The Official HOP "I just learned a new move" thread

aston: Wednesday is the perfect time for you to practice isolations

thirteen: How are you doing with isolations? I had a look at them on the tutorial videos and can't quite get my brain wrapped around them just yet.

As for me, thanks to aston's advice and Derek's tutorial videos I've got (or at least I think I have) backwards 3bt weaves down I can also turn using it, which is miraculous for me! So great excitement all over

I'm half practicing stalls, but am completely useless at them, to the point that I actually wonder if I need a certain kind of poi for them, that's how useless I am

thanks aston!

ash, more good work backward 3bt is so awkward at first. being able to turn between that and forward and back again is so useful though, and then you'll be doing fountains, one of my favorite moves... so pretty.

and isolations are... hard, lol. I get the theory and I can do them but they look terrible right now. need a lot of practice until I can do them cleanly and consistently. haven't touched them in a couple days actually, I spent last night polishing reel turns and trying out pirouettes (very hard in a small apartment...) not to mention practicing air wraps (which are more consistent than isolations for me, but not good enough to use in freestyle yet)

so to sum up I'm working on: isolations, reels, pirouettes, and air wraps.

yeah I have the ADD, I think.

Ash: Look at SwayingDaisies' channel on Youtube. One of the best stall tutorials around. Heavier poi can make your stalls a little crisper as well, but without knowing your current weight that does not help much.

Now that you know the weight of my poi, should they be heavier?

pmji - one of the advantages of sox (or cones) with rice for weights is that they are almost infinitely adjustable.

I kept on adding more rice a spoon at a time 'til I found a weight that suited - I went up when I was learning 5 beat weave and polishing my upward stalls.

Ash: those you haveare fine, if a little hard. I would prefer a different tether and a swivel, but that is pure preference. I like your poi a lot.

been working on a lot of stuff. most recently have been tackling my fear of butterflies; today I learned how to stall from a weave into a butterfly and back into a weave. I was messing around and decided I like stalling the same poi twice in a row and never actually entering the butterfly. it's a really awesome feeling.

still can't quite do outward TTN as well as I'd like, and even my best butterfly (inward, right hand on top) occasionally explodes in a blazing glory of clashing poi, but I'm getting there.

also starting to play with short poi and transitioning back and forth between long and short poi while spinning. I've discovered that doing weaves with one short and one long poi makes it look like one poi is circling inside the other. any other suggestions on stuff to try with one short and one long?

oh and I've learned my first flower! wall plane single-handed anti-spin four-petal is the only thing I'm comfortable with, but still - so cool! I can tell that learning these is going to be so much fun once I feel ready to push them further.

*looks at thirteen with sad eyes*
Where and how do you find the time???

Well done thirteen! You're seriously styling at this point

thirteen: you can have a lot of fun with switching which hand stalls in a butterfly. I came across a fun way of doing it a couple years ago which I still use from time to time. Good work though, you are making some nice progress.

Ash: Give some thought to what you want to learn next, and I can give you a hand on Wednesday if I can find a vehicle to get down to DBN in.

thanks ash! I usually practice around an hour a day when I get home from work, sometimes more. it takes some dedication, but it doesn't hurt that poi is more fun than just about anything else I could do with my free time!

aston: how do you do it? if it's not too hard to explain, sometimes putting poi into words is awkward. and thanks as well

Not too hard to explain. Basically, inward butterfly, stall over one arm. Hold the stall until the other poi is coming up on the outside and bring both up together. Keep them together for part of a rotation, until the poi you stalled over the top is coming up on the outside. Normally it would start wrapping here, so do a horizontal stall and bring it back into your normal butterfly. This can then be repeated with the other poi.

I think I do it slightly differently, since I do not really care which butterfly I do, but that was the original conception of it.

Hope that that makes sense. If not, can do you a video in the coming week?

I think I get it. you're saying you stall the same poi twice in a butterfly, once over the arm, then back around and under in a horizontal stall, which allows you to go back into the butterfly. then you can stall the other poi and keep going.

if that's right, I was doing the reverse - starting with a weave, stalling one poi horizontally between my body and the other poi, then bringing the poi up and stalling it over the other arm, then going back into a weave.

That is right, yes. The goal for me was always to bring both poi back up together after the top stall. It can look pretty odd if you do not know what is going on, especially when done with alternating poi, since one seems to disappear and then suddenly reappear. The effect works better with fire, but it is still fun. Like I say, I do it differently now, and do not always do both stalls, but that is because I am more comfortable with all the basic butterflies than when I worked that move out.

And that is a very simple and elegant way of going into a butterfly, good work on figuring it out. Keep experimenting!

elegant is a good word for it; I keep practicing butterfly stalls of all sorts because it's such a nice feeling. definitely something I'm glad I learned, and it wasn't too hard to figure out either (though I had worked on butterflies, weaves, and stalls all on their own first - I'm sure that helped).

Is a fairly logical thing to do, I remember working it out pretty early on.

Also: semi-colon!

semi-colon is the punctuation of the gods!

Im new at spinning, i kno the basics, but i do a 3bw and bend backwards, or go on my knees and bend backwards, it has a really cool look and evry1 watching is like whoa, lol.

*shudders*

I learned corkscrew without realising that I'd learned it... Almost there with fountain, thanks to aston.

Well, you had a corkscrew on Wednesday.

And you basically have the fountain down.
I am looking forward to seeing what you work on next.

Currently trying to transition into s/d crossers smoothly and get the meltdown sorted. I can wrap each side with a beat in between but when i try to take it out things get abit squiffy =(

I've been trying to get out of my weave, reels, TTN comfort zone as i reckon i'm starting to get a wee bit stale, but everytime I try to practice something seriously I just get distracted and end up dancing grrr.

Fountain needs a LOT of work still... Will spend some time this week practicing it and hopefully get it to look smooth.

I'd like to try figure out butterfly weaves, but the tutorial is a little confusing. It's so pretty when you do it But we shall see...

Stdn: Try some constrained sessions. Basically, put limits on what you can do in a given spin. So for example, only split time moves.

Ash: The butterfly weave can be broken down. Do TTN on one side, then switch. Do TTN for a while there and switch. Eventually you can cut down on the amount of time spent doing TTN.

Quick question, do you end up doing forwards TTN, then when you switch, end up with backwards TTN?

Yes.

The ah-ha moment for me was when I realised that your arms do a forward weave on one side and a reverse weave on the other.

Cool, will mission with this and hopefully have something down by the next time I see you. Thank you friend :)x

have fun with the fountain, ash. I think it's one of the first big "ooh, aah" moves. it's really visually pleasing.

Also, a useful building block for flowers.

Hmm.... I have worked out a rough analogue to the fountain in opposites. A bit tricky for me still, but doubt it is that hard really.

About the TTN weave....
I've watched a few tutorials and found a few to be misleading.

Just some things to mention, if you are doing TTN, you can turn right or left and being doing a forwards weave. Also, you can turn right or left and being doing a reverse weave. You can of course do a fountain with a TTN weave if you like, Forwards TTN weave, to reverse TTN weave, to over your head and back to Forwads again. (Not to be confused with somehow doing a Forward TTN on both sides of your body, it will switch between forward and reverse TTN). When I refer to a weave, I refer only to the way your hands/arms move.

I found trying TTN in front of me and turning 180 degrees (moving the poi at the same time), doing a TTN on the side of me and simply moving the poi (no body turn), and of course doing a TTN in front of me, then moving it behind me with minimal turning of the waist helped me to get more consistant results...

Sorry about rambling about.... where am I? *looks around*
Oooh, dinner time. Be well!

dear btb weave,

you suck. why can't you be more like your brother, the 5bt weave? or your cousin, the btb butterfly? honestly, I feel like you're just being difficult for the sake of being difficult. cut it out.

sincerely,
thirteen