Forums > Advanced Poi Moves > Perception, difficulty and habits

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simian110% MONKEY EVERY TIME ALL THE TIME JUST CANT STOP THE MONKEY
3,149 posts
Location: London


Posted:
i taught a three year old how to spin a stick in an antispun figure eight the other day. It was really easy. I just showed him how to do it (a pretty simple motion of the hand) and he did it. He thought it was "ok"... shrug

Showing or talking about the same move with grown up people who spin stuff really well gets me very different reactions. They often seem amazed by this fairly simple movement, sometimes almost afraid of it, and usually totally certain that they won't be able to do it, at least not without a lot of effort.

And those experiences have made me think about:

How much of "difficulty" in learning a movement is to do with how it is percieved?

Maybe what makes a lot of moves "Technical" is how (and by who) they're discovered rather than how hard it is to make your body & poi move the way they need to move?

Is being "amazed" by a move wow bad for your learning it?
Wouldn't reacting in a more underwhelmed way umm mean that you'd be able to pick it up faster?

Is saying "i can't get my head around that" just an self-fulfilling excuse?

ALSO

How much of the "difficulty" in learning a move is purely having to override habits that you've formed?

Is there a way to learn without forming habits that you later have to break?

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."


_Clare_BRONZE Member
Still wiggling
5,967 posts
Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland (UK)


Posted:
"How much of "difficulty" in learning a movement is to do with how it is percieved?"



I think the perception of any challenge is what makes it so - otherwise it is just another task.



Isn't this why children learn things more quickly? Because they are more open to possibilities and haven't yet spent a lifetime being told what can't be done?



Learning a new spinny movement, I think, is much like learning any new skill... it takes work and practice - and an openness of mind to be able to see a positive outcome.



(Of course, there are things in life that are more demanding than others - I reckon I would find cycling the Tour de France more of a challenge than learning a BTB hyper-inverted atomic butterfly weave... (y'know, if i really WANTED to do either)

smile )

Getting to the other side smile


colemanSILVER Member
big and good and broken
7,330 posts
Location: lunn dunn, yoo kay, United Kingdom


Posted:
a BTB hyper-inverted atomic butterfly weave?!!???
man that sh!t sounds crazy!
i can't even get me noggin to accept the possibility of it!
i'd *never* be able to do that!
and so on.


great topic monkey - i agree with claire pretty much word for word.

i may have used the word 'operation' as opposed to task but other than that, its exactly what i think smile

ba little addition i'd make is that if you have never seen something done, or worse, if as far as you are aware it has never been done, the difficulty level can be raised or lowered depending entirely on your state of mind (attitude) and your approach to the 'problem' (or task/operation if you prefer wink).


cole. x

"i see you at 'dis cafe.
i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.
they do porridge."
- tim westwood


RevBRONZE Member
Bastard Newbie Messiah
1,269 posts
Location: Apparently lost in my ego, USA


Posted:
Written by: simian


Hiow much of the "difficulty" in learning a move is purely having to override habits that you've formed?

Is there a way to learn without forming habits that you later have to break?




This has been my main issue.. the only things that are difficult are the things that go against something you've pretty much trained yourself not to do..

granted the arguemtn is always made "well why is it that many of the top spinners are the first to pick up these motions.. " I think the answer is that many of the top spinners spin many different ways.. I think they also spend a lot of time drilling patterns (which is what sets experts from nonexperts wioth the same amount of experience supposedly).. and I think they are more open to finding the inherent qualities in a pattern that they dont know as such are better able to drill the componentys, (or find easier ways to drill the components) they need..

I'd love to be a newbie again.. just to have access to all this stuff at once.. sure it would be overwhleming, but think of all the 'basics' that'd you'd get to start with.. eek

More useless information courtesy of Rev...
Confusing the masses, one post at a time...
"Obviously, you're not a golfer.."- The Dude
"Buy the ticket... Take the ride..." -Raoul Duke
"FEMA has never done catastrophe planning..."-Michael Brown


UCOFSILVER Member
15,417 posts
Location: South Wales


Posted:
"I'd love to be a newbie again.."

Aight. smile so true.

colemanSILVER Member
big and good and broken
7,330 posts
Location: lunn dunn, yoo kay, United Kingdom


Posted:
Written by: UglyCowsOfFrance


"I'd love to be a newbie again.."




thirded.

(but not a newbie juggler - that just sucked)


cole. x

"i see you at 'dis cafe.
i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.
they do porridge."
- tim westwood


RevBRONZE Member
Bastard Newbie Messiah
1,269 posts
Location: Apparently lost in my ego, USA


Posted:
Written by: coleman



(but not a newbie juggler - that just sucked)


cole. x




hehe.. that's why I didnt start..

More useless information courtesy of Rev...
Confusing the masses, one post at a time...
"Obviously, you're not a golfer.."- The Dude
"Buy the ticket... Take the ride..." -Raoul Duke
"FEMA has never done catastrophe planning..."-Michael Brown


UCOFSILVER Member
15,417 posts
Location: South Wales


Posted:
I think im saying that though as I now know what there is to do with the balls on ropes thing.

When I was a newbie, half of the stuff I do today hadnt even been invented.

BTB stuff, Isolations, Tangles, Anti spin.

I think it would annoy me slightly that I kept on hitting myself so much.

So I think what I want... Is to pick up poi again for the first time, but be all [censored] hot and not hit myself, have perfect plane control etc bounce

or something like that.

RevBRONZE Member
Bastard Newbie Messiah
1,269 posts
Location: Apparently lost in my ego, USA


Posted:
when I was a newbie lots of stuff werent done yet.. BUT we were also told specifically not to do them.. *spins an atom* "no dude... your butterfly goes like this.. " -fast forward a bit- *spins a butterfly* "dude... did you know you can spin it like this.. its an atom.. isnt that cool?"

More useless information courtesy of Rev...
Confusing the masses, one post at a time...
"Obviously, you're not a golfer.."- The Dude
"Buy the ticket... Take the ride..." -Raoul Duke
"FEMA has never done catastrophe planning..."-Michael Brown


UCOFSILVER Member
15,417 posts
Location: South Wales


Posted:
"BUT we were also told specifically not to do them."

Who by?
The Wizards? umm

I dont think anyone ever specifially told me not to do something when it came to poi. Its all about experimentaion innit? smile

simian110% MONKEY EVERY TIME ALL THE TIME JUST CANT STOP THE MONKEY
3,149 posts
Location: London


Posted:
Rev: so true ubblol



i've been becoming a crap teacher recently, cos i keep refusing to give advice.



newbie turns to me with wierd thing happening with odd speeded up beats all over the place switching from vertical to horizontal planes and goes

"is this right?"



what do you say?

"No, make it look like everyone else's." ?

rolleyes



UCOF: Yes, but remember. You're special.

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."


DurbsBRONZE Member
Classically British
5,689 posts
Location: Epsom, Surrey, England


Posted:
Habits definitely come into play...

Hyperloops being a prime example - take a poi spinner who's been working on perfect flowers and immaculate planes for 5 years.
Then try and get them to make the strings tangle - really hard! Mainly (IMO) because they've spend 5 years learning not to make their strings tangle.

Same as atomics really.

Anti-spin flowers with poi I'd argue are slightly different as there's a greater amount of co-ordination going on there and it's not just a case of mind-over matter, likewise isolations.

To fully answer the question, to an extent I think you'd have to carry on and explain each move and why it's difficult - technically, anti-habitually (Good word...), physically (contorting for BTB for example)

But yes - I think to a large extent, especially when teaching "newbies" (although "not old skool" might be true also) you realise how "easy" a lot of what was considered difficult really is.

Burner of Toast
Spinner of poi
Slacker of enormous magnitude


colemanSILVER Member
big and good and broken
7,330 posts
Location: lunn dunn, yoo kay, United Kingdom


Posted:
when researching for uberpoi and my symmetry lecture/workshop i found a lovely article on pattern breaking.



it wasn't what i was looking for at the time but it is very much applicable here - hold on, i'll have a look for it...



here we go smile

(apparently its called 'assumption busting' in this context rather than pattern breaking)



https://www.instantbrainstorm.com/bust_assumptions.html



my workshop touched on this (it was intended to bridge the gap between knowing that symmetric patterns are pleasurable to watch during a performance whilst highlighting the importance of learning to regularly break your patterns).



this is like one step on from that - challenging your assumptions about what is possible with your props... ubbrollsmile



*prints out this thread cos its only one page long and already better than 90% of threads around here*





cole. x

"i see you at 'dis cafe.
i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.
they do porridge."
- tim westwood


spiralxveteran
1,376 posts
Location: London, UK


Posted:
I reckon the main problem is stopping doing things in the way that you've spent so long doing it's instinctive.

e.g. hyperloops involves breaking planes and/or then *not* moving your hands relative to each other
BF weave and antispin involve disconnecting the direction of the poi from the direction of your hands
atomics involve not spinning in parallel planes
etc etc

If you've not learnt these from the beginning they're all things you've trained yourself not to do by the time you come to learn them, so they're hard.

"Moo," said the happy cow.


FireDollJamienewbie
14 posts
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, CAN


Posted:
Written by: simian


Is being "amazed" by a move wow bad for your learning it?
Wouldn't reacting in a more underwhelmed way umm mean that you'd be able to pick it up faster?
Is saying "i can't get my head around that" just an self-fulfilling excuse?





It all relates to knowing your own pattern of learning and finding people / ways / techniques that work for you. I learned the 3-beat weave yesterday - and most of the backwards weave by accident ;P - last night at a workshop. They went through the concept of over, under, cross for each hand and then how to integrate. But for a good period of time (10 - 20 minutes) I couldn't really get why it wasn't working for me. In working to unlock the trick. I took a wholly different approach of starting with crossovers and then adding an extra spin on each side to build it up. I had an 'OH WOW' moment as I realized that I could do it, but through my own discovery as the method.

This is where having multiple people spin jam together at multiple levels of skill is a very good thing for fostering learning. I might need to understand things from a fluid and alignment point of view, where someone else might grasp a trick better based on the mechanics, if you have different people who can explain (and perform) the trick in different ways, one might take hold.

The funniest part was that I started trying the back weave and it just wasn't happening. So we moved on to how to turn around from the weave (and failed to mention to me that you'd be going backwards when you did this). I got the turn on my first try and was doing the backwards weave in under 2 minutes because it just flowed right for my brain from forwards.

I think Yoda had it wrong.
Do Try. There is no wrong! Only opportunities to learn.

oliSILVER Member
not with cactus
2,052 posts
Location: bristol/ southern eastern devon, United Kingdom


Posted:
Written by: Rev


when I was a newbie lots of stuff werent done yet.. BUT we were also told specifically not to do them.. *spins an atom* "no dude... your butterfly goes like this.. " -fast forward a bit- *spins a butterfly* "dude... did you know you can spin it like this.. its an atom.. isnt that cool?"




i think theres a reason for this, if you keep youyr spinning '2d' it makes it soo much simpler. ie, turning, there are only 2 directions (well 4, but the catagorys weave and butterfly kinda simplfy this to 2) so you know that when you turn 180 youll be doing the opposite direction.

with an atom, youve got 4 different directions and no weave or butterfy catagorys to simplify things, so you have to remember which atom your gonna get to when you turn, and as from any atom, you could turn into 2 other atoms, and there are 4 atoms you could be in, thats 8 things you need to remember if you want to trun atoms... as opposed to 2d stuff, you just have to remember one thing. so i reckon 3d stufff is approximatly 8 times as hard (probably even harder as there is much less room for sloppy planes in atoms) as normal stuff which is why at the beginning noone really mentions it.

anyway, ive got a feeling ive just been rambling nonsense off topic. but i suppose my point is that it is not sensible to try and teach newbies atoms because they are (imo) alot harder. it is not simply a case of forgetting how to spin in flat planes.

Me train running low on soul coal
They push+pull tactics are driving me loco
They shouldn't do that no no no


simian110% MONKEY EVERY TIME ALL THE TIME JUST CANT STOP THE MONKEY
3,149 posts
Location: London


Posted:
i disagree oli.



i think there's no reason not to teach people concepts early, rather than placing them on pedastals.



you can teach Mr Newbie #00038934 all about flat planes, and while you're doing it, tell him what atomics are and why they're hard. He can come to his own conclusions about what feels harder to him. Is it so impossible that he might pick up on atom weave instead of parallel planed, if it happened that he were somehow more naturally inclined toward those kind of planes?



i promise not to jump on newbies and force them to airwrap, but i will show them whatever they WANT to learn, without concern as to apparent difficulty.



"no, that's too hard." = self fulfilling prophecy

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."


RevBRONZE Member
Bastard Newbie Messiah
1,269 posts
Location: Apparently lost in my ego, USA


Posted:
I agree... its one thing to expose them to it early.. its another to force it on them... I think having the exposure to it let's them dabble with it while they learn what they want.. so it doesnt 'close' tem off to it (like we did) but doesnt overwhelm them either..

More useless information courtesy of Rev...
Confusing the masses, one post at a time...
"Obviously, you're not a golfer.."- The Dude
"Buy the ticket... Take the ride..." -Raoul Duke
"FEMA has never done catastrophe planning..."-Michael Brown


oliSILVER Member
not with cactus
2,052 posts
Location: bristol/ southern eastern devon, United Kingdom


Posted:
i agree with you simian, but i dont think i made my point very clearly... i think it is extreamly unlikely for the reasons in my other post.. that a newbie would find atom planes easier, i know when i started poi they never even crossed my mind.

Me train running low on soul coal
They push+pull tactics are driving me loco
They shouldn't do that no no no


DurbsBRONZE Member
Classically British
5,689 posts
Location: Epsom, Surrey, England


Posted:
But then you were trying to learn a butterfly, not an atomic butterfly... wink

Burner of Toast
Spinner of poi
Slacker of enormous magnitude


oliSILVER Member
not with cactus
2,052 posts
Location: bristol/ southern eastern devon, United Kingdom


Posted:
atomic butterfly is a bad name, there are no atomic butterflys only atoms. and atoms are just as easy as butterflys but a hell of a lot harder to manipulate. tongue thats one way of looking at it anyway....

Me train running low on soul coal
They push+pull tactics are driving me loco
They shouldn't do that no no no


colemanSILVER Member
big and good and broken
7,330 posts
Location: lunn dunn, yoo kay, United Kingdom


Posted:
the reason i don't teach newbies atoms is because i don't understand them fully yet.
nor can i even do everything that i know is possible with them.

whereas in comparison, i have tonnes of ways of teaching traditional '2d' poi basics.
and loads of variations that i can expand with.

i think having more than one way of explaining a technique is very important if you want to be a good teacher.

if i tried to teach atoms to a newbie, they would have to understand the one way i have of describing them and just trust me that all the stuff i say is possible with them actually is (without me showing them any of it).

i.e. i would be rubbish at teaching them so i don't try - yet.

i agree that in principle, once these areas of poi have been properly explored and are more widely understood, that there is no reason why they shouldn't be presented to newbies at the start of their poi paths.

but that is where this discussion starts to seriously overlap with the 'teaching moves' thread so i'll stop there smile


cole. x

"i see you at 'dis cafe.
i come to 'dis cafe quite a lot myself.
they do porridge."
- tim westwood


RevBRONZE Member
Bastard Newbie Messiah
1,269 posts
Location: Apparently lost in my ego, USA


Posted:
my take is kinda like this... had I started with something like atoms.. my shitty plane control would be a lot better because I would be able to use my two hands somewhat 'independently'.. .a lot more so than I can now.. I'm not saying teach them to spin everything atom.. I'm just saying that atomic excercises would be something for them to work on occasionally..

and I agree about there being no atomic butterflies.. all atoms are butterflies.. some are same directional and some arent... I know people dont' like to agree with that.. but you have because they don't have the same actual direction..

More useless information courtesy of Rev...
Confusing the masses, one post at a time...
"Obviously, you're not a golfer.."- The Dude
"Buy the ticket... Take the ride..." -Raoul Duke
"FEMA has never done catastrophe planning..."-Michael Brown


Psycho_lemmingSILVER Member
Running hippy spinning lemming
15 posts
Location: Scotland


Posted:
ubbrollsmile good thread...

Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering...


RicheeBRONZE Member
HOP librarian
1,841 posts
Location: Prague, Czech. Republic


Posted:
Does that feeling move nice meen

the look of the move is nice?



quiestion,



:R

POI THEO(R)IST


Cute Little Burning BallBRONZE Member
member
101 posts
Location: Here and There... mostly there., Germany


Posted:
Its like teaching a new guitar player to do a tremolo... i find it myself very scary mostly because i am not used to it, but once they (the newbie #00038934 and cia.) knows it exist it will wake some curiosity on it, and still they can learn the basics about guitar playing and do as well tremolo exercises wich in the near future will be very beneficial.

Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless. - Calvin 'Calvin & Hobbes'


micoBRONZE Member
freedom in chains
176 posts
Location: San Francisco & Oxford, United Kingdom


Posted:
A few thoughts:

The 'top spinners' have probably already gone a long way
to understanding how they learn, and learn better for it.

Learning a poi move is a process of habitualisation,
but the more moves you have, and the more transitions, the
closer some wierd new move will be to some form you already
know.

Bristols curiously pointless Poi Gladiators had me reluctant
to engage with anyone - I've spent all my poi days trying
not to get too close to or tangle with anyones poi - it was
comicaly hard overcoming this 'training'.

It occurs to me that 'play' learning may have an edge as it's
more about continual transitions and experimentation (with
all the open-minded self exploration that that entails) than
any 'form' learning. The later doing nothing to explicitly
encourage any positive learning attributes...

Belief is everything. The best spinners I know are more
excited by the coolness of a new idea than intimidated by
its difficulty, and this probably has a lot to do with
why they are the best spinners.

~peace is a fire~


MuskelungeGOLD Member
member
55 posts
Location: Chicago, USA


Posted:
Speaking as someone who has learned poi within the last month, I think that new students should be taught the basics, then left on their own for a while so they can experiment, then introduce them to stuff like airwraps, isolations, etc.
I had learned the very basics from this site--butterfly both directions, 3-beat wave in both directions, and not much else. After I got these down, I started to try all sorts of stuff. I figured out turns for butterfly and weaves, then started random wraps, then tried to move a 3-beat wave over the head and sideways (which I would now call a 3-beat windmill). All this stuff I had taught myself with pretty much no external input. After a while, I even started to try an air-wrap-like thing.
Then, I started looking online to see what other people were trying, and found that much of what I had come up with on my own was similar to stuff other people were doing.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that you shouldn't wait to give a new spinner too many ideas, so they can start to develop their own.

P.S.--By the way, I followed a similar track of making up my own stuff when I was learning juggling.

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.


PyrolificBRONZE Member
Returning to a unique state of Equilibrium
3,289 posts
Location: Adelaide, South Australia


Posted:
anecdote:

me juggling away doing various easy and harder tricks on 3-balls. after just finishing a run of mills mess variants a guy who has been watching comes up and says 'hey mate can you teach me that?' I start trying to show him 3 ball cascade, which he cant really manage, and after 1 minute he goes, 'nah mate I want to learn that other one...the one with teh criss crossy hands that looks really trippy'. I spent a fruitless 1/2 hour trying to teach him basic mills patterns not having any luck. at the end of it he said...hmm this is pretty hard..I go - yeah there are probly about 30 other tricks I'd have taught you before this one.

while I agree that moves shouldnt be on pedestals, I think there is often a logical reason to learn one move before another...

mm de ja vu

--
Help! My personality got stuck in this signature machine and I cant get it out!


JonnyRokBRONZE Member
Look! I'm Darth Bunny!
446 posts
Location: Sunny South Africa


Posted:
I once saw a girl who had absolutely no poi experience (didnt even know what "poi" was) pick up a pair of practice poi for the first time ever and do a perfect reverse weave on her first try. Maybe some people are just more naturally inclined to the movement. People also learn much faster with other people. Its so much easier when you have someone who knows more or less whats going on saying to you "Nah, your hands are crossing the wrong way". I also think that if a newbie wants to learn a move, he/she should. They will soon determine for themselves if its too hard or not. You might even have one of those hardcore people who'll practice that hard move day and night until they master it.

Do what you want coz a pirate is free,
You are a pirate!
Yo ho fiddle dee dee, being a pirate is alright to be,
Do what you want coz a pirate is free,
You are a pirate!


[Nx?]BRONZE Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,749 posts
Location: Europe,Scotland,Both


Posted:
yo

according to the NLP workbook,

it takes 1000 repititions for body memory to be conciouse-difficult

then another 4000 reps for it to become unconcious-difficult

and a total of 25000 reps until it is unconicious-mastered.

becasuse we are working with the body we have to set up patterns and learn them, and the process of new moves ecomes the process of breaking previously establised patterns.

so learning for the body is always about breaking each pattern, I like to think that a pattern is 'difficult' when you first learn it, 'inescapable' once you got it down and 'optional' when you have broken the pattern for its opposite.

the question is, does it matter which order you learn the patterns in?

Fu£ked if I know, go do some feild work!

T wave

This is a post by tom, all spelling is deleberate
-><- Kallisti


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