in my achilles again, and the beginning of shin splints. So I took it easy and mostly just did boring stuff. I focused a lot of retraining my flip pixie, which I think was productive.

I tried to start out by just aiming to do 10 individual smears with good form. And there are three things I focus on when doing it: 1) setting straight up and near my body (instead of out in front of me), 2) NOT doing a little hop with my support foot, 3) trying to concentrate on thinking about it as just a toe set (like how Johnny thinks about atomic). The last one was the hardest for me. I was doing pretty successfully thinking of the first two, but then my leg just didn't have the energy later on to do it properly anymore. Kind of weird. It's getting there though. I want to focus on pixie same tricks like magellan, parkwalk, pixie same whip, pixie same dod, etc. I also did some pixie muted far clippers, which felt so cool. It's always looked ugly with my bad pixie, but I think I did it like my good side.

I'm really excited to relearn pixie, 'cause my good side is still really good and I could do a lot of cool tricks with it, but I just never do because it would make me one-sided. The other major thing that I want to relearn is flip stepping. It's weird that it's my good stepping ducking, but I struggle with, like, stepping same clipper. There's a weird movement with my foot on flip stepping whip that really bothers me. Plus one of my favourite tricks is stepping same symp mirage, which I think is super cool, and I can do it on command on good side, but again I never do because my brain can't figure out stepping same symp on my flip. So I'm going to work on stepping clippers and stepping same symp mirage.

I'm also going to try to do more yoga daily and add a few more stretches to prevent those sorenesses I felt today from developing into full-blown injuries that will prevent me from playing. I really wanted to try playing every second day or so, but I will have to be really careful, 'cause my body is just really fragile. I haven't been able to PRACTICE stuff for, like, almost a decade because of it. Which accounts for my overall inconsistency. My two favourite poses are frog and warrior 2. They feel amazing on my flip hip flexor (the reason I don't do drifters or atomics). I'm gonna try to add stair raises, wall lunge thingies, and maybe convince Jenn to trade foot massages.


Oh, I was really excited to try a few new tricks today, but didn't wanna push.
I want to hit backside fog and backside haze since in my last FAT session I was doing some novas pretty easily again. I think I BSOSed it first try. I've also never hit pdx nova on one side. Kinda weird that I've hit backside bedwetter (both sides I think?), but never a symp eggbeater.

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Re: Muffinman

Post by Muffinman » 13 Feb 2014 17:27

Had my first livestream since Nick and I started our revival. 4-6ish people tuned in and it was really fun. Audience included: Nick Polini, Kevin Crowley, Aleksei Zhikin, Ken Somolinos, Tony Whitney, Aaron Price, Mathew Woods apparently (the Ad guy, or something? There was a mysterious username)? Here's what I posted in the Facebook group:

"Hit some new tricks by request: double diving whip, flip double diving clipper, blink > symp whip BSOS (blink is new)... not sure what else. Really fun session! I played a lot harder, longer, and better than I would have otherwise! Looking forward to others' streams in the near future"


Here's the thread I made about livestreams: http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=23573
And here's my livestreaming channel URL (follow to get email notifications for when I go live!): http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hackrifice-shred

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Re: Muffinman

Post by MetZelRio » 13 Feb 2014 21:53

Rats Patoot! wasn't available for that, dangit I wanted to be a part of that. I imagine online live request sessions, horse, sick 3 and 1, etc etc, dude it's gonna be fun and you know it was!

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Re: Muffinman

Post by sen » 14 Feb 2014 17:08

Was nice dropping in on your session. Maybe I'll try to figure out how to do one one day. I remember me and Nick and a few others (?) once did an online session through some video sharing website where we would take turns doing runs and then watch and chatty until it was or turn again. That was lots of fun.

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Re: Muffinman

Post by Muffinman » 14 Feb 2014 17:17

That DOES sound super fun... I wonder if there are better ways to do this... Google Hangouts maybe? I guess the main benefit of UStream is that randos can wander in anonymously and participate without signing up or having to install any software.

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Re: Muffinman

Post by sen » 14 Feb 2014 21:15

That whole easy to find thing is important. I guess it depends who we do it for. Do we expect random people to stumble onto it on ustream and decide they want to learn more, or are we doing it more for the benefit of the existing community.

I don't think that ustream is bad for the community by the way, I just don't see a way to get a virtual circle going on it.

EDIT: found the site we used from my bookmarks. http://tinychat.com/footbag I think that hangouts would be better at this point.

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Re: Muffinman

Post by Muffinman » 14 Feb 2014 21:36

Nice thoughts. I didn't really consider a virtual circle as top priority. I like the idea of being able to just tune in and watch Aleksi solo shred while I'm doing house work or something. I think online circle shred could be a completely different thing and would require really different setup.

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Re: Muffinman

Post by F[uns]tylin' Eclectic » 14 Feb 2014 23:38

Yeah Erik, I said it over Facebook, but I'll say it in your blog too.. great session man. It was really cool sitting in on it. I admit, I did miss your blink link because I was multitasking, but I saw both Double Diving tricks :) So sick. I really hope we can get sounds working soon. It would be so much easier to just talk to the person shredding, instead of typing back and forth, too.

I'm planning one soon. Looking forward to your next one.
Nick Polini

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Re: Muffinman

Post by Muffinman » 16 Feb 2014 00:16

Thanks a lot, Nick! Means a lot :)
Also, this app thing is great!!


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Re: Muffinman

Post by Muffinman » 17 Feb 2014 17:11

Oh my glob.
3 hour livestream session.
I filmed with my GoPro at the same time today, so I should be able to put together something from my highlights. I just wanna keep a log of who came and watched, 'cause that's fun:
-Ivan
-Nick
-Ken
-Rory
-Johnny
-Matthias Lino-Schmidt
-Mathieu G
-Jordan?
-Paul Gressett
-Sergio?


And I feel like I'm missing a couple more.
Hit some good things, but got suuuper drained in that last 30-60 minutes.
Here's my recap from Facebook: "Thanks for watching again, guys! Some highlights: blaze > rev reactor > ripwalk [repeat]; blazing clipper > stepping whip [repeat]; blur > tapping whip > blur > atomic whip > blur > tapping whip > blur...; and other things I don't remember"
Last edited by Muffinman on 17 Feb 2014 17:15, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Muffinman

Post by C-Fan » 17 Feb 2014 17:13

Digging the live sessions. Thanks for doing them.

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Re: Muffinman

Post by isirc10 » 17 Feb 2014 23:30

Add Benjamin B. to the list of people present at your session (another PSU member)
I am really enjoying the live sessions, might try to make it happen at PSU if we can find reliable wifi near our shred spot. Keep it up - your sessions replace my mindless watching of sportscenter or other stuff on ESPN3 while I do homework/edit footage/make footbags. Super cool to interact with players from other places.
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Re: Muffinman

Post by Muffinman » 22 Feb 2014 15:07

New trick today, like second try: high plains drifter :) only one side, but it didnt seem super hard. Thanks to Nick for the request and tip in my last livestream.

Was a pretty low key session for me otherwise. Just Adam and Cassy and we didnt start until like an hour after i arrived, which was kind of a pain. Still really fun. Adam was on as usual, but Cassy and I were a bit under the weather and playing lightly. Oh yeah BSOSed whirling same mirage and also dropped the last blaze in BSOSing whirling same mirage and blaze same run. Shouldnt be hard to do, but maybe never done same mirage before. Oh also BSOSed far legover first try too.


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