Everyone has their own favorite surface for shredding freestyle Footbag, and mine has always been white concrete. My second favorite surface is the standard tennis courts. However, due to the unfortunate demise of the lightweight poly-sole Adidas Rod Laver in 2012 our poly-soled lavers are now unavailable and the pairs that we are lucky enough to possess have become prized possessions! White concrete is ideally grippy so initiating a spin and controlling my spin is more predictable and I feel I perform best on this type if surface.
The problem with concrete is that it eats Rod Laver shoes alive! The very grippy-ness it provides also rips away at the poly soles, eventually wearing them through. It has happened to every pair I've ever had, and it is the primary reason why any of my Lavers are forced into retirement.
Another reason concrete is now a bad surface for me is that recently I've had two instances where I was rotating my upper body and my support leg normally rotates with me to get in position for the catch and the sole was so attached to the grippy concrete that I tweaked my knee by over rotating, and I've been babying it ever since, even though the pain has gone away.
I'm going to take a cue from the Hip Hop Dancers who also treasure the poly-soled Adidas Rod Laver shoes, and I'm going to switch to smooth surfaces whenever possible. Those guys probably don't have the wear-and-tear problem on the soles because they require smooth surfaces to dance on, due to the way they spin by pivoting on an amazingly wide array of body parts. The dancers have found a way to deal with the slipperiness of smooth flooring, and I'll need to make my peace with it too.
But what surfaces are best? Polished wood gymnasium floors? The wood floor in my living room? Tile or marble? The problem with shiny and smooth surfaces when dust is present. Even the best wood floors need regular clearing of dust to stay grippy.
One thing the european Footbag players and dancers have been doing for some time, is to roll out a thin floor over the concrete which modifies whatever surface they are on, into an ideal one. I've tried athletic flooring in the past and my conclusion was that the plastic ones that used tongue and groove were too bulky to transport and the rubber ones sucked the energy from my legs and reduced my leaping ability. I never before saw the wisdom of thin supplemental flooring, but I'm all over it now! I will find the perfect surface that is a single lightweight portable piece, that is the right grippy-ness for freestyle Footbag and I will report back with my results. For now I'm trying to play on wood floors with a damp rag nearby to step on and remove dust from my shoes. Save our soles!
As for my daily shred update... Today is 2806 days in a row. I'm still loving every minute of it! Looking forward to tomorrow's jam session already and I haven't even gotten to werk yet. I've been kayaking a lot lately, but I'm paying the price in the form of back pain. First, lower and now upper. But the pain did not slow me down a bit. Thanks for all your support!
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