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.

You may have read our interview with world champion Honza Weber, who mentioned that a Footbag App for the iphone would soon be released. He let the team here at Shred Global know that the app is ready to go.

It has been quite a long period since the first announcement of The “Footbag” App, but it has finally been launched!

The goal of the app is simply to provide basic and necessary information about the sport for beginners and general public.

Updates will be done of course, so if you have any tips for improvement feel free to send them to ripwalker8@gmail.com

How to get the “footbag” App? Go to AppStore and simply search for “footbag” and then download it.

5 star rating would be of course appreciated and help the ranking!

It was developed by the current world champion Jan “Honza” Weber in cooperation with Plantaapps - run by Mario Plantosar (freestyle footballer), who has also developed “freestyle football” app.

You can check his triple atw with a football in this video:

You can also check the app on the internet link here:

Android users do not have to be disappointed because the App is currently being converted for the Android platform, so in the short future it will be available as well!

Have you tried the app out yet? What do you think? Any suggestions for the next update? Let us know in the comments section.

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?

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!

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

Watch the Dropless Video that secured the win for Honza Weber at Todexon 12 in Prague on April 16th

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!

Guys this is a battle between Weber and Benda. You should watch this. Epic Video!

Big thanks to our sponsors for helping out with the prizes:
Freedom Footbags
Fourkast Footbags
Bomb Footbags

And here we go … Halfway through the inaugural Shred Global Season with everything still up for grabs.

Official Info can be found here:
Current Standings
Video 1 – Bsos 3
Video 2 – The Luns

So the third event has come to fruition, and in association with Freedom Footbags, Fourkast, and BombFootbags, are pleased to announce “Flying – Ducking – Spinning”!!!

The deadline for this event will be 11:59 PM PST February 12th

The prizes being awarded for this event are:
1) points towards the $500 grand prize given to the person with the most points after all 4 events
2)$50 to the winner of the event
3) a Hania bag.
4) some various sponsored items from Freedom Footbags, Fourkast Footbags, and Bomb Bags.

The rules are as follows.
1) One submission video per person, sent to submissions@shredglobal.com on or before 11:59 PM PST February 12th.
2) The combo (3-tricks) must be started from a drop (with warmups kicks allowed prior to the first trick in the combo) and finished with a hand catch after the third trick.
3) The original set can be from anywhere you want, But the first trick must be a jumping contact or stall (with the bag leaving your foot before you hit the ground), the second trick must have a Ducking, Diving, Weaving, Zulu element, and the third trick must have a Spinning or Inspinning Element.
EX. Drop to any surface>(Trick ending on flyer)>(Trick that includes a duck)>(Trick that includes a spin)>hand catch
4) the judging criteria will be Creativity (Show me your Zulu and your Inspinning), cleanliness, and of course difficulty of the trick, with all three having the same importance for the sake of this event.
5) Any questions on this please email to submissions@shredglobal.com

Have fun guys, we look forward to all of the great submissions!

Big thanks to our sponsors for helping out with the prizes:
Freedom Footbags
Fourkast Footbags
Bomb Footbags

This is the video everyone has been waiting for, as it reveals the winners of Event #2: the Luns.

The point of the contest was to see who could catch and set from unusual surfaces the best.

The placing of all the submissions is in order from last to first…… so ENJOY!!

Big thanks to our sponsors for helping out with the prizes:
Freedom Footbags
Fourkast Footbags
Bomb Footbags

And to the Judges for taking the time to judge all the submissions:
Milan Benda
Mark Monistere
Jeremy O’Wheel

And to Eric Chang for the video!

With money on the line, and first place in the Shred Global Season standings, 22 freestylers took to the challenge of having the best 3 trick combo, with the first and third trick being the same trick started on different feet. This video, shot in order from lowest point score to highest point score, shows how the competition panned out.

Enjoy! (And please leave comments on the youtube video as well as this page to show your support for events like this!!!!)

Seeing the possibility to gain a bunch of exposure for the sport of freestyle footbag, the people at Nucleus footwear decided to sponsor some of the world’s best to perform some demo work at the 2010 Tony Hawk “Stand up for skateparks” event in Bevery Hills. Honza Weber, David Clavens, and Evan Gatesman can be shown in the video below being the professionals they are, while showcasing our beloved sport in a rare opportunity to the types of people who could appreciate it.

A big thanks to Nucleus Footwear, Honza Weber, David Clavens, and Evan Gatesman for sacrificing the time, energy, and motivation needed to help push the sport to as many people as possible.

On watching the video again, it was just his middle section that let him down. Within a short period he made a number of mistakes, which led to more drops, but he actually finished very strongly.

Name: Honza Weber
Location: Czech Republic
Website: www.honzaweber.com

Honza Weber Nucleus Session from Honza Weber on Vimeo.

Between helping revolutionize the sport of Freestyle Footbag as well as train for the upcoming World Championship’s in August, it would seem that trying to get a hold of Czech superstar Honza Weber would be tough. Luckily for Shred Global, our own Will Digges was able to get an exclusive interview with one of the best Freestylers in the history of the sport.

Will D – Thanks for taking the time to give us this interview! How exactly did you get interested in Footbag? How were you introduced to the game?

Honza W – In 2000 there was a huge Starburst (candy company) footbag campaign here in Prague and almost every young boys tried the game. Not me though. I am trying not to do what the masses do and so I started a year after in 2001 when almost everyone forgot about Starburst and footbag as well. I knew some basic tricks from some guys from school and I searched for other moves on the internet and learned them from videos. After like 4 months I met players like Dexter and Tomas Tyrpekl and started playing with them. It was a lot easier because I was given many tips on how to improve and it worked!

Will D – What are you looking forward to most at Worlds 2010 in Oakland, California?

Honza W – Well, if everything goes smooth for us in Czech, it is gonna be first World Championship with all the top players since 2004. That means huge challenge and opportunity for everyone. The last few years the events were also becoming more and more professional, so I hope that the conditions for the players will be even better this year! It really looks like so far. I am partly cooperating with the organisers and I must say I am always happy to hear the news they have. The judging will be also crucial this year, more than ever because the competition is gonna be incredibly tight. Hopefully everything will work this year and there won`t be any similar mistakes in judging like at Florida in 2007. Well, they say you can`t cross the same river twice.

Will D – What do you think your chances of winning Routines are this year?

Honza W – I was in really good shape last year. I lost a lot of weight and tried some new practise methods, which obviously worked. Unfortunatelly I did not perform well in the crucial momets and that cost me dear. I have kept the shape more or less the whole year and I am really looking forward to show my improvement and of course I am gonna go for the victory. I think I have good 50% chance.

Will D – How do you think the future of Footbag will unfold?
Compared to 4 years ago, how has the Footbag community changed?

Honza W – In 2006 the community was really big and widespread. Since that time it has changed a lot in my opinion. There is a lot less players and the level has gone a lot higher. The current trend is that not very succesfull players leave the sport and so there are just the good ones left. In the past the sport used to be more about fun, random people used to join it because the level was not that hard and they could easily reach the top or at least take place in the center of the community. This “specialization” discourages many of the new potential players and closes door for most of the general public, but only in combination with no commercial succes, which is exactly what is happening these years.

Will D – Was this change for the greater good? Would you have done anything differently?

Honza W – I think the trend I described in the previous answer is something like natural selection and so inevitable. If that was a change for greater good is hard to say. It depends on the point of view, there are pros and cons. The same thing happened to frisbee and the sport became a lot smaller and less popular and did not recover from it until now. It will be interesting to see what way will footbag choose and how it will develop. It depends mainly on the players and the committees. In my opinion there many things to be changed in the structure of the competitions. We have to make everything more friendly for the audience and more interesting for the commercial sphere and entertain some big companies. Freestyle Football did these steps and has been experiencing great boom in the last couple years. This is something we have to do as well and it will bring us more players to the community as a reward.

Will D – Name one upcoming young shredder that the community should be keeping their eyes on?

Honza W – Very interesting question I must say. I took quite some time to think about that, but I simply cannot see any new footbag „superstar“ in the crowd of young players. It could also be just due to my ignorance, but I am quite confident in fact. It is also possible that I just cannot distinguish the talent inside the players like for example I did not think that David Clavens would become that good after I had seen him in Montreal 2004. On the other hand I predicted bright footbag future to Ilja Mitrofanov, but he quit the sport very early… unfortunately.

Will D – If you had to pick a pair of Feet, legs, arms and torso from any Footbag players to create the ultimate shredder. Who/what would you pick?

Honza W – Ok, I guess I would take Milan`s legs, Karim`s feet, Yacine`s torso, hands from Ales and my head, which I was not asked for. It is actually quite dissapointing to realise I would not choose any of my parts as the best in the sport, but I think the combination of my limbs has worked also very well in the past and hopefully will improve in the near future.

Will D – What is the funniest/most memorable moment in Footbag that you can recall?

Honza W – There are just so many, so it is really hard to pick a particular one. Well, there would be a hilarious one including Vasek in Vienna during his final routine, but considering we have some younger readers I guess it is not the right one to choose. I guess the most memorable momnet for me was the few long seconds after I did my final routine in Montreal 2004 Worlds. It was just unbeliavable. I felt I could… do everything. Just incredible, even now it is almost impossible to describe the feeling from back then. It was also big satisfaction after previous Worlds and I guess even best moment in my life. Those, for me, precious seconds I will remeber forever…

Everyone at Shred Global would like to thank Honza for taking time out of his schedule to give us all a look into his throughts on Freestyle Footbag, and his quest for a world championship!

Fourkast Footbag Company
Location: Oregon, USA
Website: www.fourkast.com
See all Fourkast Posts

New Honza Video Link

I don’t think Honza Weber needs much of an introduction. He is the second most winning freestyle footbag player in recent years. He has played for nearly ten years and is from Prague, CZ.

Asmus: Hello Honza. How are you?

Honza: Hello, thanks for asking, I am doing very well. Just today I played foosball with Rippin`s friend, who is like number 2 in the World and came here for the Czech Foosball Champs, so it was a great experience.

Asmus: Let’s start at the beginning. You started playing footbag back in 2001. How did that happen?

Honza: Long story short ☺ I was lucky to be attending the same high school as couple of guys, who were the first ones to play in Czech. I was kinda shy back then to ask them if I can join their circle, so I was just watching them and started playing some time later with my classmate and after 2 months I was better than those guys, which was great feeling ☺

Asmus: And then next year you got 2. at euros and the year after that 4th at worlds. How was it attending your first worlds?

Honza: Ye, it was astonishing! I was really really happy about my 2nd place at Euros 02 in Budapest, it was a huge success for me because the competition was just so tough that year- all the german players came as well as the Finns, simply amazing tournament and experience.
Actually my first Worlds attendance was also in 02 in San Francisco, but I was eliminated in the semis. I had good routine and was quite in shape, but I was just unexperienced and there was some mess up with the schedule, so I had to go on the stage without warming up and I did not do well ☹ The next year I came a lot stronger with better style and routine, but knee injury held me back. Actually I figured out I had still been unexperienced and just practiced too much during couple weeks before the tournament. I still should have been 3rd because my routine was just a lot better and harder than Yacine`s who was actually 3rd. I guess I would not care that much, but since it was first big tournament in my home city, where my friends and parents could see me, I wanted a podium finish which I deserved, but the judging was very sad and disappointing for me..

Asmus: What where your goals and thoughts on the sport in those early years?

Honza: I was just so obessesed with the sport! I wanted to compete, to go to every tournament, to win as much as possible, to beat the best players, to prove I could also be one of the best, to invent new moves, to make videos and DVDs, to leave legacy, to be remembered! It was just unbelievable! Wonderful time, but a lot yet to achieve..

Asmus: You, Ales and Vasek really blew up back then. How was your relationship, was it friendly competition? In what ways did you influence each other?

Honza: Well, occasionally we had some fights because we were young and silly, but overall we really supported each other and we were giving each other advices on routines and for example I chose them music and did the basic choreography for their doubles routine in 03 and also for their singles in 03 and 04 in Montreal. In return they helped me with my style and some moves I was not able to hit like eggbeaters, quantums and symposiums. I think the strongest relationship was between 02 and 04. We formed a great team and I really enjoy to remember those times!

Asmus: Last year at worlds you looked in better shape than ever. Do you agree and why was that?

Honza: True, I was about to quit in the whole 2007 because I could not find any motivation and neither inspiration for the game and after another dissapointment with the results at Worlds 07 I was almost sure I was gonna quit, but decided to wait for another year and to think it through. I was kinda lost in the whole 08 and did not do well at tournaments and did not achieve much in other parts of my life, so I decided to make radical life changes. Instead of quitting I started to take it seriously, I lost 12 kilos in 3 months and that helped my game a lot. I have also changed the attitude and you could have seen the results during the summer in Berlin. This year I expect to be even much stronger in much better shape for the summer, but to be able to go to Worlds I still need to get some sponsor because it is just too expensive for us in Czech. So if anyone is interested…?

Asmus: Now, back to the future. How does an average day in the life of Honza look like?

Honza: Well, I usually wake up at 8 and immediately go to check my email, which wakes me up even more. Then I have a cup of coca or mint tea with honey ☺ I do not really eat in the morning, so after the morning beverage I start to either work on some articles for the school lessons (I am doing masters in economic policies and history) or when I have time I work on some footbag promotional materials- I am trying to put together some professional material for potential sponsors, which is actually a lot of work if you want to do it properly. After the lunch I go to school for couple hours (I am just sooo happy I managed to schedule all the lessons in the afternoon, so I do not have to wake up early ☺ ) When I get back I usually go to kick and workout and then I have a dinner. I watch the news in the evening and then it depends how tired I am. Sometimes I still do some work to school or for the promotion or I just watch a movie and fall asleep ☺

Asmus: What part of your game are you working on right now?

Honza: Actually I am not really trying to practice new moves or combos anymore. Instead I have just been practicing some cool moves, which look good for the audience, trying to hit the normal stuff with big bags I have for demos (either the glowing bags or juggling bags I got from Peter Irish). Lately I have been also practicing freestyle with football because people demand it during the demos. Of course I still go for a normal session, but I just enjoy the stuff I can already hit and just trying to make it cleaner with better style. Style is everything! When 2 people are doing the same it is definitely not the same! I wish people could understand that and stop trying to hit insanities with no style and execution.. :/

Asmus: In the video included here you play in the new Nucleus shoe. What do you think about it?

Honza: Ye, actually I was quite surprised by the quality of the shoes. I was a little skeptical when I saw the first pictures, but since I tried them and my heels did not come out of the shoes after landing some moves just like in Quantums I was quite impressed ☺ In the video I managed to hit some new moves and fresh combos, which I was satisfied with considering I have not really played the first 2 months of this year due to the injury and I just started playing more often before Todexon. Also it was just second session I had in the shoes. I guess I will still keep playing in lavers because I am just so used to them, but I can recommend Nucleus as a solid footbag shoes. They might also help to improve style and execution as well, which I find the most important!

Asmus: Could you talk a little about what place footbag have in your life right now?

Honza: After the decision to get back to the game is footbag very big part of my life. I found a way how to enjoy the game much more and the new footbag generation inspired and for example it is quite a big motivation to keep up with guys like Milan. Especially Milan because after Vasek got more interested in freestyle football these days Milan became the best player in the World. I can now see the disagreeing faces of many ☺, but without any doubts or questions he is the best player at the moment! His stamina is magnificent, his execution is spectacular and the combos are just insane! That is actually why we teamed up for doubles this year ☺, so hopefully we will be able to find time to prepare nice and solid routine.

Asmus: If you could change one thing in footbag what would it be?

Honza: It is so hard to pick just one thing. I would love to have professional judges in the sport, but I would also like the sport to be more famous with better acceptance from the general public, which would probably bring more professionality. More mature people with organising skills could help as well. On the other hand it is hard to guess what would be the consequences of that.
It is very hard question, however I would probably want the sport to be more commercial and we will see what would happen ☺

Asmus: Thanks alot for the interview Honza. Best of luck in the future.

Honza Weber from the Czech Republic, Filmed at World Championships Berlin 2009. This video shows exactly what great style looks like, and what it takes to win championships.

Filmed/edited by Jacob Dahlstrup.