What are you working on now?

Oh, awesome! We *should* meet up and spin! About the meets, there were the Round Rock Hoopers poi meet ups on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but the group closed down on meetups.com about a month ago so I have no idea if this is still happening. It was a non-fire meet though. There's also the Texas Juggler's Society that meets at UT on Thursdays from 7-10 pm. Again, non-fire. However, the Austin Pyrotechnics Group meets once a month. I've never been to a meeting, but I assume you can use fire there. You're just in time too, since the next meet up is this upcoming Thursday at 6:30 pm. There's nothing stopping us from spinning fire though! The fire ban has been called off. So, I'm sure you can find something if that doesn't work out. Also, I have 7 acres of land that is pretty secluded outside of Austin that is perfect for spinning fire. I've been wanting to start frequent fire jams, but I don't really know many fire dancers, despite living outside of Austin.

And that's okay! I'm kind of shy too (which is probably why I don't know many fire dancers) and very reserved, so I get it.

I am the same. The dance aspect of poi is much more important to me, but you're right that tech can be integrated into it so I like to learn both.

I don't use mirrors. >.< Not for a lack of wanting to though. I typically use my sliding glass door late at night with my flow toys. That video is awesome! I've been practicing that, but I lose my balance a lot so my barrel jumping definitely needs work. I've also been trying to work in forwards handsprings somehow (stall down, handspring, continue spinning), but it needs work too. How long have you been spinning?

all those meets on thursdays... when I leave at 6 AM on thursday the 21st. 7 acres of land sounds fun though!

mirrors are so helpful. or even a video camera... I just saw a video of myself spinning and it was painful, but educational lol.

handsprings would be really cool, and definitely push things onto a whole new level of awesome

I've been spinning since January of this year, how about you?

Yeah, I don't get it. Thursday seems to be a popular day for it. It's also the day CU @ Circus meets. It's at 5 in front of the UT tower. There's no fire (or at least I don't think so), but there's a whole lot of random circus skills being practiced every week.

I agree. Acrobatics and poi look so awesome, but I very rarely see it. Actually, I've never seen it except for on youtube. Most of the spinners here are very tech oriented.

Oooh, congrats on nearly a year! I've been spinning since March. I wish I had started earlier, but I just didn't see what was so great about poi the first few times I saw it. It wasn't until I saw it done well that I got interested.

yeah the spinners here are like that too. I like it... but I would like to see more movement as well. although it can be so tempting to work on tech when dance seems unrewarding... I'm in that space right now. I want to learn new tech but I just saw a video of myself spinning and I was like "oh no, we've got movement issues to work on. so many issues."

I feel like so much of the focus in spinning is linking move to move though... that gets boring for me

Working on Butterfly variations

Over the past couple weeks I've started playing with crossers, wall plane CAPs, chase stalls, and 1.5s. My goal is to use crossers as an introduction to the BTB dimension and follow with waist-wraps, weaves etc. It's an area of my spinning that I haven't worked on much up until this point.

CAPs are super fun to play with and I'm also gradually exploring the various ways to turn with the wheel plane CAP No.2. Drex's Tech Blog is proving to be an invaluable resource!

Heh. I have most of them up to about 180 saved on disk somewhere.

got my triquetra extension wall-plane hybrid looking good in the one direction. very excited about that. now to get the other direction...

Nice work thirteen! I need to work on my triquetras. I'm not quite as comfortable in one direction as the other and I need to improve my switching.

I've been working on flow quite a bit this week. Taking a lot of inspiration from Rastaxel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUmidbeumy0). I'm struggling for consistency with my BTB 3 beat but I'm making progress slowly. Also have crossers down and will have crosser extensions nailed by tomorrow. Waist-wraps are next Oh and my LED Ninja poi should be arriving in a couple weeks! I am beyond excited!

I don't know what to work on now! I could stand to learn more inversiony stuff, but what kind? There remain hybrids I could be better with... but they're not thrilling me. I HAVE TECH POI ENNUI!

Maybe playing with my clubs when they get here will freshen things up...

thanks! good luck with your triquetra it's one of my favorite patterns and learning it really improves your mode switching, antispin, and extensions.

Welp I've got triquetra mode switches down now which feels great. I usually have a couple main patterns/ideas that I'm learning at any given time and then several secondary areas of practice. Right now one of my secondary areas is the reverse triquetra. Crosser extensions and variations have been bumped down to secondary.

Right now my primary focus is body tracing drills. Leo has an awesome drill breakdown (http://youtu.be/GMy-0_9m-5A) and I also found Alien Jon's body tracing class notes helpful (http://youtu.be/Z7FGPcKjVZ0). Even after one afternoon of practice I can feel significant improvements in my play. For example, waist wraps feel so much smoother. If you guys/girls know of any other body tracing-related tutorial vids please share

just started exploring s-s-s-snaking... LOVE it.

I've just started exploring snaking too, thirteen. It's a must for body tracing and looks amazing. Also working on more flower turns, foot work, and plane bending.

Toroid flowers!!!!! These things are awesome. A poi spinner at Freezerburn kind of blew my mind with these, so I decided to get started on learning them. Almost have it down with one poi, so now I need to work on making flowers out of them with two.

Good work guys! Sounds super exciting Unfortunately I've tweaked my shoulder so I haven't been able to spin these last two days Super frustrating but I'm using the down time to find more resources online.

Please let me know if you have links to any body tracing tutorials. The best I've found so far are from Leo and Alien Jon (linked above), as well as Mel's workshop videos part 1 and 2 which are in Russian but still super helpful (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGu4j9i9F_8) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsSWSHMPDUc). He has a mind meltdown tracing transition at the end of the second part which loves super smooth and slick. Have fun!

Leo's video on component reels for body tracing is immensely helpful. Alien Jon's is too, but I'm working on getting the reels down before I really get started with body tracing. Drex has some pretty helpful videos on it too.

spent nearly my whole practice session today working on poise and footwork, mostly just polishing up my basic circular stepping turns and eliminating unnecessary steps/wobbling/loss of balance/over-compensation. it was a nice change of pace and it's something I really need to work on more.

That sounds like time well-spent thirteen I'd definitely like to incorporate some basic martial arts patterns into my spinning in the next few months. I know that Nicky Evers has focused a lot on tai chi movements in his flow.

Yesterday, my entire practice session was spent working on foot work, under the legs, and orbitals. I'm working on too many things at once. >.<

I'm working on orbitals too! I'm currently having a lot of trouble getting out of them but I think I'll figure it out once I develop a feel for the motion.

footwork practice was time well-spent indeed, droid. did more today and I think I'll be working on this on and off for a while.

I've working on orbitals lately too, good luck with those so difficult, but so rewarding when you do it. I can't pull them off well or consistently but I'm slowly learning how to feel that middle point and they are improving... emphasis on slowly

I've almost learned that "dodging daggers" under the legs move. This has frustrated me for quite a while. >.<

my hat's off to you. UTL is something I've barely started working on!

I have so much on my plate right now but I'm still obsessed with footwork. I just figured out pirouettes last night, literally right before bed, so I'll have a lot to play with tonight.

Under the legs is hard, to say the least. Drilling with one poi makes it a lot easier though.

I think that's excellent, thirteen. More poi spinners need to work on movement. Pirouettes are nice. I can only do them with hip reels though. What have you been doing pirouettes with?

I just started pirouettes so I learned hip reels last night. need to iron them out, but I've got the idea. gonna learn shoulder reel pirouettes next. and I think I'm gonna work on same-time opposite pirouettes since they have some similar properties to split-time same-direction.

Try long arm pirouettes without poi!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m727YFlDX...mp;feature=plcp

This is a video I made a while back to demonstrate this one.

The BEST part about learning pirouettes like this, though is that when you are getting your boogie on to your favourite musics you can bust out a nifty little pirouette so you can do poi in your head without aaaaanybody knowing about it.

hey thanks for the link. I actually do those as a stretching warm-up for poi, and sometimes when I'm at work or somewhere else and can't spin... way ahead of ya!

still solidifying my rightward hip pirouette but it's looking good, so I'm beginning to work on leftward pirouettes. the dream is to learn those, then learn shoulder pirouettes in both directions, then extend those to 1.5 rotation pirouettes so I can chain them together (it sounds confusing but it makes sense - search "yuta pirouette" on youtube). I also want to learn to chain leftward and rightward hip pirouettes together, which shouldn't be too hard since they start and end in the same mode poi-wise; the only thing that changes is the footwork.

that's the dream, anyway... I am easily distracted, so we'll see how far I take this

oh, also: has anyone else ever noticed that if you give up on something, keep practicing other stuff, and come back, you'll have an easier time with whatever it was you were working on?

example: I was working on BTB weaves. couldn't do them for the life of me. I gave up months ago and decided to practice other stuff. I just tried them again last night and I can do them now they're not perfect, but they're MUCH better.

I have to say, that is so motivating - to know that as long as you practice, even if you don't FEEL like you're getting better, you definitely are

Right on thirteen! I know exactly what you're talking about haha the same thing happened to me with BTB weaves. I was getting crazy frustrated and left them for a while and now they're easy. That's what I really love about poi - the growth in your ability occurs in a non-linear fashion. Practice, practice, practice!