I've been dabbling with cross-body toe delays for a long time. Only recently did I start hitting them consistently, and only after I had all but gave up on them. It was a balance and timing thing.
Now after practicing them even more, which always causes some kind of unusual soreness when I try new trick categories, I have uncovered at least 5 iterations of it, and Zippers keep getting better.
In this recent video, I explored Zippers for the first time and showed Reverse Swirling Zipper and Phairy (fairy) Butterfly Zipper. Since this video, I have hit Blender Zipper, ToeSis (Zipper from op side/behind) and Spinning ToeSis. I am close to Blurry Zipper and Pixie Opp Zipper.
Please watch my new video which summarizes my 2,500 day journey of exercising every day. Specifically, exercising in Footbag Freestyle, a high-impact aerobic sport that requires focus and dexterity, and provides a constantly challenging, constantly unique athletic experience.
None of this would be possible without the constant support and understanding of my wife and son, who give me the time it takes to play everyday, they tolerate me dominating the computer to do the video editing and publish videos, blog and maintain my website: EarlyWorkingRetirement.com, they help me with laundry and they feed me. I could not have maintained this kind of focus over this long of a period of time without their help. THANKS!
Yesterday I filmed a new trick on the roof of Mammoth Springs Footbag Training Center. I filmed simultaneously on an iPhone 5s and a GoPro Hero3 from 90 degree opposing angles.
The new trick is called "Pulsing" and it is a symposium dexing set. It could also be called Up-Rooted Pixie set. I show it here to a DLO and a far osis.
I use side-by-side slow motion comparisons of it. The video also has the Hyper set in it... with several iterations.
I hope to link this closely to a Rooted trick, for instance Rooted Blur directly to Hyper or Pulsing DLO or osis.
This was filmed on day 2474 in a row of playing footbag freestyle (at an extreme level) shred. In my 2nd session of the day.
I have been shredding every day for 2472 days straight, and it feels great! I had access to an iPhone 5s Apple camera for an hour so I shot this video. I hope you agree, when viewed in real time, footbag tricks are difficult to figure out, but at 120 frames per second (120fps), it is an amazing visual.
I have a gopro with a wide angle lens, but I desire having a camera with this capability alongside my phone, in case I get the urge to film.
Certainly World Footbag Championships is the father of all Footbag tournaments, and that means many of my old friends are traveling there too. This post is to summarize our Journey to Montreal.
Starting in Oak Park, IL which is a suburb of Chicago, we began packing on Thursday, the day after my wife's moms funeral. It was a tough week. I am traveling with my wife Valeria, my son Alex and my niece Juliana (both 14) and our dog Harley. We each get a bin and packed it into our station wagon with a car topper that has our camping gear, chairs, xootr, etc...
We got our usual late start and didn't get to the Windsor Canada crossing until midnight. We had to reserve a room in Canada to prove we needed our passports expedited, but it took until 4:00am to find the hotel near Toronto. We slept until 10:30 and had to check out at 11.
Another constant challenge is finding Internet and using it wisely. I rely heavily on iPhone maps, but without a data plan here, we have been successfully zenning our way around. We sat in the hotel parking lot and used their wifi to figure out our next moves.
We found the Toronto lakefront, and went to this new park but $10 parking and mostly not dog friendly we backtracked to the old Toronto lakefront parks and found a $1.50 parking spot. Here are some Toronto pictures:
A drive by picture
Met this kid and his sister, taught them some kicks and gave them a dragonfly Footbag from our sponsor www.footbagshop.com
If you look carefully in the background you can see the spire in that last photo.
The weather looked bad at this point, so camping that night was off. We went to Gananoque CA which is billed as the 'Gateway to 1000 Islands' and found a hotel. We watched a heavy rainstorm come thru and got up the next day to go see 1000 Islands.
We zenned our way to the highway and headed for Montreal. We have a condo rented and we needed to dump all our stuff and get checked in for the tournament. Here is our condo...
Pretty sweet! About $100/night. You see Valeria in the kitchen then the dining room and family room space, a bedroom beyond the TV and a sitting room to the right with Juliana on the barkolounger.
We got checked in at the event site... Saw old friends like Tuan Vu and Lisa Monte-Vu, Kenny and Kendall Shults and family, and many others! It was great!
Valeria made a great pasta dinner in our full kitchen and we felt right at home.
On Monday, we skipped the tournament and went to Six Flags LaRonde and used our season passes to get in free. They even let us use the parking for free!
Julie and Alex at the site where I took 4th in the world in 1996. In the back of LaRonde. After Worlds is over, we are going to 4 more six flags along the east coast. Stay tuned.
Back in 1996, a random jam happened on Isle St. Helene at this very location. Peter Irish, Tuan Vu, Eric Wullfe and I shredded epically here. It is where I did my 2413th jam in a row and my last practice before round 1 at worlds.
So at 12:30 today EST Worlds freestyle begins and at 1:20 my pool goes on. So wish me luck. It's breakfast time here. And that is the story of how we got here!
I need your votes! Each day, starting July 10th thru July 24th you can vote once at http://www.drpepper.com/oneofakind/ and a second time by tweeting my custom hash tag #ScottForTheNextOne to your Twitter account.
I know it will be difficult to remember to vote everyday, so I am putting a calendar event that repeats daily for the next two weeks to remind me.
If you could share the link to my Dr. Pepper video on your Facebook and Twitter, I would greatly appreciate it.
The video was submitted over a month ago, and would not have been possible without the help of my son Alex Davidson, my wife Valeria Davidson and my friend Steve Richardson. It is in the style of the Dr Pepper /1 of a Kind as campaign and tells the story of how Over 1 million Footbag's are sold each year, and how hundreds of thousands of college students move on and never play Footbag again. It also talks about how I am a world champion, how I am over 46 years old, and how I play every day, And that's what makes me one-of-a-kind! When we were filming it, at Rosary College in River Forest, Illinois, As an afterthought, we got shot in front of the doorway at the college. It turned out that this was the best shot of the day. A rather long string, captured with the iPhone in vertical mode, featured prominently in the second half of the video.
I apologize in advance for being annoying this week. I will be making several Facebook posts a day to garner as many votes as possible.
As of This writing, the video is not yet viewable. I hope there will be a share button for Facebook and Twitter, and even LinkedIn. I hope they publish it at 1080p.
Even if you aren't quite as excited about this as I am, I truly appreciate your support in voting and getting the word out to vote!
If I win, the prize is that they will produce a professional quality video along the same lines of the one I made. And they will Eric on television and on the web. I'll get flown to location, and per diem's. But no cash prize this time.
Just making the finals, feels like winning to me! But it sure would be nice to get some great positive exposure for the sport of Footbag, and Footbag Freestyle specifically.
This is Part 2 of my series of articles on "How to create a 2 minute Footbag Freestyle routine."
The Music Map:
A Music Map expresses the chosen song in relation to where the 'sections' of music start based on their relationship to the beginning of the song. This is necessary for designing a routine, as it allows me to break the song into several pieces so I can create sections of the song in my mind. It will also be necessary for training, as I will break the song down into these sections so I can train the different sections separately.
This years song is a compilation of two tracks from the Monsters, Inc. soundtrack which I spliced together using GarageBand on a mac as referenced in the previous article Part 1 - Picking your music.
For the past few days I've been listening to the music and watching the clock. I have broken it into 6 uneven sections, for the purpose of mapping each group of tricks and the transitions between sections.
From this map, I went back into Garageband on my mac and split the song up along these lines. I had to use multiple tracks, lots of splitting tracks and copying and pasting to get it done. But my goal of creating musical sections of my song selection is complete. Specifically, using the time codes and listening, I made 6 separate songs that each have a bit of the 'before' and 'after' of each section so I can also practice the 'bridges' between the sections.
After exporting each song to iTunes and creating some new playlists, I have my song pieces available. The playlists I will ultimately do my training to will include these specifics...
1) A Playlist that has each section in order, with gaps to create a pause. So I can hit pause after I do a section, and hit play when ready to go again. I could also have itunes 'loop' each individual section.
2) A Playlist that has each section in order, but with 1 minute song segments in between, so I can do my 'endurance training' jams with each segment. Those are so tiring.
3) A Playlist with the first half of the song repeating 5 times with 1 minute 'other songs' interspersed. I start it and keep going until done.
4) A playlist with the second half of the song repeating 5 times with 1 minute 'other songs' interspersed. I start it and keep going until done.
5) A playlist with the entire song repeating 5 times with 1 minute 'other songs' interspersed. I start it and keep going until done. Very tiring.
So join me in this journey. My next article will be about my Trick Hit List. These are the tricks that I would like to incorporate into my routine.
Shred notes from this week:
Published some advanced Eclipse combos to youtube. Broke 100 youtube subscribers this week. Had a blast toying with my routine. Today was day 2298 in a row. Doing at least 2 run-thru's of my routine for worlds every day. Looking forward to actual spring temperatures.
In this series of articles, I plan to publicly create my freestyle routine for World Footbag Championships 2013 in Montreal.
Usually, I train in private and come out of nowhere to surprise my competition. This time, I am publicly sharing my progress through this blog, and occasionally through Vimeo.
Today's lesson:
Picking your Music...
I am always keeping my ears open for good music, but because my library is limited and my taste in music is poor, I rarely come across new music that I like. Whatever I choose, I will have to listen to it thousands of times, practice to it hundreds of times and perform to it at least 3 times (assuming I make it to Finals). It has to be near my Beats per Minute speed of about 110bpm, it should not have any lyrics.
One of my favorite performances was the year I emerged victorious against the great Peter "Executioner" Irish. At East Coast Footbag Championships 2003, Here is that performance...
The other day, I heard a commercial for Monsters, Inc on TV and the music spoke to me. I have always liked shredding to swing and jazz music and this is great. I listened to a few songs and I settled on the beginning of one and the end of another. I used Garageband on a Mac to splice them together the way I need them and I included the track here:
The next thing to do is a Music Map... that will be for tomorrow's lesson.
Shred notes: Day 2260 in a row.
Today, I worked through my routine music a few times to get a feel for it. Wow, what a great time I had. It has been a while. This music really moves me. Let me know what you think.
Shredding in the morning is a double edged sword. It is great to get up and get going early. Footbag Freestyle in the morning takes a real commitment to get started, but I am so fresh and ready to go, I always have a great jam. I can also pull off 2 hour workouts in the morning, which was never possible on my lunch hour. When my dog wakes up during my shreds, sometimes I'll walk him, but I'll always add that time back into my shred. So if it takes 15 minutes to walk the dog, then I add 'Bonus Jam Time' to my session to make sure I break the 1 hour mark. Lately, I've been averaging 1.5 hours in the mornings.
The double edged sword comes in at night. Today's footbag freestyle athletes are half my age, and tend to play in the afternoons and evenings. Have you ever met another shredder that practices only in the morning? Maybe... but if they are like me, they find themselves tired at the end of the day, and somewhat unwilling to lace up. The later in the day it is, the more effort it I need to get motivated to get going, and I feel that I am not at 100%.
I am going to say that the later in the day, the lower likelihood that I will be lacing up. This is a direct inverse-proportional relationship. I'd make a chart to illustrate my point, but I'm feeling lazy.
As the weather gets warmer, I'll still play in the AM, and my lunch shreds are my filming sessions. I need to focus on moving my shred times later in the day as World championships approaches. Finals is in the evening, and I plan to be on stage that night. I'll have to make a conscious effort to shred later in the evenings.
So don't cut your workouts short because of life's little interruptions! Add Bonus Jam Time to make it up!
Shred notes: 2/5/2013 - Hit Swivel both sides, and reverse swivel on the strong side today. Never hit them before. Day 2239 in a row today!
I play every day. Today was 2234 in a row. This morning, I was shredding in my living room and I noticed that I was breathing only through my nose when I shred. And once I got a little winded, I asked myself... "Would I be able to maintain longer strings if I were getting more oxygen, by breathing through my mouth rather than my nose?"
I know that one challenge that Josh 'Chizzler' Casey had back when he was shredding was that he would take a deep breath as he started a string, and he would hold it. He wasn't breathing when he was shredding. This made his string lengths shorter, and he had a hard time getting past 10 tricks in a row.
When I am in the zone, I don't have time to think about breathing, all my processing power is being used. When I was trying to discover if I have been breathing properly, it took several strings of drills until I was sure I am breathing when I'm shredding. As it turns out, I breathe fine, but only through my nose. Something happens when I start to shred where my throat closes up, and only the nose can be used. It is natural.
So while trying to stay focused on new tricks like Atomic same Eclipse, which I first did yesterday, and others like Atomic Clipper Seamless juggle which I came across last week... I was trying to focus on breathing through my mouth.
The Verdict:
When I'm shredding, I am perfectly fine sticking with my nose-breathing, it provides plenty of oxygen. When I did long strings and breathed through my mouth, I sometimes almost felt dizzy from, is it possible... too much oxygen? Now that I know I breathe fine, I'll stick with breathing through my nose when I shred. One less thing to think about.
Don't forget to breathe!
The bottom line:
It doesn't matter how you breathe, just be thankful you are breathing!
Please enjoy my Atomic Clipper Seamless Juggle video below:
