Arek Dudzinski of Poland, who goes by the nickname “Norek” in footbag circles is only 19 years old. He’s got some amazingly talented feet, as illustrated in this YouTube video:
I particularly like the slow motion editing in this video. It really helps to emphasize just how fast freestyle footbag can be! I remember Norek coming onto the scene strong, being the fist person to land a “Whirreck” (triple whirl)… A trick which makes my knee hurt just thinking about it.
I was at a friend’s house last weekend reading through a book of inspirational quotes and ran across this one by F. Scott Fitzgerald:
Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
My “back of the napkin” calculation indicates that, assuming I’ve dropped the footbag once every 25 seconds in my 20 year career of kicking at least an average of an hour per day (some conservative numbers by my estimation), that I have dropped the bag…
Over a million times. Literally, one million failed attempts.
Clearly, this is not something to brag about, but I believe it does speak to persistence, and vitality, and the aptness of this particular quote when it comes to footbag. Dropping is part of the game. Besides, if you never dropped, it wouldn’t be worth playing.
So you want to lose your weakside and even out your game, becoming more ambidextrous. The short, simple answer is obvious: practice both sides evenly. However, the practicality of this is another matter entirely. Hence, I offer the following suggestions:
Start with your vocabulary. Nix the weakside, bring in the flipside. It was, again, Eli (Ellis, Elliot, Intergalactic, Zohar – he is a man of many names) Piltz that coined the term “flipside”. As I understand it, his basic reasoning was that when you consider the subtleties of language and you always call your “less skilled side” your “weakside” you are unconsciously reinforcing the thought patterns of that side being weaker. Thought is energy, and it has the power to manifest reality (depending, of course, on the level at which you have said thoughts).
Always start with your flipside! Weather it’s a pass taken with a kick, or starting out a trick string, start it out on the flipside first. I particularly like the idea of doing both-sided drills that start and end on the flipside. A very simple example would be leg-over (or switch) three times (flip, strong, flip). This skools the flipside twice, and enforces linking in and out of the trick.
Dedicate sessions to working only your flipside. These can be frustrating, but will pay high dividends.
Use your flipside exclusively in a new circle. Approaching a new circle is wisely approached as a delicate endeavor, and you don’t want to be immediately branded as a “hack hog”.
Another great time for honing the flipside is coming back after an extended break from the sport. I consider myself in this category, having kicked barely once a week for most of the end of 2009. In slowly getting myself back into shape, I find that since both sides are struggling, I may as well focus on working them both evenly. Lately I’ve even pushing my flipside even more. The end result will be that by the time I get back into shape I’ll be significantly more even-sided).
Of course, if you’re just a beginning hacker, or just now getting into serious freestyle, there is no better time than now to make a commitment to ambidextrousness… The further you get down the one sided path, the harder it is to even out. I highly recommend working both sides as evenly as possible. Though rare, serious one-sidedness could potentially lead to a form of spinal curvature called scoliosis.
Ellis Piltz and (apparently in conjunction with or at the same time as?) Damon Mathews came up with these concepts to describe people’s (generally one-sided) footbag trick tendencies:
Bigfoot: Favoring the all surfaces (toe, inside, outside, heel, sole) of only one foot (right or left).
Sideways: Favoring one side of the foot (and body) over the other (e.g. left inside, right outside, and right toe OR right inside, left outside, and left toe).
Ambidextrous: Favoring neither foot over the other. Of course this term has been around long before Piltz and Mathews – I’ve also seen it called ambipedal or pedidextrous (both of which are rare).
Myself: I’m Sideways (favoring my left inside, and my right outside, toe, sole, and heel), but (of course) striving to be Ambidextrous (stay tuned for my next post on tips for this).
In thinking about this I was wondering if there are Sideways kickers that favor, for example, the same toe as inside or if the toe and outside are always linked. I’m guessing this could tell something about the way the brain is wired… Anyone?
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Zeb Jackson has been hacking the proverbial sack for a little over three years now. I remember the first time he visited the Freedom Shredquarters back in 2007: He was able to do toe stalls fairly well, and perhaps a few two add moves with a bit of struggling. Nevertheless, he persevered and continued to make trips to the Shredquarters to kick with Jim, Sunny, and myself, steadily improving. He now lives with Jim in Boise and skools frequently with him.
Zeb, who’s also an accomplished video editor, gives us clear evidence of his progress since those first days in this self-edited video:
He now plans to win the 2010 World Footbag Championships in San Francisco this upcoming August. A bit of a lofty goal, but if he really practices hard and forgoes a few luxuries, such as sleeping, anything’s possible!
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