HELP! about to give up

Really good way yp teach weave, both 3 and 4 beat...

is to break them down into their components.

First spin forwards... but properly!! Make sure the poi are parallel to your body; you can check this by standing in front of a window or by aligning yourself with your shadow and feet...

Next be comfortable in crosswinging (as in cross skipping), bringing both across your body. Concentrate first on having your right hand on top then your left.

To learn the 3 beat weave is easy:: begin by bringing both poi to the same side (normally the right) and weaving them as one, in time, always keeping the right hand on top.

Next split-time... and hey you have a 3 bt weave!!

After you've mastered 3 bt weave with either hand on top, concentrate on switching from having rightt to left hand on top... it soon becomes clear that you're doing a 4 bt weave... not only that but youve also mastered 8 tricks in the process!

Good luck, and remember the frustration is always worth the pleasure youll give yourself and others once it clicks (and it will...)

al

Zoltar.

for the reverse weave, get both poi on one side of you body and then turn 180 degrees with your poi, but keep the poi going the same way. then you are doing the reverse weave, i was really frustrated with the reverse weave but then i just did this by mistake and i did the reverse, its really screwed up how somethings (mostly cool things ) happen by acciedent. try this and let me know if it works for you.

I don't know if this helps you any, but actually the way I learned the weave was discovering that the hand motions are remarkably similar to liquid or energy ball dancing... I had just learned how to liquid dance a few months prior to starting poi (read this summer), so it kinda clicked for me that way. I imagined a ball between my wrists and just rolled it between them in my head and suddenly found myself doing the weave.

And I discovered the reverse weave by trying to follow the poi with my body, turning 360 degrees. I found my arms naturally following into a reverse, and then back to forward as I turned, so I started trying only turning 180 degrees and reversing my hands (Palm up instead of down) and started doing a mutant reverse weave which I am now cleaning up.

One tip for keeping them in time is to make sure BOTH hands keep moving and responding to each other (Using my ball idea here), so that if that ball were there as one hand goes over or under the other, the other hand moves up (Forward weave) or down (reverse weave).

If you think your going to hit yourself in the nuts, drop your arms down quick and pull them toward your groin while they are on the downswing. This way they lose a lot of momentum from your downward moving arm, and if you do it right they go between your legs and stall instead of swinging up and hitting you. I feel your pain.

so this must of been some help to you darkdnb. wish i had all thi shelp at the start.

one thing tha did occur to me just recently is, do you practice too fast? maybe try spinning as slow as you can go without losing momentum. I love moving to drum and bass but i have a real problem doing it slow if i do.

Another way that is sometimes helpfull is if someone can stand behind you and 'force feed' you the move from a loose wristed split time swing. It may not be the most natural but once your hands have done the motion, it is hard to forget, even if you dont totally understand it.

Of course this only works if you have a friend wh9o can alreday do the weave

Good luck and please tell us how your doing

(and can i have some really dark low down dirty honking filling rattling drum and bass please)

Invest in a cup man, youll always hit yourself in the ... . It took me 3 min to learn that move but 3 months to get 5 bt btb rev weave. Its different for everyone, some peeps get btb easy, just have fun. Thats the secret. Oh and beer helps.

when learning the 3 beat weave i didnt suffer from too much trauma in the nether regions....however the 5 bt weave was a different matter.
instead of any proper groin protection, i found that a book thrust down your pants, held there by your belt and a bit of tape, is the best and cheapest solution.
just dont tell the owner of the book!!

if your taking a while to learn a move, try and hook up with other spinners in your area. i had help from friends to learn the weave and butterfly, but once i understood how they worked i was able to figure out most other move by myself with the HOP lessons.

and if youve had the patience to last two weeks of failure, youve got the right mindset to be a juggler!!!

cheers

Don't worry about it dark dnb. I been twirling poi off and on for about 5 yrs, and it took me forevery to get the forward 3 beat weave, I won't go into how long it took me to reverse it. Now onto bigger and better weaves, the 4 beat. Now that is a beater.

A suggestion for something softer?? Try a poi made of paper. If it hits you it doesnt hurt, if you hit someone else it doesnt hurt and if it learns to fly it won't break any lamps.

How rude for a thread starter not to come back to his/her own thread for nearly a fortnight

Seriously though..


....gimme some low dirty drum and bass!

Well I don't know abt the original thread-starter but reading this has cheered me up a little. Not that I get it yet either. I think I get the "practice with one poi only" thing, and I think I got the stickweave move down from the other website. But whenever I try to do an actual weave, the self-bruising begins!

I'll keep trying though. Poi-dancing just so gorgeous that I really want to get to a place where I can graduate from tennis balls on chains!

Any other tips or words of encouragement welcome

there is a positive side to the bruising...i went paintballing a couple of months ago and didnt get a single bruise...for that matter not a single shot that hit me hurt!! i put it down to bruise immunity enchanced by learning poi!

remember...
"al-ways look on the briiiight si-ide of life..de dum..de dum de dum..." (the tune is in my head but probably noone elses)

cheers.

I'm very new to this whole thing, but I can still remember pulling off my first 3 beat weave.

I'm assuming you're coming close to hitting yourself in the jewels.

Don't try to fight your poi back to where it came from. Everything is VERY circular and works on momentum. If the poi WANTS to go back to the left side, chances are, that's where it needs to be. If you're where I think you are, you probably already have 2 beats done and the poi is drifting back to the left side just as it's finishing up the third. Let your hand follow it over and continue the weave on the other side.

I kept fighting the poi back over to the right and significantly reduced my chances of having children.

I always find it takes me AAAAAGES to learn any new move.

There's always loads of people who have been spinning for just a few months, and they're a billion times better than me.

Trick is, if you're finding something difficult, then relax, do something similar. Maybe just do some stuff you can do, and then come back to it. Eventually you'll crack it, and being able to pull it off is very very rewarding.

Not only that, but there's noone in my area who can do a one handed butterfly, nor mexican waves. :-P i can pull some moves others find impossible. But then again, each person's different!

welp, i know I'm knew to the forums and all, but I have some advice that has worked for everyone i've showed this. get to stick, 2 cardboard tube (the kind wrapping paper comes on) or to dowel rods or SOMETHING that is about as long as the poi would be. anyways, hold them very near the end and only with your index, middle and thumb. then do the motions (greatly exagerated movements help also). Now they won't make the full perfect arc that poi do, nor will they let you move your fingers to get the motion as much, but they do give 2 VERY beneficial things to you.

1) it makes you REALLY use your wrists which is a very good habit to get into ANYWAY.

2) unless you are a complete moron, you can't hit yourself in the sacs since you have full control of the sticks/rods/tubes. (the most important benefit if you ask me!)

now, i dunno if dark has gotten the 3 beat weave since then, but one problem my friends seem to have that causes them to hit themselves in the unmentionables, is the timing of when you switch sides with your arm. Everyone, it seems, starts to cross when they can see the poi. this is a BAD idea as you have very very little time to get the poi to the other side of your body.

so how to stop this? CLOSE YOUR EYES. learning to "feel" where the poi are will REALLY help you learn other moves like the windmill (funny story, this is the FIRST moved i learned, the windmill, saw my buddy do it with glowsticks, and i practiced and practiced for ages till i got just that one move, then the weave is freaking cake after that). anyways, the point at which I start moving my arm and dragging my poi across is when i feel the poi are nearing the top of the arc (NEARING, not AT) by the time the poi are vertical i have moved 1/4 the way accross, by the time the poi are pointing out and up at about 45 degrees I have my arm 3/4 the way across. thus, when they hit horizontal you are pretty much all the way to your side and can begin to exercise control over the next part of the swing.

hope that helps!

Hey all

Ive been finding this thread really useful. ive been doing poi for about 2yrs and mastered moves like butterfly, alternate butterfly, corkscrew and windmill fairly easily.
but somehow not matter how hard i tried i havent been able to do the weave (it even caused me to give up for a while).
however now i think ive almost mastered what my hands should be doing........ just cant quite master it with the poi, but this is the closest ive ever come to be able to do it...................woooooooooooooo

Imbalance: Another thing that helps is to take a staff and hold it cross-armed and then do a weave motion. I dunno, it works for a few people I have shown but is hard to describe.

Saz: You can get it.

I learnt 3bt weave by mistake while trying very hard to do a 2bt (:
The reverse one, though ... still trying. I've been working on it using only one poi (you know, the "under, over, out" thingy) and it took my hands forever to realise what they were supposed to be doing.
It did, however, get easier when I sat down, closed my eyes and pictured myself spinning very sloooowly. After that it just kind of clicked. Maybe your mind picturing yourself doing something makes it easier to actually do it with the body. I've gotta remember that (:

This thread certainly has been interesting.

From starting with swords doing a 2 beat weave, I eventually learned, using juggling clubs, the basic three beat weave.

Now, as far as I know a 5 beat is pretty much silly to try and learn with clubs but yea.

It did take me about 2 or 3 months, with poi, to learn the 5 beat forwards weave, and I'm working now on 5 beat reverse....
I've been hit in the head so many times, I think I'm starting to get a bit of brain damamge.

I've been hit in the head so many times, I think I'm starting to get a bit of brain damage.

I've been.... j/k...

I never really liked the 2 beat weave, it doesn't feel as fluid to me. What, also, is a 4 beat weave? I had 4 beat TTN explained to me not too long ago, but 4 beat weave... There are so many moves and so little time! Oh wait, I was fired from work, so there's PLENTY of time!

I do however like the way the.... hm.... How can I put this without knowing if it has a name.... Say you were spinning both poi forward, and instead of going to split time for a 3 beat you just moved your left hand to your right side and did a beat with both on the same side then took both at the same time and moved them to your left side for 2 beats then rinse and repeat....

Now... I guess that could be a 4 beat weave, so if it is, I'll be shocked that I accidentally learned something when taking a break from Nutterflies.... *sigh* Getting a cup or a book WOULD be a good idea.

*shrug* I'm done rambling now, carry on.
=)

I'm not 100% certain I know what you're saying, meshunderlay, but I THINK I do.

Hahah, I don't mind it myself, I'll play with it... but its not a 4bt


A 4 beat weave would be if you were doing a 3 beat motion on one side and a 5 beat motion on the other...

You can also do a 3 beat weave by doing a 5 beat motion on one side and a 2 beat on the other... I like that one, actually.

Interesting Interesting.

That's how I learned 5 beat really, I was able to do the motion on one side which.... I guess because it's not followed by the second half I can see it being a 4 beat. =) Nifty.

I'll hafta play with that. So many things to think about, and thinking is one of the times when I hit myself. If I just do it and don't think about things, it usually works out better =).