What's so appealing about Shred 30?

crazylegs32 · Post by **crazylegs32** » 24 Mar 2006 19:33

Shred 30 originated at '99 worlds, Ryan mulroney ran it and the rules were that you couldnt plan out the moves it was to be spontaneus. It was supposed to be the opposite of routines but it has become a routine in itself.

Jorden · Post by **Jorden** » 24 Mar 2006 23:00

Yeah, Shred 30 has become 'Do a 30 (+/-) contact add-hunting shuffle run that you've practiced'.

SlashC · Post by **SlashC** » 24 Mar 2006 23:31

Jorden wrote:Yeah, Shred 30 has become 'Do a 30 (+/-) contact add-hunting shuffle run that you've practiced'.

That's the only shred30 I've ever known.

Outsider · Post by **Outsider** » 25 Mar 2006 03:04

Shred 30 originated at '99 worlds, Ryan mulroney ran it and the rules were that you couldnt plan out the moves it was to be spontaneus. It was supposed to be the opposite of routines but it has become a routine in itself.

Its funny the way you phrased that whole thing. I don't know exactly who's idea it was that it was supposed to be spontaneous, but that was one of the principles behind the shred contest at the first Colorado Shred Symposium (except that it wasn't Shred:30 at World '99 yet or even CSS 2000 less than a year later, it was Shred:45 still, remember?). None-the-less I didn't especially care for that little (sometimes) unwritten rule of Shred, and I liked to consider The Regulator himself as providing me with justification for ignoring that ideal. I think I saw him win three of the biggest shred contests between spring '99 and the CSS in Feb. 2000, and his shred seemed very similar each time. It may not have been exactly the same, but it pretty much always included the same familiar combos (like Blur > Magellan > Parkwalk > Sidewalk, for example) each time.

I got to figuring that even if a shred wasn't pre-planned, for most competitors it would pretty much usually wind up consisting of a bunch of that player's most familiar combos, the stuff they were most likely to throw on a regular basis in circle shred or when they were skooling or both, anyway. At least, the top finishers in most contests were likely to be the ones who stuck to stuff that they were very good at already. I mean, really, who goes out and tries hitting tricks in their Shred:30s that they've never ever done before that moment? Personally, for me its rare that I'd even do a combo of tricks that I've never ever done before that moment, without having thought about what new combo I'd try first, and I sure haven't ever thought to myself "hmm, what new trick or combo that I've never ever tried to do before should I throw in my Shred:30 today." Oh, I've done some new combos in Shred:30 on an occasion or two, but I had at least thought of the combo an hour or more in advance and tried it out a few times while warming up, so that can't be said to really be spontaneous at all when I have done that.

To answer the question, though...

One of several things that I like about the whole Shred:30 competition format IS the chance to preplan my entire 30 seconds. It kind of strikes me as being like a puzzle. I have some puzzle pieces to play with (my vocabulary of tricks that I feel that I can depend on under pressure) and I'll spend hours playing with those puzzle pieces in my head, moving them around, arranging and re-arranging in my imagination. I have sometimes learned new tricks just in order to make a better scoring or otherwise more satisfying arrangement of the puzzle. I don't feel at all funny about using my tendancy to obsessively pre-plan shred:30s to draw inspiration for what new tricks I should learn. I've improved at several different moves that I decided I wanted to learn for the sake of scoring higher in shred contest, that I might not have skooled as hard if not for where I saw those moves fitting into my shred strategy.

And speaking of Strategy, I can't think of any other sport off the top of my head where strategy doesn't play some important role in the sport, some game where its unsportsmanlike or otherwise improper to strategize your approach to the game, to think about how you intend to get your best possible results in competition. I think about my shred, and I feel that I have a few "strategies" that I try to employ, strategies that I've discovered from competing or just training that I believe help me to do well in Shred:30 contests. Why should we, in this sport, have to say "Strategy? My stategy to do well in this particular contest is to totally wing it, make it all up as I go and just hope that I do things that score well," ? I mean, if thats how you want to do it, be my guest. I prefer the game when I don't do very badly, and to avoid doing very badly I think about what I can do to do well.

Besides, even when I completely pre-plan a shred, I've almost never actually managed to stick perfectly to a plan anyway. It always winds up being "spontaneous" to a greater or lesser degree. And sometimes, when I actually have deliberately not thought too much about what I'm going to try to do in a shred (I think I deliberately decide to go around that blind corner about 20% of the time, usually because I haven't actually practiced a pre-planned shred in the previous couple months anyway, and spontaneously shredding seems to make me smoother and more consistent when I am not thinking much about what to do next, even though I tend to repeat more BOPs this way, and so I consider it one of my various "strategies" [ "I've got nothing rehearsed, so I might as well just let it flow and I'll try to make up for less variety or difficulty with a decrease in the likelihood of drops, I hope" is how I might label that particular strategy, which sometimes works well for me],) I feel that I tend to do mostly alot of the same old stuff that I'd have decided to do in the shred anyway had I actually pre-planned and rehearsed it. Therefore I've never felt that the whole "spontaneous shred" rule mattered much. It doesn't really seem to change what you'd see in shred all that radically. I'd say that even if it were applied, the "shred spontaneously rule," it would probably change the appearance and outcome of the contest only marginally.

Anyway, pre-planning shred is one of the ways I most like to mentally play footbag when I'm bored and want to let my thoughts wander away to somewhere else, like when I'm sitting through a very boring meeting at work with the whole department and everything they're talking about actually has very little to do with me, so I'll deliberately do my shred in my head a few times. Its actually another strategy of mine, though its not really one of my favorites: mental practice. The problem is that I'm not really sure I believe it. I kind of have a knee-jerk skepticism of anything I've ever heard from psychologists that might seem to apply directly to me. I think I first formally heard of mental practicing for the sake of improving your physical performance at a sport in a sports psychology class. What the hell was I even doing in such a class considering how I feel about psychology? Skip it, that story is fairly long and dull. Anyway, the professors in that field believe in mental practice, but then again, so did Paul Mestes. He TOTALLY MASTERED osis very quickly, it seemed to me, and he told me that he would, in his imagination, practice doing osis back to back hundreds of times consecutively while he spent hours driving a delivery truck in the middle of the night between Denver at Colorado Springs. I have my skepticism, and maybe for some people consecutive osis over and over is too easy to consider it a good test of mental practice, but one of my best results in a shred contest could be partly attributed to it, maybe. It was one of those times when I hadn't really practiced my pre-planned shred much in the months prior to. I had been playing regularly, though, and I had been doing alot of mental practice of my shred:30 in those months (lots of boring meeting at work back then, and I wasn't yet even thinking about what I was doing as "practice", just as a way to avoiding falling asleep or dying of boredom, both of which might have gotten me in trouble at work), and then, bam, I have this great 30 seconds, and it seemed afterwards like maybe all the time spent envisioning a few similar shred:30 plans over and over in my head on a regular basis just might have been helping me after all. Then again, I only got about six tricks into my plan before I lost control a bit, bailed, and then sort of winged it and shredded spontaneously. Like I said before, even when I was winging it and not following a plan, I still basically did alot of the same combos that would have been part of my plan anyway. I don't know if any of that proves anything at all or not. Whatever.

Well, I guess I've gone and revealed a couple of my strategies for shred:30, but I still want to beat all you guys, so I think I'll just keep the rest to myself for now. Out.

King Monkey · Post by **King Monkey** » 25 Mar 2006 07:38

With Shred30 rules as they are (and i have no objection to how the event is run or scored) then you would be silly not to plan your shred, if you have any intention of winning. I see it as totally smart to plan your shred30 as best as you can and execute it that way. Those are the rules, and if you want to win then you play to them that way.

BalinorNZ · Post by **BalinorNZ** » 29 Mar 2006 18:21

I think shred30 is a great event, even though it is pretty predictable what you will see in it.

I mean, basicly, if you have a quick style, and you are very consistant at a variety of sets (pixie,fairy,atomic,stepping,spinning) and butterfly, whirl and double down, then you can do well in shred30.

I think the whole 'ducking and spinning players are disadvantaged' is a bit exageraged, I think ducking perhaps is a fair amount slower than shuffel, but even Vasek is his world record shred30 used both spinning butterflies.

Toe moves may be faster than clipper moves, but they take more energy and get less adds than clipper moves, so it events out quite a bit. Obviously not doing all your sets to butterfly in shred30 is silly and not using pdx whirls is silly (I have recently learned whirls and butterflies after my 2 year aversion to the concepts partially because of shred30).

I think eggbeaters and dlos have just as much disadvantage in shred30 as ducks and dives because it takes so much more energy to get adds out of dlo/eggbeater moves than butterfly/whirl moves (and you can argue that this is a stamina issue, but a player who does butterfly/whirls over dlo/eggs will always have more energy left for other big moves in his shred).

As some people have said, Dylan fry at the Australian 2006 nationals blew everyone else out of the water, not because he has a fast style (he doesn't) not because he is short (he's flippin massive) and not because he didn't do ducks (he had a ducking and a spinning section), but because he had put in the hard yards and practiced his shred30 to maximise his uniques and minamize drops. He scored around 220 I think and that is a world class score.

So lets not be labeling height and ducking/spinning for bad shred30 scores, it's far more about practice and strategy than it is about body shape and style, atleast at this stage, maybe one day in the future the tables will turn.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 06 Apr 2006 01:09

Dylan's score may have been lower - about 185 - I'm told although don't have the time to work it out.

I agree with some of what Nic said although I have never put pdx whirl in my shred 30s (although have had blurry whirl and ps whirl so I guess that could count).

I definitely agree that shred 30s not all about shuffle. When you look at all the top shred 30s from the last 4 years at worlds all of them had some variety beyond shuffle - both spinning and ducking. Yes they were predominately shuffle but shuffle only has a small amount of variety and when you're looking for consistant moves and adds as well as uniques I think most players have to go beyond shuffle. Definitely players with fast styles have an advantage in shred 30 - just like runners with fast styles have an advantage in running races.

Uranos · Post by **Uranos** » 17 Apr 2006 02:04

Jeremy, if Dylan's score was actually 185 then thats a serious shock to me. I mean, because 2nd place was in the 130's it didn't matter that much but what if 2nd was about 190? Then Dylan might have still won! I think to come up with a score of almost 40 points wrong is pretty outrageous, but as i said it didn't really matter that much in this years situation

Ill get onto watching his shred 30 again soon.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 17 Apr 2006 22:03

I'm only going on what I was told about Dylan's shred 30 score. I haven't reworked it out for myself - I think it would be fairly accurate to say that if the results were closer for first position we would have made sure they were correct - as we did for the second 3 places. There didn't seem to be any need to check over Dylan's score when it was so clearly the winner - even if we did indeed make a mistake it was still over 50 points better than anybody else - which was more than a third of anybody elses score. Our priority was on working out the results as quickly as possible so that people didn't have to wait around for a 3 hours for results. Obviously accuracy was also important but only within reason.

Tsiangkun · Post by **Tsiangkun** » 19 Apr 2006 13:29

Shred 30 is a sport. There are rules, and players score points by putting out tricks that play to the rules. There are no judges, the results are directly linked to what was hit with no subjective BS.

Freestyle 2min is a competition. Ultimately, the outcome is in the hands of judges.

No matter how good you get, you can not win a freestyle 2 minute contest if the judges want you to loose.

No matter how hated you may be, you can win shred 30 because of what tricks you hit. No judge can take that away from you. You can go to the video tape and prove you won a shred contest.

That's what makes shred 30 so appealing. If nothing else, you have a chance to win, if you have the skills to win. It's a real honest sport, not dependant on some subjective, biased, unqualified judge.