Freedom Footbags

The Freedom Footbag’’s Freestyle Footbag Fundamentals Flyer (FFFFFF) has been around for a few years now. This simple one page flyer was an attempt at conveying the fundamental aspects of a very complex sport (which is part art) on one sheet of paper. It was indeed a difficult task, but we did the best we could.

You can also download the full PDF version and print it yourself (Note that the margins are set for professional printing, so you may have to scale it down to print it on your printer). Feel free to distribute this flyer so long as it is unedited, and not for profit, unless you donate your profits to the IFPA. A physical glossy color version of this flyer is now available for purchase for just $1.00 in our shred shop.

In this official blog version of the FFFFFF, we are no longer limited to the constraints of the paper’s edge. Nearly all of the information from the original FFFFFF is replicated here, but it’s not limited to still frame shots! That’s right, for those players that are ready to see some tricks and don’t want to sit around reading a bunch of text, you can skip straight to the Freestyle Section. This section has links to the videos of the tricks that were used to make the still shots on the original Flyer. These videos were edited by Evan Lovely and contain some sweet special effects to help clarify the motions.

This particular blog does not have any pictures or videos of moves. It simply expands on the information that was crammed onto the back quarter-side of the original flyer, delving deeper into the Add System and the Move Components that are integral with Job’s Footbag Notation. Note that the original FFFFFF’s are Free with any purchase from our Shred Shop.

The Footbag ADD System:

In freestyle footbag, each trick is assigned points or ADDs based on the Additional Degree of Difficulty beyond a basic kick. In general, the more ADDs a move is, the more difficult it is. The add system is not the “be all, end all” solution for accessing move difficulty. In fact, it’s far from it. But for now, it’s the best system that the freestyle footbag community has adopted. Conventionally, the “ADD counting” for a move begins once the bag leaves the setting foot.

There are five basic categories of ADDs. The brackets [] indicate the short hand abbreviation for the types of adds that are used in Job’s Footbag Notation:

• Delay/Stall: Catching, rather than kicking the bag [DEL]
• Body: Spinning, flying, ducking, diving, symposium, paradox [BOD]
• Cross-Body: The contact leg is crossed under the support leg [XBD]
• Unusual Surface: Contact not using a toe, inside, outside, knee, or neck[UNS]
• Dexterity: Circling the footbag with your leg [DEX]

The concept of Adds was originally conceived of by Kenny Shults, and “Rippin” Rick Reese. These two players brought fourth many of the fundamental ideas and moves that made freestyle footbag what it is today.

Move Componetns:

Most freestyle tricks can be broken down into five basic components:

Set > Uptime > Apex > Downtime > Catch

The Set and Catch components may be either a Delay/Stall or a kick. Also, a move need not contain all of the components to be a valid freestyle trick, for example, a Toe Stall has only the Set and Catch components. Note that when counting the adds for a particular move, only the “Catch” component can receive the delay [DEL] add (you do not receive a delay add for setting a trick from a delay). The Set and Catch components indicate where a move starts and ends, which is typically on the Toe (top of the foot), the Inside of the foot, or the Outside of the foot.

The Set is straight up in most moves, and either waist, chest, or head height. As the bag travels upward, Uptime Dexterity components of the move are completed (such as Stepping or Pixie) and Apex components (such as Spinning or Ducking) are starting their motion. Finally, as the bag travels back downward, Apex components and Downtime Dexterity motions (such as Whirl or Butterfly) are completed and the trick finishes in a Catch/Kick. It was Chris Holden that first termed the “Apex” concept (also called “mid-time”) and came up with the format shown above as a way of better understanding Job’s Notation.

Job’s Notation:

Faced with coming up with an interesting topic for a statistics class in college, it was Benjamin Job (rhymes with “robe”) that introduced the idea of breaking down freestyle moves into components to describe them with a consistent vocabulary. His project even consisted of a program that generated a massive list of possible moves (the vast majority of which had not been landed at the time of the paper). The basic premise behind Job’s Notation is has already been outlined in the Move Components discussion above: A freestyle trick described by breaking the move into components. It’s interesting to note that since Job’s original idea, the number of tricks that have been landed have easily doubled and has possibly even tripled or quadrupled.

Job’s Notation is a particularly well suited short hand notation for describing moves that involve the Dexterity component. Dexterities are conventionally described in relation to the previous component or dexterity using Opposite (OP) , and Same (SAME) and the direction of the dexterity is described using IN or OUT dependent on whether the leg/foot circles in-to-out (IN, towards the center of the body before the dextirity) or out-to-in (OUT, away from the body before the dexterity).

To the neophyte, this may sound a bit confusing, so it’s best to start with a simple concrete example, say, the trick called Around the World Stall. Using English only to describe the trick, an in-to-out Around the World Stall performed on the right foot could be elucidated in the following manner:

Starting from the toe of your right foot, you set the bag straight up, then circle the bag clockwise with your right leg/foot, and finally catch the bag back on your right toe.

That same trick can be described using a mix of English and Job’s Notation as follows:

Starting from the toe of your right foot (right TOE), you set the bag straight up, then circle the bag clockwise with your right leg/foot (SAME IN [DEX]), and finally catch the bag back on your right toe (SAME TOE [DEL]).

And finally, the move that took a full sentence with plain English can be condensed using only Job’s Notation to:

right TOE > SAME IN [DEX] > SAME TOE [DEL]

One can see how Job’s Notation system is ideal for describing moves that contain multiple Dexterities, or “Dexes” in freestyle lingo, particularly because the English-only definitions can quickly become wordy and confusing.

Putting it All Together: Freestyle Footbag

The blocks for and understanding of Freestyle Footbag terminology have been laid out previously in this article. They include the Add System, the Move Components, and Job’s Notation. Building your own trick vocabulary is a matter of personal choice. There are literally thousands of footbag tricks and there are thousands more that have yet to even be conceived of. The purpose of the Beginner’s Corner is to explore some of the well trodden territory in Freestyle Footbag, and explain some of basic tricks whose names have been officially adopted by the International Footbag Player’s Association (IFPA). If you are new to footbag and think that you have just invented a new trick for the first time, chances are that in the past 35 years of the sport someone has already landed that trick and named it. For the most part, new tricks generally combine old trick components in new ways.

Having a complete list of Freestyle moves is impossible. There is always another harder trick, weather it be by starting with a new set, or it contains a new apex component, or the inevitable extra dexterity (currently the most dexes for one move is five! but some day, some one will do six.) In time, this blog will grow to incorporate more tricks, but for now we are sticking with the ones on the original FFFFFF.

An important note to the brand new player: Before moving into doing all kinds of fancy footwork, most successful players opt to learn the basic kicks!

EDITOR’S NOTE: BASIC STALLS ARE COMING SOON… MORE TRICKS TO FOLLOW!

The Basic Kicks: Getting Started

• Inside Kick
• Outside Kick
• Toe Kick
• Knee Kick

The Basic Stalls (or Delays)

• Inside Stall
• Outside Stall
• Toe Stall
• Clipper Stall
• (The Magic Hop: not on original flyer, but a key tip!)

Two Basic Sets

• Pixie Set
• Stepping Set

Moves With Dexterity [DEX] Components

• Mirage
• Butterfly
• Whirl

Moves With Body [BOD] Components

• Paradox Illusion
• Symposium Mirage
• Spinning Clipper
• Ducking Clipper
• Flying Clipper
• Osis

Combining Components

• Mullet

Continue to Part Two.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Beginner's Corner, Jim Penske. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.