Doubles: Anti-Spin and Isolation Grips (Holding Patterns)

Doubles Anti-Spin / Isolation Grips (holding patterns.)

Time to get to knitty gritty with thumb end and pinky ends... Eurgh

The thumb end is the end the thumb points to if it were laid flat on the staff while you were gripping it normally.

The pinky end is the other end. (the one your pinky finger is closest too)

These technically aren't grips, but are body positions related to grips and which way round the staff's are. I'm going to use grips in this post to mean that. Maybe some new terminology is needed here.

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My favourate grip: both thumbs pointing toward each other.

This is true doing anti-spin or isolation with doubles.

I find that both pinkies pointing towards each other feels a tad odd. It's not a lot different, just your hands are the other way around. So for both thumbs, your plams are facing down. With both pinkies, both plams are facing up. (feels more open.)

so obvisously you can do a half turn of the staff, (half a beat) to get to the other 'grip'. Both pinkies to both thumbs.

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Then of course, you have one pinky - one thumb. This is a more normal grip for isolations, as it will occur naturally out of parallel reels.

Either way is possible of course: forwards, left pinky in, right thumb in, ;; forwards, left thumb in, right pinky in and so on for backwards.

Anti-spinning with these non-homogenous grip patterns feels odd to me, but only because I haven't practised it as much. Strugz I think uses this grip lots.

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I talk about all these things in parallel but it all applies to butterfly too obviously.

Recently a lot of butterfly anti-spin has involved switching ends of the staff to get extra beats and make the pattern look different. This means the ends pointing at each other switch also, and you get the other grip.

other ways of switching between 'grips' are to speed up one staff hence only switching it's end. Change your grip without letting go of the staff by squirming your hand around a bit. Do a throw and catch in the alternate grip. Stop one staff for a beat while letting the other carry on... etc. Lots of ways.

There's only a few moves I know that actively require a certain grip in order for them to work, mostly due to immediate snaking as you do the move.

So this knowledge isn't that useful.

Apart from:

The way you hold the staffs affects how the movement looks and how your body moves.

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Then you get into snaked isolation and snaked anit-spin territory.

So you can snake an anti-spin to get an extra beat out of it, or you can hold it in snake and do the entire anti-spin like that. Or you can use inside planes (or any other method) to get out of the extra snake.

There are plenty more snaked grips. I will have to go experiment to discover all of them... or at least so I can write them down accurately.

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in other words: learn all moves with all the different grips. (and then with 3/4 grips... )

incidentally, you can do fun hybrid patterns with two staffs if you hold of centre.

*carries on reading uberpost*

mm. nice post, mop.

once you've got a bit more freedom with how you hold the staff, and more familiarity with the types of grip you can use, you allow yourself soooo much more room to adapt to new moves, and to use the whole bunch together smoothly. i'd go on, but i think you've covered it, pretty much.

antti teaches a similar thing for throwing that's utterly awesome.


R

incidentally, i used to call a 'holding pattern' a default that you went back to while you were just playing, and waiting for the next move to come along..... now i call it a default pattern

hybrid as in the poi term or hybrid as in mutated?

I couldn't think of anything better than holding pattern... grips doesn't cover it either, as it references the other hands grip... brain is useless...

hybrid like the poi term.

'grip direction'

I think I've tried this, and it feels not much like the poi version. Feels like moving an isolation around...

I think it's better with bfly hybrids... I learnt those with sticks...

I wonder if it feels real different with 3/4 grips...

hold one with the long bit away from you, and one with the long bit towards you, and move both hands together. its like an isolation, but with the hands moving together.

Cheers for this! Never really think about the gripping technique. My hands and fingers usually bend to the will of where the staff wants to go...!

so further on:

The three beat weave, translations and how they relate to "holding directions" / "grip directions"

Translations:

Translations can be done in both forms of grip, (heterogeneous: both thumbs pointing in or both out, homogeneous: thumbs both pointing up or both down, pointing in the same direction in other words, not both in and both out. homogeneous is the grip you'd do reels in, or spin 'normally' in.)

'normal' translations occur in the homogeneous grip. If your in a heterogeneous grip then you have to snake your wrists to translate.

doing one high one low parallel anti-spin and then translating in the middle before going back out to anti-spin, (instead of isolating round) is only possible if your in the homogeneous grip.

Weaves:

The heterogeneous grip is the grip in which a three beat weave (one hand snaked) / a two beat 'aussie' weave / locks and unlocks is done in.

Typically a four beat weave (where you snake both your hands) will be done with a homogeneous grip and hence can be done out of normal spinning, whereas the three beat requires a end change.

so, what i really meant to post under the weaves section:

When you go into a normal 3 beat weave, from the hetergenous grip, you'll do if from the pinky together grip. and typically the hand underneath with snake and the hand on top will always be 'free' / unsnaked.

But you can also do a three beat weave out of the thumbs together grip, and in this one, the hand on top does the snake, and the hand underneath is 'free'

further to that, weaves are fun because you do all sorts of weird things with them, namely, put the low hand btb when you cross your body, or put the high hand behind the head when you cross. or both.

Olives move is I think where you do the btb with the low hand, and the top hand is really pushed to the other shoulder as you cross.

typically if you attempt translations while holding in the hetergenous grip pattern, (the one that isn't good for translations) you'll be forced into a higher beat weave.