Most people within the Footbag community would be well aware of Jan “Honza” Weber from Prague, Czech Republic. He is the current World Champion of Routines. After many appearances in the finals at Worlds, he finally climbed to the top of the podium in Helsinki.

In what I hope will be a long running series of interviews, I decided to ask Honza what he has been up to now that he is “the champ”.

Honza searches for a new doubles partner...

First of all, for those who may not know you, give a brief introduction of yourself and your time in Footbag.

Hello, my name is Honza Weber (as the title of the interview will also probably say  ) and I have been playing footbag for over ten years. I have made BAP (not that a lot of new people know what it stands for these days  ) in 2002 and over the years I managed to win couple of major footbag tournaments including Euros and Worlds. You can also watch this nicely done documentary of me .

You won your first Worlds in the singles routines this year, after 10 years of trying. Describe your feeling after the results were announced.

Well, yeah…. Finally! As everybody was cheering during that night. Actually I think it was much better feeling to win after so many years than for example if I would have managed it just after couple years in one of those when I was finishing second all over again. 

It was a great feeling and in fact much more than that. It is very hard to use words for that description, your body is so full of energy that you can make a hole into a wall just by using your thumb  You feel just incredible. I mean I have won doubles routines at Worlds 4 times before this one, but it just never really felt that good. The first one in 2004 was bloody awesome, but it also meant that much because it was first doubles dropless routine ever… The 2011 singles routines win was different from any other win, it was a pure relief, I had the feeling I could finally die satisfied and without regrets , I have succeeded  and on the flight back it was really the first time ever I was not scared… and I was very happy it was quite obvious even before the results announcement because the worst is when you win and people talk whether the result were correct.. :/ It was great night that day, an important one for me .

Who (or what) were your big influences when you were starting out in Footbag, and what are your influences now?

Back in 2001, when I started with footbag, my heroes were Ryan Mulroney, Peter Irish, Rippin and Sunil Jani. Simply the best players of that era. During the time Ryan became my favorite because of his amazing style as well as Karim Daouk (of course just until he started playing net  ). These days I am not really into hardcore shred anymore, but if there is anyone I like to kick with, then it is Milan because it is always fun to shred with him and he is probably the only one who can inspire me to hit new moves and combos these days.

There are many good players nowadays, but the problem is they are too predictable and after watching some of their videos they cannot really surprise with anything while playing in the circle and if they can, they lack the style. Lately I have enjoyed footage of Samu Ahola and Jay, it was very surprising indeed! I should also mention Vasek, I have spent a lot of time kicking with him and despite having never really worshipped his skills, he had an influence on my game.

What do you aim for when preparing a routine?

It depends whether it is a routine for performances or routine for competition. I must say I feel really good preparing my performances and I am really confident about those, but I honestly do not like my competition routines. It feels like a have some kind of mental block or something. I think just 3 of my routines in my career were representative; the Spiderman one from Worlds finals 2004, Thierry la Fronde from Worlds finals 2009 and probably the Figaro one from 2011 finals.

You are quite involved in the freestyle football scene as well – you had a pretty big hand in organizing the European and World championships. Do you see footbag and freestyle football coming together more in the future?

Definitely! These sports simply have to be connected and the communities should cooperate as much as possible. I have started doing freestyle football in early 2010 and in the beginning I have been doing footbag moves mostly, but later I discovered all the possibilities of the original freestyle football moves and I have been practicing them since.

Here is a video from a year ago and I am gonna make another one during the next week… :

It is just amazing to see the passion of the freestyle football players, it reminds of the golden footbag era from 2002-2004. They have shown a big respect for footbag and they are really inspired by all the moves we can hit. I think it is just about time when we all start organizing tournaments together on a regular basis.

Look at this video from this years Prague Freestyle Football World Champs. – the atmosphere speaks for itself:

Really, watch that one, it is GREAT!

Tell us some more about the “Freestyle Union” shows

“Freestyle Union” is a freestyle team of people showing Footbag, Freestyle Frisbee, Yo-Yo and Freestyle Football. For a long time we have been doing performances at various events together and later we decided to take it more seriously and prepared quite a nice show for a Prague’s university talent show, which we eventually won. It may not sound like a big deal, but there were almost 100 competitors and the final was during a big event with over 5000 spectators.

I think this kind of freestyle show is perfect for all kinds of events and the combination is much more entertaining than the single sports performances. But show is what it is all about , so you must have something extra in there as well. We are currently working on new and much better performance and we have been booked for several events including some international ones, which is amazing for those few months we have been promoting this show, so I think if we continue in this progress it may become very successful project promoting these freestyle disciplines!

Here is the first round of the talent show: And this is our Facebook page:

Honza takes flight

What do you think about the current state of freestyle footbag, and where to go from here.

Nearly half a year ago I wrote an essay called “The Future of Footbag Freestyle”, where I have summed up my thoughts I had in mind for certain amount of time. Long story short I was quite negative about the sport`s future because some of the habits in the game are in my opinion still medieval and I found them to be the main source of lack of new players. So if the community wants the sport to move forward and gain more members, then those are the ones to be changes in the first place. You can read the article here: Http://www.shredglobal.com/archive/the-future-of-footbag-freestyle-by-honza-weber/

I was glad the essay caused quite a discussion and people actually started to think about it more. Some arguments said that the situation goes in waves and sometimes there is more and sometimes less players, which is in fact very reasonable, but on the other hand the last wave must have gotten lost somewhere . This is a serious topic though and despite the situation might have become slightly better, it is still very far to be good and changes are to be made here in order to make the sport successful and known!

You must spend a lot of time working on routines and performances- do you have time to work on any big new tricks?

Unfortunately not :/ I spend lot of time these days practicing Freestyle Football and kicking with bags I use for performance, so I rarely kick with regular 32 panels. On the other hand since I was travelling a lot for footbag tournaments during the last couple months, I got into a good shred shape and managed to hit some cool and hard stuff, the only thing to mention though is probably barraging same whirling swirl. I will try to get it on video soon… The other problem is that when you push your limits it is very easy to get injured and therefore I also became afraid of trying big moves.

You have got to travel quite a lot through Footbag- what are some of your biggest highlights over the years?

I loved Japan! It was always my dream to go there and finally it came true. It was an unforgettable experience and I recommend everyone to go there at least once! Russia is always a blast, no matter whether in Moscow or in St. Petersburg, both place sare amazing. I really enjoyed all the California trips thanks to Steve and Queency and meeting Tony Hawk in L.A. meant fulfilling of another dream of mine. I mean there are so many wonderful places I visited, but these are the ones I keep thinking of the most. Here is a short vid from the Tony Hawk event.

10. What are your plans for 2012? There have been some whispers about a Footbag app, tell us a bit more about that.

Plans are of course pretty big, so will see how successful will be their realizing . I would love to continue travelling and performing all around the World. It is a great life I have right now and I pray it stays like this! Anyway for the start there is a “Footbag Freestyle” app for iPhone coming up any day. It was developed by my freestyle football friend (another example of connection between the sports  ) Mario Plantosar from Croatia. It is just a first version, so we plan further improvements on the app. It is more informational, but the first goal was to come up with something and wait for the feedback. The final goal would probably be to implement ShredSessions footbag online video game into it. For those who have not played it yet, give it a try here

What advice do you have for people new to the sport of Footbag?

Do not get discouraged by how hard footbag looks like! After some practice you will start improving really fast and you will love it! It depends just on your will and want to improve because anything can be achieved!

Maybe this tutorial video will help you in the beginning 

Do you have anything else to add, or anybody to thank?

I think I have covered all the topics. I would like to thank everybody that support me and have supported me in the past! Naming all the people would make a huge list here, but I am sure they all know! I am very grateful for that and let me know if I can do anything for you in return!

Honza Weber

www.HonzaWeber.com

So first of all I would like to say a big thanks to Honza for being the first interview subject, and of course congratulations on the victory in Helsinki.

Feel free to add any comments on the interview, or to suggest who you would like to see interviewed next. I am planning to release one interview per week from players right around the world.

Who do you think will be next?