Andy Linder's approach to freestyle training helped!

There is a lot to learn from the great players who preceded us in the sport of Footbag. I was lucky to have seen Andy Linder's performances during the early days of my Footbag development, they inspired me to get better, and to strive for the kind of precision that I knew was possible because he had achieved it.  After traveling to many tournaments together, we teamed up to win the Team Footbag Freestyle in 1991 World Championships, and reflecting on the training we committed to is how I came to this particular conclusion...

In a word, it's methodical. 
I'm talking about the way he approaches practicing a performance, and how helpful I am finding it to be. Once we had our routine mapped out, we not only did complete run thrus, but broke it down into segments. We would go through each segment perfectly 3 times in a row before moving to the next segment. If we got 2 good runs and dropped on 3rd, we start the count over. 

I spent an hour on two separate days getting thru my funtastik routine in this fashion. Today, I had a chance to run thru this performance and I averaged 2.5 drops in 5 attempts. I wasn't averaging quite that high before this training goal, so I think this triggered an improvement in my game. 


Now that Funtastik is over, my performances were both mired with 3 drops in different places.  You can review my performances at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkUtDTZIGQo  
I did like how it turned out overall, and it is still nice to be in the top group of shredders, able to compete with people literally less than half my age!  I'm 43-3/4, I've been skooling hard every day for 1362 days in a row, plus about 24 years before that!


Thank you Andy Linder for sharing your training techniques with me, I'm glad I can still use them to better my game!


Shred notes 9/12/10:
-I've been on vacation at New Jersey's Six Flags Great Adventures, Harrisburg's last running of the Funtastik Summer Classic, the US Open Tennis Championships and got to shred in Times Square NY!  Today I refined another type of seamless juggle that I'll videotape and post soon.  It is juggle integrated with fairy-mirage and seamless back into juggle.  Also video to come of our Times Square shred!