Footbag Wallpapers

The latest interview in the Shred Global series is with Roy Klein, the founder of Footbag Front. Roy is from Israel so we had a chat about what’s happening there, his ideas behind the site and his plans for the future.

Here is a video from Israel to begin with.

- You have started Footbag Front – what got you started on the idea and what’s your goal with the site?

The idea for a modern social platform for footbag was born on Modified. People complained that the Facebook Freestyle group takes the power out of the community’s hands, and that we need a player owned and run alternative.

Someone linked to a Hoola Hoop community site as an example of how a modern alternative to Modified would look like, and there was a consensus that we ought to have a site like that for the sport. Having the skills to pull off something like this, I figured that if I’m not going to give it a shot, chances are the idea would be discussed to death and then abandoned.

The site is supposed to provide an alternative to both Modified and the Facebook group, in that it has the most popular feature of both. Namely, footblogs, discussion threads and a “wall”. Unlike Facebook, everything people write and share remains their property and not Facebook’s, interesting discussions from the past are easy to find and will not be lost, which is a real risk with Facebook, where old topics are always in risk of deletion. On FootbagFront The content remains players-owned and stored forever.

Before starting FootbagFront I was running a different side project called the Freestyle Footbag videos feed, which I was using to collect my favorite freestyle videos and make them searchable. That got incorporated into the site as well, so you can find videos posted to the site based on which players appear in it.

Having both blogs and videos connected to players, I made a neat player page showing everything they wrote and all the videos they appear in. At which point I got a little greedy and figured I could show their competition results as well. I wrote a whole framework for posting events information, who attended, who competed, what spots they got, etc., but since I don’t have the time to design and finalize it I removed access to this system.

Even though I didn’t pull it off, it was a first step in a direction I’m very interested in pursuing: Creating data collections of everything related to the freestyle footbag world and providing easy-to-use access to them. Databases with Footbag information like trick vaults or event results, where it is both easy to input information and easy to get the information out of them would provide more leverage than just a website with information written on it in HTML. For example, I imagine that FootbagFront could use an event results database to show very accurate Player Profiles, while some other site may use the same database to create a world ranking sheet. One data source with multiple usages.

The original goal of FootbagFront hasn’t been achieved yet, though: I still have a Facebook profile because that’s my only link to the Freestyle world. On the day I feel I can close my profile, then I know that the online freestyle presence is back in the hands of the players.

- You have been sharing the results of your training programs – what has been working best for you with the training programs?

When I left Worlds 2011 I was ready to quit footbag, as I felt like I played terrible, especially compared to players who have been playing far less time than I have. Rene Ruhr, who visited Israel a few seasons after, filmed most of our sessions together, and again, I was embarrassed by the videos. I had a respectable trick collection but I was very one sided, had terrible run length and I couldn’t play guiltless at all. At that point I had been practicing Freestyle for nearly 4 years. Even though I was very interested in training techniques and have been experimenting with them for a while, I was obviously not very good at training.

Therefore, I decided to figure out what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong by measuring my sessions, and gradually phase training methods in and out to see how they affect the measurements. After months of measurements I was able to hit a few “jackpots” of training principles that made my training measurably more efficient.

For example, I found that when trying to become consistent in a trick, there’s a big difference between hitting it and then hand catching, and hitting it and then linking to some other trick. The former is far more efficient. When I hit the same trick 50 times in a row with no other trick in between, within a few sessions I “get” the finer details of how to hit the trick so that consistency is easier to achieve: How to set the bag, how to position and move the body. Without this level of understanding of a trick, it’s very hard to become truly consistent in it.

As I’m still working on my basics, I feel that my venture with training programs and measurement is far from over and there’s a lot more to learn.

- How are things in Israel at the moment in terms of footbag?

Static. A few years back we ran footbag programs in a bunch of schools, and had a lot of talented youngsters playing freestyle. Alas, once we stopped the programs, due to lack of time, the youngsters stopped playing one by one and the circle shrunk to its original size.

Before I started freestyle there were a lot of hacky sackers. I recall circles 30 people strong when I just got started. I used to feel guilty that my freestyling in the hack circle turned all these people off from kicking, but I guess they were interested in casual play and wouldn’t have converted to freestyle. Our circle is 2 people strong now, but is purely freestyle.

- How about in general terms? What’s going to happen in the near future?

Israel is a bubble, isolated from its surrounding neighbors and in many ways, from the world. It breeds very odd politics: Israelis in general want a two state solution and at the same time don’t want to give up the settlements or make any concessions with the Palestinians. Right wing governments leverage this by promising a peace process while at the same time expanding the settlements and practically crushing any chance for peace.

If Israel is a bubble, Tel Aviv, the city I live in, is a bubble within a bubble: Most people here are left wing and progressive in comparison to the rest of the country. Living here makes you feel that there’s a strong opposition to the right wing government, but in reality they keep winning every election.

I love living here. The weather is great, the economy is good and Tel Aviv is an amazing city full of wonderful people. But I hate living inside the bubble, I hate being ashamed of what my country does sometimes, and I hate that I don’t know what the future holds for us.

- You have your tickets book to Worlds. This will be your first North American worlds – any expectations?

Worlds is always fun, so even though I’ll probably know less people this year I’m not worried about that. I am worried that once again I’ll feel uncomfortable with my game and come back home disappointed with myself.

I’ve never competed before (except for a last moment entry to intermediates request in 2011), and I think that this year will be THE year that I’ll go for it, in intermediates. I was hoping there would be a circle competition for intermediates, as it looks far more exciting to participate in compared to routines, but I guess there aren’t enough players of my breed to justify it.

- What are you working on in your game at the moment?

These last 7 months I’ve been working on basics and string lengths. My recent achievement was being able to hit a 20 guiltless string dropless every session. For now I plan on adding more 3 add tricks to my safe two sided arsenal and make my guiltless runs longer and more varied. I’m also working on paradons and barflies to keep things from being too monotonous.

- You are one of a few people who are getting various footbag projects off the ground – what do you see in the sport’s future?

I probably know less about the current state of the sport than most, being able to attend any kind of event only once every two years. I feel that our online presence needs more work, and that beginner and intermediate players should be encouraged to participate in it.

I vividly remember that during my first few years playing footbag I had a very twisted image of what an average player is, as only very talented or top players posted any videos at all.

Only when I started attending events and meeting more players did I realize that there’s this hidden biosphere of people who just enjoy playing and don’t plan on becoming professionals. I think our sport would benefit from having a thicker layer of that biosphere.

- You were in South America recently. Any future trips planned, and do you think South America could host a Worlds?

I’m learning Spanish, and if I had the opportunity I’d love to move to South America for a few years to streamline my learning and eat all the alfajores I can get my hands on. Until that happens I’ll probably keep coming for visits every year or every other year.

As far as worlds is concerned, it’s probably a question of the amount of players in South America. There ought to be a critical number of both net and freestyle players to make it happen, and I have no idea what that number is and how far S.A is from getting there. There’s always the issue that many players can’t afford to make it to worlds when it’s not on their continent, but for an international sport that’s an unavoidable problem, and a good one to have, too.

We’re much better off today than back in the day when worlds took place exclusively in the U.S. If it does happen, I hope it won’t be in Venezuela, as Israelis aren’t welcome there

Anything else to add, anyone to thank?

I want to thank everyone who has been participating in FootbagFront from the bottom of my heart. Your support made the project worthwhile.

I also want to thank everyone in the footbag world that contribute to the sport. I often find myself inspired and amazed by them, and I wish I’d let them know that more often than I do. Daniel, you’re one of them, so thank you for the interview series, they’re always a great read.

The Shred Global interview series continues, now taking a look at some of the footbag related projects in development around the world. We got in touch with Australian Jeremy O’Wheel who is actively involved in some great projects.

Jeremy has been active on the Australian scene for over ten years now, with many Australian titles and a few world records to his name.

Here is Jeremy on his way to one of many Australian titles – Australian Championships 2010, Royal Easter Show, Sydney. Photo: Francisca Borquez

- You have a variety of projects going, including the video and Wikipedia projects – what’s the aim of each project and how did you come up with the idea?

I have three projects going at the moment. They have multiple aims. The first project I started a few years ago is a footbag.org reference wiki page that lists the (hopefully) current consecutive record for each trick that is caught on video. The primary aim was to have a page that tracked video world records, instead of the old list that just had the records written. I think it’s a lot more fun to see videos rather than just read a number, and it gives more credibility too.

Actually I was inspired to make that page by watching the amazing documentary King of Kong, which I highly recommend. It reminded me a lot of footbag, but also I was impressed with how well organised their record keeping was, even though it was just a small number of people tracking it. The Guinness Book of Records accepts their records as legit on authority. I vaguely envisioned something like that in the distant future.

I guess I’m aspiring to be Walter Day, which I assume nobody has ever said before. The other aim with that project, and the new one as well, is to try and come up with ways of engaging the footbag community and encouraging people to be involved at an organisational level.

Of course not everybody can set a world record, but anybody can help contribute on a wiki page, and I hope that by creating something with very few barriers to help, it will encourage a few people to then move to bigger and better things. I guess I should thank Reilley Adamson and Mathieu Giard-Montpetit, who have been a massive help on that project, and also Ken Somolinos who has filmed a lot of records just for the page.

The new page, also a footbag.org wiki reference page, which I only started last week, is an attempt to provide links to videos of every trick ever hit. Obviously that will never happen, but hopefully we can create a comprehensive list. I think this would be really helpful to new players – it can be difficult searching youtube for specific footbag tricks, and better to go to a footbag page and go from there. Also there are a lot of different sources for some tricks, so having a single point of contact is easier than searching multiple sites. Again, I’m also really trying to create a project that lots of people can become involved with. I really want to create projects where anybody can help out, and can easily actually do stuff, rather than talking about doing stuff.

The final project is to update or re-write the Wikipedia page for footbag, and I’d like to create some other footbag related pages after that. I’ve been doing a reasonable amount of Wikipedia editing lately, mainly because a friend of mine is very involved, especially in uploading nature photography to Wiki Commons, and through that involvement I realised how bad the current footbag page is.

Wikipedia is such an important source of information for everybody these days, and I think it’s now really important to have a good page, because I’m sure that 90% of people that discover and show interest in footbag these days would read the Wikipedia page now. That’s almost the first point of contact for many people, at least within our control, and I think it’s vital that we have a good page that encourages them to go further.

- How’s your footbag game at the moment? What are you working on?

My game is not in great shape. I’ve had a lot of non-footbag related injuries lately, so haven’t been playing a great deal. I’m also more focused on bird watching and touch football than I am on footbag, when it comes to exercise.

The other players in Hobart have either left or stopped playing, so it’s hard to find motivation to play by yourself. I guess this is a common story. Anyway I do try to play when I can. I managed to get a clean sweep at Aus nationals last year, so I guess my game isn’t too bad. It helped not having you or Ednie to compete against though .

When I do play, I’m mainly working on improving my form on some of my basics, especially things that put stress on my knees. I either have to hit those tricks better or stop doing them at all. I think because I’m reasonably fast, I have a bad habit of starting tricks late and then using my speed, so I’ve been trying to start a lot earlier and be a lot more relaxed.

I guess I don’t work on specific tricks very much. Oh except cross body rakes. I’ve been skooling those hard! I guess because they’re fun and low impact. I like hitting as many consecutive as I can on just one side, and then the other side.

Jeremy, Dan Ednie and Alex Urano in Ian Pritchard’s video “Australia’s Finest”, filmed at the 2007 Australian Championships in Hobart.

- Do you think you will ever get a chance to go to Worlds?

It’s not much of a priority for me. My game is well past my peak, and I’m having a baby in September. Also when I go travelling now, seeing birds is really my obsession, so it would have be held somewhere that is very exciting in that context. Maybe Chile ?

- What are your thoughts on the footbag scene, in Australia and the world, at the moment

It feels like things are contracting a lot, especially in Australia but also globally. I guess increasingly there are veterans like us, but no new blood. Maybe we just had too high expectations after the boom in Eastern Europe during the 2000s. People who have been involved with footbag for a lot longer than me tell me that it’s just a cycle, and things will expand again. Certainly there is a lot of potential, especially in Asia and South America. I think we’ve been a bit slow moving with social media and new technologies, but that’s getting better. I guess footbag will always have a tiny following, just because it’s so difficult to begin with.

- You were the first backer for the Footbag history book project – what do you think of the potential for crowdfunding in footbag?

Heaps of potential! You could fund events and videos that way too. I can even imagine top players creating crowd funding pages to pay for their trips to big tournaments. I’d definitely chip in to get Milan or Penske to come to Australia for the next nationals, for example.

I think there are a lot of things in footbag where everybody would be happy to pay a small amount, but we haven’t really had the systems in place to let that happen. Also, I’m really excited about Stalberger’s book!

- You recently mentioned the lack of ex-player involvement in freestyle footbag. Any ideas for how to change that?

Well I’m hoping to set an example myself, as much as I can. I guess I believe in the saying; “be the change you want to see in the world.” A lot of people in footbag talk about what they’d like to happen, but don’t do anything to make it happen.

I guess my life philosophy these days is that if I see something I think should happen, I try to actually do it. I’m hoping that some of these projects I’ve created will help give very easy ways for people to be involved beyond playing, but really I think we just have to make people aware of this issue so that when they do start winding down how much they play they decide to stay involved in other ways. I dunno, that’s not a very good answer, but I’m not sure what else we can do.

- What has been your best moment in footbag?

The annual Narooma jam has been a great addition to the Australian footbag calendar, with Australia’s best players arriving from around the country at the South Coast location.

I think I’ll probably echo everybody else on this question, and say that the friends you make, and social gatherings are the best moments. If I have to be more specific I’ll say Narooma. I’m not sure which one, they’ve all been good. Actually when Copey kicked the drink bottle into the bin. Just witnessing that was pretty special.

- You were involved in various projects on updating the rules of footbag – how did these goes and what are your thoughts on the administrative side of footbag?

Well they got there. That was a very frustrating process, but if you look at the rules on footbag.org they are up-to-date I think. I feel like the administrative side of footbag is really the best example of where people should be doing things, but instead just voice opinions without investigating how they could help.

If you ask somebody what they think of the IFPA and they complain about the stuff the IFPA should be doing, but isn’t, then you need to ask them; “Why don’t you do that?” I’m sure we’ve all heard the “too much time on hands” line and know that everybody has time to do the things that we make priorities for.

Well if the IFPA doing particular things is something you view as important, go and do it! That’s why updating the rules was so slow and frustrating – there just weren’t enough people, or the right people, actively trying to make it happen. -

You have a lot of experience in various sports – what has helped from those sports on your footbag game and how has footbag helped with other sports?

Good question. It’s hard to know. I’ve always been fast and agile, and I think that’s a trait that helped for footbag and helped for the other sports I’ve played. A few years ago when I came back from a footbag tournament people commented that my stepping in touch footy (dodging people) had improved but maybe I was just a bit more switched on.

I’m sure that the fitness from other sports helps footbag, and from footbag helps other sports. I guess the other big thing is the mental side of sport. I learnt early on from touch football that really the most important thing you need for success is hard work, and I applied that to footbag.

I think footbag has taught me the benefits of careful and precise training – repeating the same things over and over until you always get them right.

- Do you have anything else to add or anyone to thank?

Thanks Dan, for doing the interview, and I’m impressed with your work in South America. Also thanks to everybody else who helps promote and grow footbag. Those people are my heroes. And to everybody in Australia who reads this, especially Lotus and Mitch, my perennial bridesmaids in footbag golf!

From Roy Klein
Linked from http://footbagfront.com/articles/training-programs

When you’re a beginner Freestyle player, you don’t need any special training to improve. There are many low hanging fruits to be plucked and your muscles are still getting used to the general idea of freestyle movements.

However, at some point in every player’s development, shredding loses its efficiency as a training method and the improvement rate decreases, eventually to a near-halt.

Sounds depressing, but it should be actually taken as good news: When random shredding isn’t enough for you to improve, you officially graduated from the beginner stage, and you’re now an intermediate player.

Intermediate players should approach their training different from beginners if they are to continue improving. While beginners can get away with working every session on whatever they feel like at the moment, intermediate players require more training time and more focus on each concept in order to improve their skills. The better your skill, the more effort it takes to improve on it.

In order to achieve the necessary training time and focus required to improve, intermediate players should construct and follow training programs.

TRAINING PROGRAMS

The main idea of a training program is that you concentrate on certain concepts and don’t “waste” any of the session time. In a training program you have a planned structure of the whole session, and you repeat the same program a certain amount of times. A program requires playing alone; you cannot follow the plan in a circle and you get distracted easily when playing with others. With programs you optimize the time used to practice.

The effective way to train footbag concepts is based on four factors: Correct technique, Concentrating on the execution, Recognizing flaws, and Repetition. Training programs are built with these factors at their core.

In this article we’ll look into what are the basic components of a training program and finish with some examples of building blocks to get you started with ideas for your own training programs.

REMOVING INTERFERENCES

When working with a training program it’s vital to reduce interference to a minimum. Programs are inherently more difficult to follow through compared to normal shred, so reduce any additional inconveniences that may discourage you from practicing.

First and foremost, training programs are done alone. If you try training in a circle or while interacting with other people, you will most likely not be able to achieve the level of concentration and repetition density required for optimal improvement.

Second, the amount of hassle you need to go through in order to have a session should be minimal. An example of a low-hassle training environment is playing in your own house, where it takes you only a few minutes to clear up the playing space in order to get going. If, on the other hand, your session spot is far and you need to get to your car to get there, you’ll reduce your chances of finding the time to train and the spacing between each training session will harm the efficiency of the program.

PLANNING A PROGRAM

Programs are only efficient when they span multiple sessions. If you change your program for each session, you’ll be getting nowhere. Therefore, you should construct a training plan ahead of time and follow it through in each session.

Let’s break down a program to see what it consists of.

SESSIONS

A program is a number of identical sessions done one after the other. The amount of sessions required to achieve your program goals vary between people and between goals, so you’ll have to be the judge of how many you need per program.

If you feel that the program is so long that it degrades your skills in other parts of the game, it is perfectly fine to take a session break or two from the program in order to just freestyle before moving on. I take one ‘break session’ for every 4 program sessions I do, but again, this number is very personal.

Each session should be spaced so that your body recovers from the session, but your muscles don’t ‘forget’ what they’ve been training. When you don’t play for 3 or more days, you’re harming your learning process. On the other hand, if you constantly train before you are able to recover, you risk over-training or even injury, which will throw you into a regression that will take a long time to recover from. Aim for 3-5 days a week of training.

SECTIONS

Sessions are subdivided into sections (I initially wanted to use the word ‘set’ instead of ‘section’, but seeing how in other sports the word ‘set’ is synonymous to what we call ‘drills’, I decided to avoid the confusion and come up with a new word). Each section trains a trick, a combo, your stamina or a routine. You can’t have too many sections in one session, or you’d be overloading your muscle memory and lose training efficiency. 3,4 sections should be plenty. Once you finish a section, you need to take a short break before moving on to the next section.

DRILLS

Each section is built up of a predetermined number of identical drills (or sometimes a single, long drill). Each drill has an end condition, such as a specific amount of contacts or a specific amount of time. Once you finish a drill, you need to take a tiny break before repeating the drill again.

BREAKS

Breaks are crucial. They’re used to ‘reset’ both your physical and mental state. Because of the mental aspect of breaks, you should be taking breaks systematically, even when you don’t feel you physically need one.

If you’re working on a section with multiple drills you’ll need to take a tiny break between each drill, mainly to allow you to refresh your ability to focus. Depending on the intensity, length and physical exertion of the drill, it can be anything from 15 seconds to 2 minutes. At first just go with your gut feeling on breaks and try to err on the side of less, rather than more, rest time between drills. If your section contains many drills, you may want to take a longer break in the middle in order to physically rest as well. Unless you’re training stamina, a few drills shouldn’t physically drain you. If they do, consider shortening your drills rather then lengthening your breaks.

When you finish a section you need the break as a physical recuperation and to thoroughly wipe the mental slate clean. Therefore section breaks need to be longer than drill breaks. If your drill breaks were around 30 seconds, then 1.5-2 minutes section may work for you. Do not take too long a break or you will cool down or lose concentration.

If you find that you don’t drink enough during the session, tying drinking to breaks can help. Take short sips of water during your break. The longer the break, the bigger the sip.

If your session is properly divided to sections and drills, these are all the breaks you’re going to need.

WARMUPS & COOLDOWNS

You must warm up before beginning the training or your first drills will serve as warm ups and you won’t be training yourself with them.

Start with kicks, then move up to basic tricks you can handle well. Gradually increase string lengths. You can include physical exercises that you find help you with the warm up, but keep in mind that the goal is to raise the temperature of your muscles and prepare them for the coming complex motor functions, so stick to stuff you know and don’t over exert yourself in the warm up.

When the session is over, cool down with easy short combos and some kicking. Afterwards, you can do stretches.

EXAMPLES OF TRAINING PROGRAM SECTIONS

Here are some examples of possible sections that you can mix & match to construct a program. Try to strike a balance between learning things and training consistency in your sections selection. If you try to learn 5 new tricks in a program you’ll end up learning nothing. The less new things you try to learn at once, the faster you’ll learn them.

Note that the trick selection and amount of repetition serves as an example only. Each player is unique, and their own ability and stamina will dictate the right amount of repetitions.

TRICK TO HAND CATCH

This section is intended to build consistency on a trick you’re not very good at. Let’s say you need to work on your osis. You can’t hit them very well on either side, so you should first work on doing them individually to hand catch in order to be able to focus on each execution.

Drill: Clipper set Osis to hand catch, 10 times.

Section 1: 5 drills for Left Osis

Section 2: 5 drills for Right Osis

TRICK BACK TO BACK

Once you can hit both sides more often than you drop it, you can start hitting it back to back. Continuing with the osis example:

Drill: Left Osis to Right Osis, 10 contacts

Section: 6 drills

COMBOS

Once you’ve got a set of tricks you can do both sides well, you could work on combining them smoothly to build a strong foundation.

You can work on your legs’ power by making short, intense combos.

Drill: Osis->Same side butterfly, 5 repeats (i.e. 10 contacts)

Section: 5 drills

STAMINA

You can use a back to back drill, a combo drill, or just a random combination of tricks you know very well, and do them a predetermined amount of time, rather than contacts. That means that as long as the clock is ticking, you don’t stop for drops, but rather pick up the bag and continue.

Another option, in case you already know how many contacts you can go, pick a contact count that’s slightly lower than your maximum ability.

Time-based section:

Drill: 2.5 minutes of continuous contacts

Section: 2 drills

Contact-based section:

Drill: 30 contacts of guiltless

Section: 4 drills

Sources:

Training Programs by Anssi Sundberg (http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17541)
Practical Programming For Strength Training by Mark Rippetoe, Lon Kilgore ( http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1677880.Practical_Programming_For_Strength_Training)

Taishi Ishida is a Japanese Footbag player who is spreading footbag throughout Japan with a great campaign that every player and can try to take something from.

Japan's Taishi Ishida

We had a chat to Taishi about his project and his footbag game. You can read the interview below.

How long have you been playing Footbag and how did you start?

This project and I are supported by UT Holdings Co., Ltd. There are 15 challengers. They all have a challenge they are trying to achieve.

My project is that I try to get 1,000 people to try footbag in Japan.When they did a toe stall, they take a picture with me that with a counting board.

Actually, this project will finish this month. Then UT Holdings CEO will judges who is the best of 15 challengers. If I win I can get money:)

How is your game going at the moment? What tricks are you working on?

My game is going very well. I’m practicing footbag about 5 times a week. But I think I should practice more and more. Because the world’s top footbaggers are awesome!! Now I’m practicing drills a lot. I’m also trying to hit Alpine fog now.

How is the scene in Japan at the moment?

In 2003,we had a really big Pepsi campaign.If you bought a bottle of Pepsi, you got a footbag. During that campaign, so many people started to play footbag, but we didn’t have a receiving side. I mean no footbag association, no teacher,everybody didn’t have good footbag skill.
And you know footbag is really hard to learn by yourself. So after that so many people quit footbag. But now an environment is improving the Japanese footbag world. There are many Japanese footbaggers that can teach and perform. Japan Footbag Association has really good motivation. Through my project, people started to play footbag now.

Will you go to Worlds this year?

Yeah I hope so.But I’m not sure because I’m almost broke money:)I’m looking for sponsor still.

Have you thought about doing this program in other countries?

Yes,I’m always considering that, especially in Asia. There are a few footbaggers. But I think I can increase in footbag population in Asia.

How can other players do similar things to what you are doing now?

Actually, it’s easy to do something similar. I just go to where there are many people on the street, then I perform footbag. If someone is interested in me and footbag, I just call out them. Then I offer that they try footbag.

We have to find events where we can give performances. In a word,we should show footbag to so many people at first. Then maybe someone will start to play it .

What have been some of the best memories from your journey?

In this project,I performed footbag at soccer stadium.There are about 300~400 people were watching me and tried footbag as well. It’s really good promotion for me and 100 footbags were bought by them in only an hour.
And in my journey,I’ve been to Canada in 2006 and to Europe in 2008.I could compete at many footbag competition. I could shred,talk and drink with so many footbaggers. This is the best part of my life.

Have you kept in touch with the people you have introduced footbag to?

Yeah I’ve been keeping in touch many people. Someone has already started to play footbag and other one are introducing about footbag and me to others.

What do you hope to achieve in the sport?

I love this sport and I love this community. Most Japanese footbaggers can’t speak in English,but they are thinking the same thing. Now footbag is my job, but it is still really hard to exist on footbag alone. I’m trying to be able to subsist on footbag. I think if I can succeed in that, it means that footbag has already spread in Japan.

I’ll try spread footbag scene little by little.Please guys, let’s cooperate  together! Thanks to all world footbaggers.