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.
The fall weather inspired me to lower my outdoor temperature threshold to 45f degrees. That is assuming low wind and lots of sun. Even with the lower threshold, the temperatures are frequently forcing me indoors. The problem is that my normal double-secret shred site is occupied by a bunch of burly construction workers building-out a new store in the mall. Tons of dust and not a friendly space. Since my workplace switched to a later schedule, I had to find a way to make all this work, and continue to shred everyday. Here is a recent video called PhobicFly, an innovative and tiny flier... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMXZc3riAsk&sns=em (you may have to copy and paste that link in a browser, as I can't seem to figure out how to make it into a link)
I now get up at 4am, and by 5am I am shredding. The problem with early shreds are that A) they take place in my living room so there can be no filming, B) my living room is small so my string length is shortened and C) shredding early in the morning makes it more difficult to shred later in the evening, when most people play. So in addition to doing an hour and a half every morning, which is a 50% increase in time from my 'recess' shreds at skool, I now do a light jam session when possible at recess during the early afternoon, where I can film. On days where I do a double shred session, it will be over 2 hours of jam time those days, and helps me to stay used to kicking later in the day, so when people come to town I can jam in the evenings with them.
Whatever you do, play everyday!
See ya! Scott.
Shred notes: I've been innovating while moving indoors and early. I've hit Spinning Ducking X-Body Pincher many times. Also, Phobic Vortex on film and publishing today. And Nuclear Paradox Drifter and Nuclear DaDa. Still playing everyday, 2148 days in a row today.
I was skooling my Quantums during a recent session. I found a great tutorial by Matt Cross on youtube and was able to really get an understanding of it. But after two days of intense skool, I ended up tweaking my knee in a weird way. Today I noticed that when I turn into a spin with my right leg as the plant, I felt a shooting pain from the knee.
In order to still complete my 1773rd day in a row of shredding, I needed to divert the focus of the playtime to something that wasn't painful, and wouldn't jeopardize my knee in the long term. I decided to 'close the door' on spinning for a day. Which actually turned out to be a little more of a challenge than was apparent at the moment. If you've seen my videos, spinning is a big part of my game.
As it turns out, when I close the door to one thing, it often opens the door to another. It was a bigger challenge than I thought to 'not' spin in my play-time. For a while, I flailed miserably. I would do a big string of tricks without spinning, then inevitably, I would spin. And I would feel a slight pain in my right knee. After a while I got frustrated with all the spinning just happening, seemingly on its own, certainly without my conscious intent. So I put the clamps on. Every time a spin almost happened, I caught the footbag. It was creating shorter strings, but forced me to NOT spin.
And so it went. I worked on some specific mini-strings. Blur to LegBeater (atomic butterfly), and I eventually hit two continuous cycles on both sides, but not in the same string. I did a lot of blurry whirl and paradox whirl and tomahawk sequences. I hit Tomahawk to Blurry Whirl on both sides too. The biggest thing I hit was Nuclear paradox reverse drifter on my left side (nuclear implies 'reverse drifter' to the initiated).
All in all, I was able to pull off a high-quality training session, hit some long-lost tricks. I really sharpened my blades on LegBeater - Blur sequence on both sides and that felt great. As usual, I had a blast playing today, as I do every day.
I have always struggled with the 'freestyle footbag as street performance' aspect of the game. I love playing in front of crowds, it somehow improves my string length, and it is a great experience to even be able to draw a crowd. But when people say, "You should put out a hat...!" I never had a great response until now.
I'm an Athlete first, and a Street performer second! So in that sense I do not rely on income from footbag endeavors, and when I play in front of crowds, I usually play in a casual circle. So looking in from the outside, we are a group of people who each take successive turns and we always pass in the same direction. If you watch carefully, we give each other props for good strings, and there is a fairness to it all, in that we each get equal opportunity to do our best tricks. We play like athletes. When we play in public, we organically draw crowds, people watch us play, but we are playing because we are all athletes trying to improve ourselves, not because we are asking for money. There is an element of 'showing off', but from my personal standpoint, I am really just trying to put together long strings of guiltless tricks while jamming to the music. I'm trying to better my overall game, while maybe getting some of the best of it on video. It's always a great feeling when people give us money when we are not asking for it, they can see the value of passive entertainment.
I've seen my share of effective street performers, and they all have a process. They rile up a crowd. They build up the excitement by engaging passersby to stay for a few minutes for a big performance. With street dancers, jugglers, gymnasts and musicians, they all draw a crowd and build up suspense for an upcoming show. Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd. The whole point of getting people riled up is to get them to open up their wallets and give you money after your performance. The Street Performers have a 'schtick', a short performance, planned which all builds up to a climactic ending and then they ask for money. The street performers day is cyclical because they repeat this process for the next group of passersby. They are organized around the goal of raising money.
I have great respect for Jugglers, Breakers and Gymnasts who can pull off these kind of shows. They not only have the athletic talent it takes to pull off dynamic tricks, but the performance awareness to monetize on it. I really wish I had 1/10th the natural performance ability of someone like Peter Irish or Tim Kelly. They can pull off the hard tricks, with the music and smile looking good the whole time.
So when you see me shredding with my friends next time, please join our circle or watch us try our best tricks, but don't expect too much of an organized show, we're purely shredding for the enjoyment of it! Not to mention that if we put a hat out, the police in Chicago would either give us a hella-expensive violation or they would kick us out, and we don't want either of those!
I'm an Athlete first, and a Street performer second!
Best regards,
-Enlightener
Shred Notes: 7/31/11 - 1684 Days in a row shredding today. Been skoolin' tons of juggles, seamless in and out. osis, spinning osis and twirls into Stepping tricks like blurs, blizzards, blurry whirls and stepping same osis. Still playing at Mammoth Springs Training Center in Oak Brook, IL mostly. Vacation coming up. Keep playing!
A Concept is something that applies to many possible tricks, making them unique. Symposium, Paradox, Atomic and Nuclear are all Concepts. The Stimpy Concept applies when the following conditions are met... When you Leap, Dex, Land AND Catch the footbag with the same foot. So far I have hit 4 tricks that are Stimpy. They are in the video below. Mostly variations on Double Leg Over.
Enjoy!
-Enlightener
Shred Notes: Have had a burst of creativity lately. Hit what I think is Spinning Symposium Swiveling Osis? I have near-hits on film. Other strange tricks like: Nuclear inspinning mirage/torque, I have scratched the back of my leg up pretty good trying this one. Took today off. Gotta look at my camera and see if any of this stuff is worth publishing. cant wait until spring weather, getting outdoors and in the sun and really start back into long strings. Hallway shredding on polished concrete is getting old.
I suppose this is pretty basic stuff, but I wanted to make a general rule of toe about this one.
HIGH IMPACT TRICKS ARE ALWAYS HIGH ENERGY TRICKS, but not necessarily the other way around.
When I think about high impact tricks, I go right to Symposium tricks. These tricks are probably the classic example of high impact, just about every one of them, except the little ones. They require one leg to be both the dexterity leg and the landing leg. And honestly, I am still reprogramming my brain to look at atomic and nuclear tricks as medium impact tricks. Why is this important? When I am training daily, I don't want to do 100% high impact tricks because of, well, the impact factor. I know better than that. I want to do plenty of high energy tricks to get the most out of my workouts, and I know that while high energy is a pre-requisite for high impact tricks, I need to keep a balance that keeps me at a high level of mastery of my high impact tricks, while still advancing on the many other high energy tricks.
I have started to notice that when I get to my frontside strings during warmup, that it jumpstarts my warmup period and gets me super warm, super fast. Also, all this extra training of my frontside tricks has been providing the high energy usually associated with Dexterity tricks, and giving me a better cardio workout.
High energy tricks are not necessarily high impact, and the important thing to remember is to differentiate the tricks appropriately in your minds accounting of the tricks. For example, in the context of Atomic tricks, it looks high impact, but is really high energy.
See ya!
-enlightener
Some High Impact examples:
Shred notes: First half of Feb. 2011... I'm at 1528 days in a row today. Already shredded, but plan a 2nd session later. I have hit Gyro Zulu Butterfly on both sides on film, and Gyro Zulu Whirl on both sides but try as I might, I haven't hit it on film yet. I have gotten way more comfortable with Symposium (no plant) Blurry Torques. Also Shooting DaDa's and Symposium Blurry Drifters. Lots of film to go through. I have been trying to film in vertical frame because it shows the whole body in the frame from closer up, yet I still struggle with framing and lighting. It is weird, but when I stand in front of the camera when it is on its side, I have a harder time predicting the right place to stand. The double secret location hallway has fluorescent lighting and I don't have the cash for the proper portable lighting system. The Kodak ZX1 does great in good light, so I really should focus on getting some good lights to offset the fluorescents and see if that works.
Whatever your favorite sports are, it is important to exercise every day. There is a public awareness of the childhood obesity epidemic in America. We are all responsible for our own health, yet so many are eating unhealthy diets with sedentary habits like TV and video games.
The CDC says: "Childhood Obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years." They go on to say that Obese youth are more likely to have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, at greater risk to bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, low self esteem and as adults are more at risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, several types of cancer and osteoarthritis. They conclude with, "Healthy lifestyle habits, including healthy eating and physical activity can lower the risk of becoming obese and developing related diseases."
Maybe playing 'everyday' is overkill, but it has worked for me. Please watch and comment on my new video, "No Excuses" on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/footbagenlightener#p/u/1/glzd8shVkJo. It is about my past 4 years (1500 days) of playing footbag freestyle every day in an effort to improve my skills in my 40's, which turns out to be a pretty healthy habit.
Thanks for all your support so far, the movie has had great reviews. Please share the link on you facebook page if you like it.
-enlightener
Shred notes: 2/4/2011
This week I worked on longer strings, alternating with frontside moves. Then on strings that contain frontside midstring. Also tons of Atomic stuff. Gotta get atom smasher to the point where I don't 'rake' it out, but freeze it in a toe delay which will make it easier to get to legbeater, which is necessary for my long term goal of rubberman. I think I hit 'Inspinning Swivel' yesterday... haven't seen the tape yet. I love this sport! Never a dull session.
"Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical."
-Attributed to Yogi Berra
I have written about this before, but I feel the need to repeat it from my experience today. We all know that the mental game is important. Personally, I need to periodically step back from my day-to-day routine and look at my game from the perspective of 'what might be', as opposed to 'what I believe I'm capable of.'
Today I was challenged by my facebook friends to work on Rubberman, along with some strings I would not have probably thought to attempt on my own. All these tricks are based on Atomic sets, which have always been challenging for me, even though I have spent the past several years actively working on them. So in my mind, I have built up an aura of difficulty in my mind around the notion of Atomic tricks. I have physically worked them to the point that I can hit them 70% of the time, but I was finding myself only working them once a week due to my 'perception' that they were high impact. I was recently skooling Paradox Symp Whirls (rainbows) and caused a compression related impact pain in my right lower back. In my mind, the Atomic tricks were as high-impact as the PSWhirls. In retrospect, after careful physical analysis, I have to say that while Atomic tricks are more taxing on the hamstrings and hip related dexterity, that the impact is minimal because the set foot touches down almost immediately.
Now that I have reset my perception of Atomic tricks, I have allowed myself to obsess on them. I can't stop doing them. I'm hitting Leg Beaters, EggPlant, and Atom Smashers. I'm hitting Atomic tricks from all kinds of sets, and I'm hitting all kinds of tricks out of Leg Beaters now, thanks to my facebook friends challenging me. It has caused some stress on other parts of my legs, but as long as I don't over do it, I should be okay. I'll always rely on my cross body tricks to some extent, but it is nice to escape that. I want to be able to throw atomic tricks in mid string confidently and from unexpected places.
Shred notes: 1/23/2011
I also skooled juggles, particularly Seamless-Legbeaters-out of juggles. I'll keep skooling it and I'll publish a juggling video again soon. Imagine juggle-juggle-juggle-legbeater-blur-juggle-juggle-juggle-legbeater-blur. Working on that kind of stuff. Seamless-in juggle, seamless-out juggle.
This is the best tip ever. Thanks to Steve Goldberg, Brat, the greatest benefactor to the sport of footbag.
This has come full circle. I started by skooling the basics. As I got better, I learned the "Economy of Motion" and got better at trimming time off of movement by finding and training more efficient paths. Spending less effort to get more done. Particularly when ending a trick, I have learned over time to catch the footbag with the minimum downward motion possible, which is one of many 'economy of motions.' To make matters worse, I spent about week this summer focusing on 'rooted' tricks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmRXODg6Bzg which are distinguished because the catching foot is the plant.
This reduction of downward motion in catching the footbag in order to complete my most difficult tricks is causing my form to suffer when doing the most basic versions of the tricks. For instance, it is generally more efficient to complete a Paradox Torque by expending as little effort as possible on the catch, and doing it at the last moment. On the other hand, the trick is more 'solid' when I am able to utilize 'economy of motion' during the dexterity part of the trick and spend more time on the 'catching' part of the trick.
One of the side effects of spending years of training to reduce the distance needed to catch a footbag at the end of advanced tricks, is when you do the basic component, it looks rushed and unpolished.
As a part of my daily training (1493 in a row today), I warm up using my 'basic' staple tricks. For instance I don't want to spend too much time training tricks I have mastered, I use those to warm up with. I do 10 osis, 10 infinity's, 10 ripwalks, I do 10 reps of my whirl/osis combo, ripwalks, blurs/blizzards and paradox whirls. I am getting into the zone at this time and generally just gaining the proper focus I need for the rest of my jam session. Thanks to this new tip, I am really gaining better basic form.
In the past few weeks focusing on the depth of my clipper catches and I can really feel a difference in my control and general ability to maintain long strings. I am really happy that a friend like Steve took the time to mention this very basic observation to me at the New Years Jam this past December. I have been working on it every day since then and am really feeling the difference!
Shred Notes: Jan 2011
In addition to working the solidness of my clipper tricks, I have spent a lot of time working on front side tricks. I have particularly been recategorizing Atomic tricks into low-impact. I have always thought of Atomic tricks as high-impact, but have recently discovered that they really aren't. I hit both Atom Smashers in a single string, which was a big barrier for me, but might seem basic for you. I also realized that I have been hitting LegBeaters on both sides (I've been calling them atomic butterflies), and then was challenged by Tuukka to do blur, LegBeater, Blurry Whirl, Blur, LegBeater Blurry whirl and hit all those components with an extra spinning butterfly before the 2nd blur. Very happy.
I learn little things about my game just about every day. You might think that doing something every day might get boring, but it never does because I am always achieving little goals, stumbling upon new (new to me, and sometimes actually new) tricks and generally keeping me interested. Playing freestyle footbag everyday gives me a clear baseline on the condition of my body, and allows me to push 'initiatives' like increasing the amount of frontside tricks that I perform.
During the week of Xmas I found my daily shreds of footbag freestyle to be a great diversion from the hectic pace at my place of work. Peace of mind. Really. I also developed a little showcase trick into a legitimate set... Fairy X-body sole (same) is now being worked into being a set from just about any toe, and it flows like an osis but looks crazzzzzzy! I have been skooling the hell out of X-Body Rake moves, and after watching Evan Gatesman, I realized that indeed Rakes don't 'need' to end in a scooping toe dex, they can end more directly underneath the balance center, and do dex tricks out of them. Thanks Evan for that insight. I suppose I 'knew' that already, but seeing someone do it effectively and mid-string even... very nice. Now I can do it too.
I got used to it. I just came to the realization that I am thankful for the great lighting I usually have available to me for shredding. I pretty much don't worry about it. Ever. Well that's not true, it factors into my 'perception' of what is possible, so in a sense my perceptions are limiting me here.
Today, Valeria fell asleep on the couch right next to my living room shred zone, so I had to keep the lights low, and I tweaked my workout towards the quieter tricks today. Lots of juggling and unusual surfaces and short fun stuff. After about 10 minutes, the low light scenario didn't factor into my decisions at all. I got through my warm-ups, and I immediately ran into a personal innovation... Fairy same blender. Probably because yesterday I obsessed on double dyno style moves. So I pulled a fairy set and thought, why not go for a whirl or a blender with the same leg as the fairy dex, of which I hit both on both sides, within minutes of stumbling upon it.. What is the name of Fairy same-leg same-side Blender? And Fairy same-leg same-side Whirl? I'll film them tomorrow. I've hit Fairy-Phobic-(other leg) Blender and posted it to youtube recently, but this easier stuff is new to me.
I also skooled a pattern that is juggle-juggle-juggle, seamless (out) Fairy DLO, to seamless (in) pixie DLO, juggle-juggle-juggle, repeat... I'll also film this tomorrow.
The moral of this story? "Beware of perceptions, particularly those that limit belief. Possibility is still unlimited, it is my mind that stops me most of the time."
No doubt that 1999 was a great year for me! My son was 1 year old, the economy was great and I was literally peaking in career, my footbag 'game', and my life in general.
I have prepared a YouTube video that contains the performances of the top 4 finishers of the 1999 World Footbag Championships Singles Freestyle competition. With great respect for all my competitors in this video (Ryan Mulroney, Rick Reese and Peter Irish), please enjoy...
I have to credit Ryan Mulroney for lighting a fire under my ass and making me want to win the World Title that much more. And I have to thank Rich Abshire for supplying me with the footbag I used to win the title! Sure I have used, and I still currently use ">Freedom Footbags on a daily basis (1396 today), but in 1999 I was using an Abshire footbag!
If there is something to be said about 'frontside' tricks, it is that I don't think I'll ever stop actively training them. I need to push my game more to the front side, and in that effort, I have been training front side tricks about every other day. Yesterday I worked almost exclusively on my flipside fairy sets and feel the burn from it today. Nuclear, atomic, rakes and pendulums are trained almost daily. Can't over do it on the Nukes or atomics because I have gotten minor injuries from too much of that good thing.
On day 1383 in a row shredding, I hit Pogo Symposium Mirage & Fairy Miraging Symposium Mirage, along with some other stuff, but I published those from my iphone.
Shred notes: 10/4/2010
I have been skooling frontside on alternating days, trying to stay focused on long strings rather than 'new trick development' (which tends to be very short attempts at very had tricks). I have been playing to Talking Heads and find their music very motivating. Especially 'And she was.' Many new juggling tricks and still improving Seamless.
Specifically: .. Phobic Gyro Symposium Whirl, Phobic (opp) Blender and Reverse Twirls. I am fluent in many spinning tricks, and in many ducking tricks. And until recently, the only trick I had thought to combine spinning and ducking on, was SDButterfly, as featured on tricks of the trade 2. Tuukka challenged me last week to hit a spinning or a ducking twirl, and it got me to really skool those tricks. This week so far, I have hit Spinning Ducking Whirls on both sides, Spinning Ducking Barfly's (ducking scorpiontail) both sides.
This movie has: Phobic Gyro Symposium Whirl (from 2 angles), Pixie Same Swirl, Reverse Twirl (thin), Phobic (opp) Blender. The movie was filmed with my iphone4, using apps ranging from 'camera' to 'slomo' to 'imovie extras' (for titles) and of course 'imovie'.
Keep inspiring me! It seems to work! Thanks! Scott!
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!
It was Independence Day, July 4th 2010 in our hometown of Oak Park, IL and we had marched, or shredded, in the parade for the past 5 years running. Our sponsor was not in the parade this year so we decided to just jump in as the parade gets going and fill in the gap between two floats. It turned out that we might have been the most energetic and unique entry, and we weren't even officially there. Check it out!
Later that day, we went to DMB at Alpine Valley and shredded in the parking lot twice and again on the deck waiting for Dave to get on stage. Then we relaxed. Total blast of a day.
Shred notes; 7.6.2010
This week was busy, and as I still continue to recover from my self-inflicted toe injury, I have NOT broken my streak. Today was 1293 in a row! We did Taste of Chicago last weekend, this weekend we did Los Lonely Boys and Los Lobos concert at Petrillo Bandshell shreds, then the Parade and DMB. Yesterday at Great America theme park. Shredded at lunch today, mostly routine stuff. Can't play music and record video from iphone4 at the same time, no problem, time to whip out the old shuffle!
On behalf of our youth outreach program, Kick for Health, I would like to announce that we have successfully submitted a grant request for the Pepsi Refresh Project to "Help prevent childhood obesity by giving footbags to people we teach!"
Learn about our proposal by watching this video:
Starting August 1, assuming we get approved, the voting begins. I want to try to use the power of social networking to win this grant, so I am requesting any people with experience in reaching large audiences to please step up and help me with this. They will give me a specific web page to send you to at that time for voting, and you can vote for 10 things or throw 10 votes at a single idea. We will need help... watch for further plea's.
Shred notes: 7/1/10 I had a series of doctor appointments where she first sliced my toe and drained a bad infection. Then it got reinfected. I DID NOT MISS A DAY OF SHREDDING! Like I said, no little hangnail is going to stop this streak. I am now on 1289 days in a row. I have made a series of video errors, bad lighting, bad focus. Learning experiences. Gonna get footage today that is good quality and compare HD to 320p.
Hangnails are my worst fear. Every time I cut my toenails I am conscious of the possibility of a painful hangnail, and this one has been getting worse for 10 days now. Doesn't seem to get better. I refuse to be stopped. I have been skooling every day for 1285 days in a row, and I won't be stopped by a freaking hangnail. An injury without honor. I could see that if I got injured by playing footbag freestyle, that there would be some solace in knowing that my own obsession with the sport is the reason for breaking a streak. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to go to a doctor. I hate doctors, I'm pretty sure they hate me too. They seem to be a bunch of pill pushers, or knife wielding madpeople with some hidden agenda to save their insurance overlords money so they can get that bonus and go to the Bahamas.
Today I am studying Daryl Genzu Genz, and how he laces his shoe. My solution is to Genzu a pair of Lavers and relieve the pressure that is caused by my shoes pushing up against my big toe every time I land. I still have another 2 hour demo this afternoon at Taste of Chicago where we shred and teach kids about the basics of footbag.
Shred notes: 6/27/2010 Just trying to be productive and play through the pain. Lots of ice on the toe to keep swelling down, lots of neosporine too. Ouch
I have had a videocamera since 1988, thanks to being inspired by Jay Moldenhauer, Greg Nelson, then later Steve Kremer and Josh Casey... also Dennis Jones. I was at the beginning of my footbag career and I saw how Jay was videotaping the finals of events and the sideline shredding as well. They were using it as an effective learning tool and accelerating their footbag game exponentially. It was amazing. I purchased the exact same camera that Jay had, it was a sony hi-8 camera (and I have TONS of footage to convert from the old days, just not enough room to store it, time to do it, or money to buy the thingy that converts it to digital) that served me well for many years. I never get credited with this, but I MADE THE FIRST SHRED VIDEO EVER! I put together the best footage I had of routines and side-shreds and made about fifty copies onto videotapes and I gave them away for free with labels on them that encouraged the recipients to make more copies and give them to their friends. No copyrights, free distribution. I was spreading the word. I still am.
Videotaping has evolved since those days, youtube has made free distribution into a fun pastime. Footbag has gotten more complicated, even faster action and still uses a very small ball that is sometimes hard to see. Here are some tips for making videos of footbag:
1. Get a good camera. HD quality and a wide angle lens is helpful. See comparison of footage between a point and shoot and my new Smartest Phone from a built-in HD video camera (starts with an "i") below, just released into the wild 2 days ago.
2. Pay attention to lighting. When shooting outdoors in direct sunlight, try to keep the sun behind you. It is better to film on a cloudy day than in direct sunlight because the diffused light that the clouds let through is more evenly distributed across your subjects. If you are shooting indoors there can be many shadows depending on your lighting style. In a conference room, the fluorescent lights provide a good diffused light experience, but sometimes causes a kind of harmonic resonance when the frame rate of the camera exactly matches the flashing-cycle rates of the fluorescent lights, plus for reasons of cleanliness, conference rooms tend to have very busy patterns in the carpeting which make it bad for playing and filming. In a garage, you are going to need lights coming from as many angles as possible to reduce the shadowing, but it can get pretty bad if you only have a few lights. If you have a shadowing problem indoors, try to stay with your back to the best light.
3. Learn to stabilize your shots, limit movement if you don't have a self-stabilizing camera or use a tripod.
4. Get the right angle for the right shot. Best is a straight on shot from just below hip level with the sun behind you, or good ambient diffused light indoors. I use a lot of upward angles because I don't have a tripod with me most of the time and I balance the camera on the ground. Angles from above are a nice novelty, but really don't give a good idea of what is going on.
5. Don't shoot from too far away. If you use the optical zoom to 'get closer', be aware it will amplify any movements you make, so if I had to use optical zoom, I would always recommend a tripod.
6. Turn OFF digital zoom, it is useless. Seriously, turn it off! Now!
7. When I am taping, I keep recording until I get something worth keeping, then I stop and restart the recording. This makes reviewing the footage go MUCH faster because rather than reviewing every second of footage, I go to the end of each clip and trim away everything before it to save space and get rid of unusable footage ASAP.
8. When using a tripod, I find that the mini ones are easy to carry around, but are hard to set up to get the right angle, only because I have to pretty much lay on the ground to see what my image frame is capturing. So for the mini tripods, I prefer to set them up on a pedestal to make it easy to check the frame field. Ideally, a medium size tripod puts the camera at the right height to get a good shot and be easy to set-up. I prefer to set my tripod at about 2 feet high.
9. If you are putting your camera on the ground to film, I suggest a slight upward angle. On my Canon point-and-shoot camera, I use the hand strap under the front of the camera which props it up at the right angle so I don't see a lot of ground in front of my feet. On my new Phone4, I had to rest it in my extra shirt to angle it back, but I could not see through the viewing side, I had to guess at what my camera was capturing, but it turned out to be useable.
10. Get the right distance from the player. All cameras are different. Think about how you are going to use your footage. If you are doing a static tripod shot, the closer you are to the players the less range the players have to move around in, and you risk losing good footage when players drift out of frame. On the other hand, if you put it too far away, you lose the necessary detail and sometimes can't see the footbag because it is so small.
11. Choose a solid backdrop when possible. If you have trees, or random objects in the background, the viewers may not be able to see the footbag as it travels across the foreground. So if you are videotaping, and you have any 'say' in the process of picking a location, try to find something as close to a solid color for your background.
Comparison of video camera footage for your review:
Canon Powershot SD630 (about 4 years old) with 640x480 frame size 24fps:
Video from my new phone camera which is HD 720p at 30fps (this popular camera phone was released on June 24, 2010):
(make sure to click on the HD version at bottom right) It seems that youtube knocks my videos down to half quality. Not sure why.
Footbag Net match - Finals from last weekends Windy City Cup 2010 on old Canon camera:
For videotaping footbag net, you really need two cameras that are timestamped together. I would generally like to keep the camera from moving left to right, so a long shot from either end of the court would be great for most of the match, but use the camera that is along the net line to do close ups of the arial dog fights that are the 'meat' of the matches.
Shred notes: Week of June 25th, 2010
I have had a hangnail for the past week that is killing me. Hurts like hell every time I step down on my right foot, but it hasn't stopped me from shredding every day. It seems to be getting worse, which means that on Monday if it hasn't gotten better, I'll be going to the doctor, which are words rarely uttered from my mouth. Either way, we have a Kick for Health youth outreach today and tomorrow at Taste of Chicago from 4-6 and plenty of time to shred then. Been skooling routines a lot. Jay Claffey and his daughter came by the other day to visit me during my lunch shred, that was awesome too.
