Trick Tip of the Week: The Magic Hop

Here it is, the secret to freestyle footbag: The magic hop! Sometimes the most subtle things can be critically important. The footbag “magic hop” is one such thing. Learning the magic hop is critical to leaning freestyle footbag because it is an inherent component of most footbag tricks. Succinctly put, the magic hop consists of a small hop on the support leg – just before a stall – so as to allow the whole body to cushion the bag for the stall. It’s something that’s very difficult to explain with words, but very easy to demonstrate with a footbag. I’ve never seen a video that clearly illuminates this elusive magic hop, so I made one of my own.

It’s a very brief video, but I believe it will prove to be a breakthrough for many starting players. The magic hop being essential for successfully linking successive hacky sack tricks. The video consists of eight toe stalls, and one super slow motion toe delay. The first four toe stalls do not utilize the magic hop, whereas second set of four toe stalls does implement it. The last trick replays the fifth trick at about 1/12th normal speed and highlights exactly when the magic hop happens:

You can also watch this video directly on YouTube or download the high resolution version, here (Quicktime Movie Fotmat, 3.6 Mb).

If you take a moment to peruse some of the other videos in our video gallery, you will see how the magic hop is integrated into nearly every single freestyle move. When first learning the magic hop, you may find that it helps to practice it without the bag. I remember it taking me a full session to really get it down – but then again, I’m a slow learner. I remember that it was Steve Goldberg that originally taught me the magic hop back at (I believe) the 1990 World Footbag Championships in Golden, Colorado. Thanks Steve!