It’s been the cornerstone of my development. First physically as I got in shape as a 12 year old. Then it was personally, as I was able to be proud of my ability to play well, and thus become proud of myself. Finally its been my vehicle of friendship, where I’ve made so many friends all over the world and had so many great times with so many excellent people.

But where did it go wrong -

The pressures of needing to get a ‘real job’ – I guess as I put it myself when explaining my life to a Primary School teacher this week ‘Footbag probably won’t pay a mortgage’. I’m not even interested in getting a mortgage – I’d rather invest in the banks then be prey to them. Its part of the story – but Footbag has also been my main source of income throughout uni and meant that I never had to get a typical part time job.

Loss of the close friends who I had when I was learning. I probably wouldn’t have kept playing after one year if it weren’t for Lynton Stephens and Brendan Erskine. I probably wouldn’t have kept playing if it weren’t for Alex Urano and Scott Kirchner. The only thing that kept me in Footbag after those guys left was my love of teaching – my love of the game was never the same.

When I think about Footbag now I think about Jesenik and playing with Milan Benda, Daniel Spacil, Karel Hak – if he ever plays again lol. But while I was there I realised that I just wanted to play with the people I started playing with, I wasn’t really interested in improving my game – I felt my Footbag spirituality meter had dropped.

Spending time with Vasek and writing the Vasek Klouda Manual was exciting, and I am so inspired by his words and life in general. The thing that excited me most was the potential for people all over the world to be reading that e-book, then improving incredibly, and all the joy that would bring them. I wasn’t excited about my own game improving, after ten years of playing I had lost the desire to keep pushing my own boundaries – but I feel good that other people still love to see me play, and that they love Footbag.

I’m going to write more about Footbag over the coming weeks
Follow me on google reader or another RSS

Syndicated with permission from http://www.danednie.com/

Merry Xmas Everyone!!
This was such such such an unbelievable year in Footbag for me.

January – Featured on a nation-wide Subway commercial and voted the Education Director at the International Footbag Players Association

February to June – Lived in the Czech Republic learning Czech with the Footbaggers there, learning how to play doubles with Ales Zelinka Tomas Tucek and Martin! I also trained singles with Milan Benda and Vasek who were just so inspiring. Not only is Footbag a sport of great beauty, but the coordination and precision these two had took my understanding of the intrinsic beauty of the human form to a new level.

Ales Zelinka and Dan Ednie doing Doubles at the World Championships

Dan Ednie and Ales Zelinka at Worlds

July – I came 13th in Singles Freestyle, ran a Certified Instructors course for about 50 future Footbag teachers, judged the singles freestyle finals and had The Vasek Klouda Manual: How to Play Footbag published with Vasek.

Dan Ednie doing Singles at Worlds '09

August to December: Taught close to 2000 students at twelve different schools and spoke at four events about my personal journey in Footbag. I’ve also been invited to speak more and teach more at lots of new schools and events in 2010 and I just totally love it.

I am inching closer to my goal of teaching 10,000 students personally. I’m just a tick underneath 9,000. I’ll be graduating from my BA at Melbourne University half way through next year, and I don’t know if I will be in Australia in the second half, but any school that would like to have me come along to teach them Footbag, please email me early next year, I would love to come.

I am so so blessed to have met all of the teachers, students and Footbaggers I have this year in Australia and Europe. Footbag is a great game, yes, but now that I’ve played for over ten years, the value for me isn’t really in playing. The opportunities , the people, the travel, the teaching and the conversations that make the Footbag community what it is have a couple of times this year moved me to tears. Footbag has been the biggest thing to ever happen to me.

Dan Ednie

Syndicated with permission from http://www.danednie.com/

Dan Ednie Pic

When you want to do hard tricks, you can put them all together in a grouping, or have them just after you’ve taken a break. For example, Takumi’s world’s routine.

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/12545

Note: see the pixie swirl and the final ripstein–he really has a break, gets ready, then he has every chance of completing the trick. He makes it as easy as possible to succeed. All the other hard tricks are in one section towards the start. But most of them are forgotten by the end, especially because there was no climax in the music when he did them.

For a good example of hitting hard tricks during the climax, and making them more memorable, see Vasek semi-final 2006.

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/10059

To see how to set up and have preparation for tricks, see my semi-final world’s routine:

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/10059

I am playing to the music with each set up trick, but it is actually a rest if you can find music that really helps you get ready for those big tricks, then it will be much easier. Also, see in the semi-final routine that I only play to the music right at the start and right at the end.

In the middle, the music plays at about the same speed at the whole time, but you don’t realize because your first and last impressions are that I’m really organized. It’s so easy to tell that I’m playing to the music. Don’t be too subtle, because if people can’t tell, it doesn’t help you. You really want people to be able to tell that you’ve practiced. Have a look at Lon Smith in the semi-finals of
Worlds 2007:

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/10291

He’s really entertaining, hits hard tricks, but it was so disorganized and obvious that he never practiced it that it scored badly and he was unlucky not to make finals, despite his amazing skill level.

Use breaks to help you. See my qualifying routine:

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/12543

From x to x after the p.s whirl, I am resting. I do juggling then very slowly have one bag on each foot and atw’s, then I do kicks and knee bumps. That was all a break for me because I was dying by that point, and I knew to put that rest there because in practice I was always tired at that point. So I wrote a break into the routine.

Syndicated with permission from http://www.danednie.com/

This was truly epic, but what did it mean?

You will notice watching it that the first minute at least is almost without any risk. The majority of the tricks are butterflies and the overwhelming emotion is that the run hasn’t started. That the tricks in the beginning are so simple actually tells us that this will be an extremely long run. It runs for almost three minutes. This is not a long time for Vasek. He is not really playing for the tricks, only the swifter and two vortexes even suggest that he is hitting tricks because he likes them. He is not playing for tricks, he is playing for contacts.

For those not at worlds, you might not know that Vasek almost never plays in the seven days, in fact he only came on tuesday afternoon or wednesday morning from memory.

It is suggested that the best outcome from the invention of circle is that it forced Vasek to play for the cameras. If you look back at footage from Worlds 07, with a couple of exceptions, the only footage available is from the circle contest. He took about five- ten runs in the same area, but the people that have video from that haven’t really posted it in many places. The Monday following worlds 07 he actually shredded at Terra Verde for over two hours hitting unbeleivable combos like attempted gauntlet> nemesis to some thing else which he dropped.

Because Vasek’s routines generally circle around the same tricks and combinations, the first run of his circle is always something which is highly anticipated. But the first run in the circle finals is the run that he chooses to make his point to everyone watching. Vasek tried with this run to prove that he is in a league of his own and that he is really the only player in the circle. Milan Benda showed us though that there is, in the absence of Jorden Moir, an intermediate between Vasek and the rest. Milan annihilated the circle final with almost all runs over 40 contacts even more convincingly than Vasek won Worlds circle. If anyone has footage of this, let me know.

During this time the other three had to start concentrating on staying warm, to stand waiting for four minutes or longer for your try is too long. Say you drop three moves in, its as though you haven’t played, the bag goes to Vasek, then Milan and then you need to construct a run. The intimidation factor for me was too cruel in this competition. While it has established a record length run in circle which might not be broken for a year or so, I didn’t really rejoice in this statement. It seemed as though it was a way of making it harder for the other players to stay warm, like a plan. What are your thoughts?

Thanks

Dan

Syndicated with permission from http://www.danednie.com/

Dan Ednie Pic

The Vasek Klouda Manual: How to Play Footbag is a 90+ page eBook written for everyone from beginners to advanced players. In the five months I spent in the Czech Republic I had access to the inner world of now seven-time world champion Vasek Klouda. In many ways this text is the product of those discussion, my questions and Vasek’s feelings toward footbag as a sport and a lifestyle.

The book is available for download for US$5 with half of all proceeds going to the IFPA to help fund the future of Footbag worldwide. The text covers three core topics: How to train footbag, The psychology of footbag, and the exact trick tips that will help you to master ever set and every downtime component.

You can read the three page biography of Vasek if you schroll down on this blog and I will be releasing exerpts there once a week.

The place to download it is at
http://www.footbag.cz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=214&Itemid=70
Or if that link doesn’t work then go to
www.footbag.cz and click on the second news item.

Thank you