A fishy business... any advice contact staffers?

flatmate & I have reached the stage where we can do a fair bit of contact stuff etc and are now moving onto trying fishtails.
It seems pretty damn hard- but as with anything we'll eventually get it with practice&perseverance. However, I was wondering if (practice-aside) anyone has any pointers as to how to go about learning how to do them.
Mr Glass, apparently from your vid, you're the dude to ask...

PS- apparently you met my flatmate (Tim from bristol) at the brixton workshop and at the BJC. random fact of the day. He would like to know where you get mr blanchy (or smt) bubble juggling balls... no clue there- i aint a juggling bloke, just play w m ba... erm. never mind.

[ 20. May 2003, 08:01: Message edited by: King Of Bongo ]

"eat the fish"

bounce.

work on half fishtails first.

try reverse you might find it easier.

eat the fish.

R

Yay, got my first coupla fishtails today!!!
don't know how, was just holdin onto the staff and doing a fishy-sort-a-movement whilst holding the staff onto my wrist with the other hand and suddenly let go and hey presto! the rear end of a fish! (bit of a botch job, not quite just the tail, but something resembling it!)
then tried it again and got something more like it...

what is a half fishtail? I can't really imagine it... I know it sounds silly, but what half would I do? where does the half start?

bounce? tried bouncing, but the staff just fell off my hand, i presume i was just being stupid and doing it at the wrong speed/time...

cheers for the pointers 1112, you sure must smell like a fish!!!
cheers bluecat (and you must definitely smell like fish cos ur a cat and we all know that cats love eatin fish!!)

sorry couldnt resist it, bit of a BJC2003 joke.

Half fishtails (if bleucat means what i think he means) are like doing a fishtail without the tricky changing direction bit. Just take the staff on the back of your hand from one side of your body to the other (again backwards is easier)

You can keep on taking it all the way around your body spinning on the back of your hand indefinitely (i've only managed a 540 so far). It stays on there because its folding round the other side of you, rather than rolling all the way round the hand and dropping off.

Alternatively you can take the staff from one side of your body to the other on the back of one hand, transfer to the back of the other to take it back, then transfer to the first hand and so on. I like this one, it looks cool but lacks the diamond hardness of the full fishtail.

Fishtails happen twice as fast as a figure 8...at least in my Experience.

Eh?

figure of eight goes at whatever speed you choose to do it, same as fishtail

(i think i just had a sudden realisation of what you mean)

You mean it switches side twice as often as a figure eight spinning at the same speed?

now i see. sorry

you got it

that hand movement seems to be twice as quick. probs cuz it is!

Josh

It really helped me to think about it in extreame terms of moving around the stick, so that you are placing youself under the falling end, and when you switch sides try not to move the stick sideways in space, rather move yourself out of the way. eventually i recon you can get sideways controle aswell but its easier to learn like this.

gotta admit i been to busy with my ball to torture myself over thease things, Ill get them tho, someday....


L8r

N <fish>

I find with forward fishtails that they work better when i sort of rest the staff at its centre on the knuckle of my index finger as it
moves from side to side and stretch my thumb outwards as much a possible to bring it round again (the tricky bit)
Some people prefer to rest it on their wrist though so just play around with it...




[ 03. June 2003, 02:02: Message edited by: Psi ]

Ok, so what's a fish tail?

Hah...So i'm not the only one who doesn't know what they are...

go to this thread and do and do a word search (CTRL -F) for "bulldozer" one of his posts has two great links to videos.

don't even try to understand it through text, unless the vids don't work

All in m opinion of course

Charles, when you say this thread, do you mean the one we're standing in right now? I tried that and it couldn't find it.

a Fishtail is basically keeping the staff spinning on the back of your hand or wrist and switching it to either side of your body, only a half rotation on each side.

EDIT: i just had to come back and say whoah there! i said that in a short clear and concise manner with no digressions or silliness or rambling whatsoever! Not even a smiley anywhere! quite unlike me really.

[ 10. June 2003, 22:42: Message edited by: simian ]

just before becoming incapacitated(oh god...another 6 days...) i was working on and getting pretty solid catching in fishtails...forwards and back too. i recommend it cause the speed change looks rather tasty

if thou needeth, here is a copy of the japanese baton realplayer clip of a fwd fishtail from a previous HoP'scussion (and that used to be online.)
please download and save the sucka (ie please don't keep reading it from the 'net) so that my website has enough bandwidth to keep this poor soul 'appy

as for the fishies..... man!, that's sooo hard! just sooo hard!!
how big a staff are you dudes twirling with, may i ask??!?!!


***edited to make cents***

If my hop video gets in there should be a closup fishtail (admittedly a bit ragged) which I do witha 5' (150cm?) staff. Have tried it with smaller and although considerably more comfotable its a bit more fiddly, a big staff knows where its going, a little one gotta be told.

L*r

N

yup. 150cm.

no what you mean thomas...