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FREESTYLE on FIRE video produced by www.honzaweber.com
Video & Edit by Radek Pšurný
Directed by Lukáš Škoda
Starring Honza Weber, Milan Benda, and Lucaso showing off Freestyle Footbag and Freestyle Football in one of the best videos to date.
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
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?
Here is the first entry for the Joulukalenteri, 2011. This is a special video edited by Ken Somolinos, from his time spent in Las Vegas during his time living there and jams. There is some mind blowing combos, drills and tricks in this video, and I’m proud to now present you with a link of glory. Thanks to Evan and Ken for being entirely legendary, and making this happen. Merry Christmas, Modified.
Gatesman Footbag from Ken Somolinos on Vimeo.
Footbag contains a wide range of unique and enjoyable events for any player to enjoy, whether it is the novice or the professional. Each type of competition has its own features and benefits, some attuned to a more social side of learning while others are for those wanting the skills they have attained to be shown off. Here is a beginners guide to all the major competitions hosted at most competitions:
Main Events:
Circle Competition
Circle is a very fun and enjoyable competition that everyone can use to relax and just have some fun. The circle competition requires 3-4 players minimum, arranged in the kicking order of beginner to the most highly ranked player. Circle competition has a few variations around the world, however the most used model revolves around a 2 round game.
The first round of circle is called the ‘density’ round. In this round, the main aim is to just hit as many different and unique tricks as you possibly can without dropping. Once you drop, you appropriately pass the bag over to the next player who will commence their run. In each round, you get 3 attempts to impress the judges with your skills. The only rule associated with this event is:
- If you drop the bag before reaching 3 contacts, the player is given a second attempt or ‘passback’ (you must pass the bag to the player, usually it is good etiquette not to pick it up yourself for a passback). However, on the second attempt, any drops lead to the end of your turn and you must pass it onto the next player.
The second round of circle is called the ‘difficulty’ round. In this section, players must hit their hardest tricks and links. Each player is given a score for each of the 2 rounds. Usually, the highest placed person (sometimes 2nd place as well) advance to the next stage of the competition.
Circle competition is a good way to relax and just play to your strengths. It is fun for all levels of players and doesn’t require any real preparation to compete in.
Below is an example of the circle competition:
Routines
Every sport, that has many variations in competition, always seem to have the decider, most important event that would crown the best of the world. In Footbag, the official event to achieve the ‘Champion’ title is from winning routines at the event. Routines are a very basic and easy competition to comprehend. It is very similar to a gymnastics rhythmic routine, where it revolves around roughly a 2-3 minute performance. Each performance is graded on difficulty, creativity and length. Difficulty is self-explanatory, creativity covers how ‘on beat’ you are to the music that you have chosen and the uniqueness of your routine, and length is just to ensure you don’t go over or under the time limit (you get penalized if you do). You get penalized for drops, which are usually the deciding factor between players of the same skill. Routines don’t require an extremely difficult performance to progress further at an event. Generally, the creative routines are seen to be the most impressive (even if it isn’t the winning routine). If you can’t hit too many difficult tricks, you can be creative and still achieve a good result for a routine. Showing off tricks that no one performs during a routine is a sure way to get a good score in creativity. In this way, even the most basic of players can come up with a routine and progress with it.
Below is one of the most creative routines I have seen (even if the difficulty isn’t world class) and is a routine you must watch before you die, enjoy a masterpiece:
(Note: This is a little over the top, but its very creative)
Shred 30
Shred 30 is a very unique and enjoyable event. In shred 30, you have 30 seconds to perform as many different tricks as you can. In Footbag, there is something called the ‘ADD system’; each trick has been assigned a number of ADD’s (this doesn’t mean a trick is more difficult if it has more ADD’s). Tricks that are given an ADD score of 3 or higher are considered ‘uniques’. Also, performing the same 3 or higher ADD trick on the opposite side is also considered ‘unique’. ‘Uniques’ are used as a multiplier to calculate your personal score for the event. However, once you perform a ‘unique’, it cannot be considered a ‘unique’ again. This means if you hit the same trick 30 times, for example pixie legover (open switch in the new naming system), you will only receive 2 ‘uniques’ (one unique on each side) that will be a multiplier. The only other rules is that a drop is considered a 0 add trick and is added to the score calculator as a contact, and in a female shred 30, 2 ADD tricks may be considered unique depending on the competition organizer. Once you ‘drop’, you simply pick the bag back up as quick as you can and start kicking again (you only have 30 seconds remember). Below is the formula for calculating a shred 30 score.
Shred30 score = ADDs*(1+(uniques/contacts))
This competition therefore revolves around precision and being both sided. In this competition, a drop isn’t as harmful as a routine, however it can damage the rhythm of the player. Shred 30 is a fun way to express how good you are at linking hard tricks, also it can be used as a tool to drilling in those links you want to.
Below is a example video of a shred 30 run:
Sick 3
A pretty self-explanatory competition, it revolves around linking you three most difficult tricks you can think of together. A player receives multiple attempts at hitting a safety and a main combination. The amount of attempts allowed for players varies between lots of competitions, but generally you get 3 attempts at your safety and 3 attempts at your main.
Other Events
Request Competition:
Request competition is very unique and relies on your skill at hitting a wide range of tricks and links. Usually, it is a competition of 15 or more rounds, each round consisting of two different links. To progress to the next round, you must hit one of the two combinations cleanly. You get three attempts at a combo each round and, if you fail all three attempts, you will be eliminated. The rounds will continue until one person is left standing. The last person standing is obviously the winner of the event. You may change which one of the links you want to hit during a round, meaning you don’t have to decide on one or the other.
Shred Battles
My personal favorite, shred battle competition is simply whoever is the last man standing wins. The only rule is you must play to your level. This ensures that a beginner could in fact beat an expert in this competition (This is probably why shred battles are not a part of the World Footbag Championship competition). However, shred battles are a fun way to settle an argument and a just generally fun.
Note: There are many other variations of Footbag competitions, some do not require any ‘tricks’ at all. For example two square/ 4 square and Footbag golf. Both of these events are exactly the same as normal two square and golf, but with a footbag.
Also known as Symposium Quantum Quantum Butterfly
Pawel Manages to his this seldom seen set very cleanly!
The Stanford Footbag Crew … plus world champion Milan Benda throw it down in this video taken and uploaded by Brian Sherril!
Pretty impressive video from the current world champion. One of the first, if not the first, legitimate 5 dex tricks landed clean.
And here we go………………….
Here is a brand new video showcasing Canadian Footbagger, Jay Boychuk. Filmed at 300 frames per second, it shows a great new perspective for newcomers to the sport.
The results event 4 are shown in this video, in order from 8th place to first place!
Congratulations to the winner, as the overall season winner of the $500 will be announced early this week!
Hey Fellas! Its been a long time since my last post, so in my return i got something special for you from Norek Dudzinski. It was insane! Enjoy!
The Future of Footbag Freestyle, By Honza Weber
Recently I watched couple sideline videos from various years World championships and in the background I was hearing all the names of great players from the past being read in their pools and it forced me to think about the past of the sport and of course its future. Let`s be honest because there is not many of us left here in freestyle. That is also why I mentioned the word “freestyle” in the title of this article. I have to diversify between freestyle and net because, let`s be honest again, these sports do not have much in common except all the freestylers switching to net when they grow up, which leads us to the first downfall of freestyle, the age. When you are young enough, it is very easy to be obsessed with freestyle because you can improve quite fast, but when you get older, not only that it is hard to keep up with the young players, you also fight with the flexibility of your body and the fun can be gone with the same speed it appeared.
The other reason for footbag freestyle breakdown is other freestyle category, freestyle football. This very young sport, which gained attention of thousands of people around the World (including our fellow bloke Vasek) in the beginning of the new millenium, managed to overgrow footbag in a small fragment of time that footbag had existed. When I first entered the freestyle football community, the players kept talking about “freestyle”, not “freestyle football”, just “freestyle”, which I could not understand. I was asking myself “Are they really that cocky to think they can overcome the meaning of the word and implement it only to their sport? What about freestyle… jet ski 
, bmx and so on?” When I did realise how widespread has the sport and the community become in such a short time, I start to understand.
Not only has freestyle football gained players, but also media attention because people can simply see what is going on, which is sometimes very hard with footbag. Visibility of footbag has always been a problem. Even though the media wanted to make some reports on footbag, it was just impossible with the small footbags the players are allowed to use. There is a solution now though, football and all the freestylers who can handle it.
The current freestyle footbag community has one big problem and that is the lack of new players. Great amount of older players has quit the sport, but there is nobody to compensate the losses. The 12th annual Todexon tournament just happened here in Prague last week and there was 7 registered players for the event. Yes, 7 players, that is ridiculous! I remember in 2003, there were over 80! We had to have 3 rounds and we had to start with the routines at 10AM to be able to make the finals on time at 8PM. That was incredible! Milan told me how angry he was when he saw just those 7 registered players and I understood. He worked really hard for many years to become the top player and now he has no competition and it seems as a waste of time for him and wanting him to quit the sport as well as all the others before him.
Steve Goldberg also visited Prague last week for 13th time in his life and I still remember what he told me during Todexon, “There is no passion for the sport anymore” and I again had to agree. It seems just like a duty for the players to come to tournaments and compete. To compete is also harder than ever before, freestyle has reached an incredible difficulty level and there is basically no bad or intermediate player competing these days and therefore it is very easy to finish lets say 10th out of 10 competitors.
“It looks to me like our history, running on repeat, over and over” are words from the latest song of my favorite music band “Looptroop Rockers”, but these words have also the same meaning as a story about history of frisbee freestyle Dexter told me some time ago. The sport almost died during the 90s, but the community managed to survive and is even evolving these days. I think footbag is also really close to “extinction” these days and it is really just up to us to save it because nobody else will or can help. One way could be to force the players to compete with big bright visible bags and make the sport more suitable for media, which could afterwards attract sponsors and bring some money and more people. I know it is probably not the best compromising solution, but in my opinion it is worth trying. I still remember when I saw Jorden using such bags for his routine and I thought he was crazy, but now it seems like a good idea. I just hope people like Queency, Steve, Red, Daryl and Dale will not give up that easily and together we manage to ensure there will still be any footbag freestyle players and tournaments when our kids ask us “What is this?” and they will be holding a beautiful 32 panel bag in their hands.
Honza Weber
Cool Video everyone hope you check out Clavens showcasing his freestyle footbag skills and keeping to amaze us with it! Hope you enjoyed it.
Source: www.footbag.org/
Name: Scott Davidson
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Website: http://footbagfreestyle.blogspot.com/
See all Scott Davidson Posts here!
Check out my youtube playlists of freestyle footbag videos…
The reason for this post was to let you know that I have reorganized my 100 youtube videos into playlists, located at my channel:
http://www.youtube.com/footbagenlightener
and click on the Playlists option.
See videos in the following categories:
-Competition Videos (23)
-Contest Videos (8)
-Doubles Freestyle
-Footbag in the News
-Lunch Shred Videos (46)
-Promo Videos (17)
-Youth Outreach
More categories forthcoming…
Happy St. Patricks Day! I was shredding that day and made a quick little video on my phone, but when I published it to youtube, I selected ‘private’ and so no one saw my video. Honestly, the phone app failed 5 times before it published, so I had to retype, on the phone, all of the details each time, even with copy and paste, it took forever. Frustrating. Now it is up, and ready to view…
Name: Derrick Fogle
Location: Columbia MO
Site: http://h4x354x0r.com
See All Derrick Fogle Articles
I kicked for over 3 hours today. w00t! Happy St. Patty’s Day!
Amazingly enough, I only filmed 5 rallies: 3 duds, and 2 like this. It was an awesome session, even with the chaos from the Frat boys and their dunking tank. There was coffee earlier, violently green drinking cups later, and the dunk tank crew supplied the tunes! Got new batteries for the boom box, then didn’t even need them.
I repaired Prissy, but not quite well enough; there’s still one spot where beads are still leaking. But, I brought an old net bag this time, and sure enough, the power hacker dude showed up at the end. So, I totally saved my freestyle bags this time. I even gave the guy the old net bag when I left.
My Speaker Circle presence so far has been to go long on rallies, but lame on difficulty and variety. Sometimes it seems like this old body needs to go lame on difficulty sometimes. I’ve been flogging (footbag blogging) for 2-1/2 years now, starting at 45. I’ll be hitting 30 years of footbag at the start of July, and 48 years of age at the end of August.
If there’s anything I can say is an age-related degeneration, I’ll have to spend half the time talking about general aches and pains, and the other half about the loss of motion range tolerance. For someone that used to do a lot of jumping stuff, I can barely get off the ground now. Landings often seem stiff and painful.
But still, for a guy my age…
I’m in great fucking shape. And I think I owe a lot of that to footbag. Just sayin’…
3:00/16:00 – Thanks for tuning in!
A Documentary video of David Clavens. Its a cool video about some information about him. Its really interesting hope you enjoy it!
Hey Fellas! check out this video of Ales Zelinka and Honza Weber. Damn it was epic! Those guys got some serious skills to show for us. I truly enjoyed it! So better watch it!
