Forums > Advanced Poi Moves > I have an idea that could benifit all spinners, new and seasoned. Please offer feedback.

Posted: 8th Sep 2010
Ive already got a good prototype, it just needs to be completed, and maybe some fresh ideas for its composition. do i have any volenteers for a collaboration?

Posted: 8th Sep 2010
Pendulums open up an entirely different spreadsheet. Also you forgot about antispin. As well as different hands doing different things. Third order motions. Uder the legs and btb. So so so much to work with o0

The only luck is bad luck.

Shut up before I stall my poi up your ass

Posted: 9th Sep 2010
It could definitely help visualize what your current position is. So long as we don't forget its just just about tricks but being able to move and link them and generally just have a good time. Either way I'm behind it.

Don't let your world end with you

p.s. No, just in case you're going to ask, I did not misspell Warrior, its supposed to be like that.

Posted: 9th Sep 2010
Dyami was working on something similar to this--a poi wiki if you will last year, but I haven't heard of any movement on that front any time recently. You can find the discussion here: [Old link]

My own two cents: there comes a certain point where the tricks a body performs kind of run off the map as they involve a series of movements that combine elements of many tricks. For example, this move Kate showed off at Burning Man this year:





Which combines elements of stall chasers, inspin stalls, plane-shifting, and horizontal chase moves. Part of the reason I think there's no complete list as of yet is that as we come up with new ideas, the previous "tricks" we've learned become modifiers rather than nouns, if that makes any sense. Ie, we learn a fountain and then we learn how to isolate it, add pendulums to it, do it antispin or as a polyrhythm hybrid. It's not impossible to catalogue them all, but I do think the methodology needs to be sound.

It definitely sounds as though your intention is in the right place, but everything you have listed is centered around static spin moves where the hands move little if at all. Look into hybrids, flowers, unit circle concepts, CAPs, etc and see where it leaves you.

Peace,
Drex

Posted: 9th Sep 2010
I think, that an idea like this would be not really doable - there are too many tricks and possibilities of combination.

Like Drex is saying it - You have got hybrids, flowers, unit circle, CAP, third-motion-conceptes, btb, utl fountains and what most people forget the variable hand distance.

When you put this up together you have too much to do.

Posted: 9th Sep 2010
You are not the first who came with this idea.

But you will find it's wrong..

You can do what mcp do, try all combinations
and find the nice one..

But good spinning don't require tricks at all.

Trick is only way of Poi movement description,
language, it's not a finite set.

think the generic way,

Posted: 10th Sep 2010
Someone had a google spreadsheet up here a while ago, if you want to dig that out it may be a reasonable starting point.

Although I think any list like this will be almost incomprehensibly long and fall out of date really quickly anyway.

'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Posted: 12th Sep 2010
im behind any attempt for something like this but i think asa practical concept you need to keep in mind the huge potential for crossing and combining moves. i think this should be aimed at new starters and intermediate levels and can be a reference point for seasoned pros. i personally would use this as a reference sheet to include all different types of movements into a spinning routine. does anyone else spin zoned out and then realise youve completely ignored a move group. ive just been out spinning for the first time in 2 months and just now realised i completely ignored flowers, poor flowers

fire is alive. it lives and breathes. it consumes and destroys. but we control it and live with it, we are fire dancers

Posted: 12th Sep 2010
Most art forms have this problem. Contact juggling is a wonderfull example, since each idea leads to the next makes it difficult to train.

Posted: 13th Sep 2010
Some of you guys get what im saying, some dont quite. as for those who mentioned things i forgot, realise that i didnt "forget" anything, i just mentioned a few things as examples. to visualize the concept. For those who use complex "combos" as examples of why it wouldnt work, realise that combos will always be an exeption to the idea. we have reached a point where making new 'tricks' is pretty difficult and we've moved to combining tricks and driving styles to make new things, but they arent tricks, at that points it is, as mentioned, just movements.

My aim is to catalog all commonly known tricks and combos, basically things that there are tutorials for, or common varients that people know, such as isolating a fountain, or turning with it. there is obviously a point where cataloging is useless. if it doesnt have a name, basically it wont be on there. just think, we all have a world wide vocab on many tricks. take split time opposite wall plane flowers. can you do it forward? check. backward? check. isolated? check. inspin? check. turn with it? check. lets leave the fact that you can do and up stall with one and go into a same direction flower move out of the equation.

Posted: 13th Sep 2010
im glad to see so many are interested in the idea. tho. is anyone willing to collaborate and make this ACTUALLY happen.

Posted: 15th Sep 2010
I'd like to reiterate that over the last decade people around the world have made similar suggestions and attempted similar things... and all of them have fallen off after a wile.

I agree there is some use in cataloguing patterns that people know as "tricks". It is a purely practical application of collecting training resources in a database though. Then you need a nice interface with wich to peruse the training database. I would suggest doing it in a database that is tag-oriented... Youtube already does this for us in video form. So perhaps what you really want is to organize people sending video links to you, and creating appropriate playlists for them. Eventually you could create a web interface as font end for embedded videos, that is a more effective way to browse related videos. This process would be optimized by contacting the video posters (if they aren't your vids) and making sure they add the appropriate Tags and description to the videos.

+Alien Jon

Posted: 15th Sep 2010
Now to dig a little deeper into why this way of approaching poi is not the end-all.

We learn poi like a language:
If I go to Indonesia and memorize the saying "Apa kabar?", it is analogous to learning a poi "trick". I simply memorize how to repeat a sequence of phonemes as close to the way an Indonesian guys says it, then I make a rough association with the English greeting "how's it going?". If I learned it phonetically, I might not even know wich are the distinct words in the phonetic sequence "a-pa-ka-bar" yet.
Once I have used the phrase a little and learned more Indonesian, not only by memorizing phrases, but gathering a vocabulary of words, I start to make some correlations, understand grammer, syntax, context, etc. Then maybe I understand better the meaning of each word making up the phrase as "what's the news?", being used in a greeting context.
As the language learning process progresses, the emphasis moves from memorizing phrases to vocabulary, and then towards understanding how to put the vocabulary together so that I can form my own phrases.

Eventually, I might even study the history and etymology of words, and the culture enough to express myself poetically using the new language.

In Poi, when we 1st start, we learn a few "tricks", by tricking our bodies into being able to repeat a particular sequencial movement pattern... but it is a coarse memorization: we don't yet understand the subtle qualities of the movement, nor the underlying foundational principles. Thus we are restricted in flowing from this trick into other movement. This is the stage analogues to learning our 1st few phrases.
If all we ever do is memorize "tricks" (phrases), without ever digging deeper, we will have a hard time learning to flow and express ourselves, let alone discovering moves for our selves.

So, we shift the focus from learning tricks to training fundamentals exercises, understanding basic qualities of poi spinning, and working towards building our patterns with more and more fundamental building blocks.

Once we start doing this we use the tricks we know as a jumping off point, and use our deeper understanding of the fundamental attributes of those tricks to start augmenting them. For instance taking a move and isolating it. Eventually with enough augmenting we have smoothly morphed the original "trick" into something that could be considered a different trick.

But where do you draw the line between tricks? Some augmentations cross a threshold that is fairly apparent, wile others have such a smooth shift that it is hard to tell where the old trick ended and the new trick began.

Where do we define the boundaries of tricks anyway, as opposed to combos? Is spinning steadily in forwards split-same at your sides a trick? What about doing so with your arms crossed? What if you occasionally bring the arm crossed underneath back to it's own side of the body, long enough to cross it over the top of the other arm? What if you alternate doing this with each arm, with one extra rotation from the crossed position between each switch (one way to think of this is a forwards weave with crossed lockouts)? What if you don't take any extra rotations... then we are doing what many perceive as a 3-beat weave. We could then make a sequence where we cross one arm over the top and then in 1 rotation cross it back under, using an inswing of the other hand to avoid tangling, followed by repeating the regular cross over the top... then repeat that same sequence with the other side. We could choose to observe parts of the sequence like a 3bt weave and parts like a notColeman3, but the pattern never repeats a complete notcol3, and only repeats one complete exchange of arms resembling a 3bt weave. So is this a new trick, or an augmented version of a 3bt weave, or a repeatable combo between weave and notcol3?

I don't think there is a definitive correct answer the the question. I think a "trick" is a "move" that we practice enough to execute with confidence on auto pilot and present to an audience as something tricky. I think a "move" is a pattern that exhibits enough harmonics (or juxtaposes some specific dissonance with said harmonics), along certain symmetry frameworks in space/time, such that the pattern recognition centers in our brain grab ahold of it and imprint that particular sequence in our nervous system as a particular phrase. This pattern imprint can be meshed into a network of other associations with other simpler patterns that comprise it, and other complex patterns that it can relate to and transition to. Eventually you perceive it as only one particular repeatable sequence traversing a landscape of relationships, much like a particular phrase of music is only one possible sequencing of notes from a scale.

For me the point of learning the tricks is as an entry point into feeling the whole scales. Then I can improvise whatever sequences I feel like expressing in that moment. Of course, this takes constant honing, and I still fall back on memorized phrases in certain areas.

+Alien Jon

Posted: 15th Sep 2010
Nice reply AlienJon and to answer the question:

trick = the complicated way

Posted: 16th Sep 2010
if you can come up with a standardised format for it then ill do what i can manage if you have ideas?

fire is alive. it lives and breathes. it consumes and destroys. but we control it and live with it, we are fire dancers

Posted: 21st Sep 2010
hey im down to help if it helps the poi community even if this is an almost immposible task. as long as you dont close the door in your mind and say i cant do this then there is always hope. I'll see if i can rig up some kinda chart to put the moves into and organize them as an example and ill email it to you and we can work from there and hopefully get some more ideas for organizing this beast.

to spin or not to spin, that is the question.

Posted: 23rd Sep 2010
ok i decided to use ms excel i sorta have a prototype. if u still want help with this let me know.

to spin or not to spin, that is the question.

Posted: 23rd Sep 2010
if he doesnt want to take a look i will. im interested in this working now

fire is alive. it lives and breathes. it consumes and destroys. but we control it and live with it, we are fire dancers

Posted: 23rd Sep 2010
k pm me your email and make sure you have microsoft excel i have it in a chart form so u can mark off the moves you have learned and ill have a bit about how to read the chart properly, only a prototype though no where near completion i have a lot of kinks to work out.

*edit
i also noticed that im horrible with poi terminology so if anyone wants to look at it whos better at the terminology than i am and would like to give pointers/help it would be awsome I think i will continue to do this, but slowly so i dont make mistakes and it is organized and well thought out.
EDITED_BY: poismylove (1285263387)

to spin or not to spin, that is the question.

Posted: 23rd Sep 2010
this is the prototype chart.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/54223177@N07/5018678269/

(make sure you click the image to elarge it and can actually read the writing.)

any feedback on a better way to organize it? i know it still needs ALOT more moves and probably tweak the organization.

to spin or not to spin, that is the question.

Posted: 28th Sep 2010
sorry guys, havent been online in a while. i have a prototype but im interested in seeing what you guys have. my email is ***********.

alternatively ive been thinking alot about what jon said. getting stuck in MOVES and TRICKS can inhibit you as a learning spinner. on the other hand, its been the method for years and so far is working.....so...pros and cons i guess.
EDITED_BY: Durbs (1286812901)
EDIT_REASON: Removed e-mail address

Posted: 28th Sep 2010
ya i was trying to spin tonight and was thinking way to much about just the moves and tricks and not enough about footwork and transitions and it resulted in me getting mad at myself for not being able to spin at my usual ability. ill email you my prototype. I would really like to see yours also, my email is *******
EDITED_BY: Durbs (1286812877)
EDIT_REASON: Removed e-mail

to spin or not to spin, that is the question.

Posted: 9th Oct 2010
due to lack of interest i am skeptical about putting time and effort into this. ill send you the proto poismylove, and lemme know what you think. if its worth time and effort.

Posted: 11th Oct 2010
Just a word to the wise - I wouldn't post your e-mail addresses online unless you REALLY love spam or are keen to have your e-mail hijacked

Burner of Toast
Spinner of poi
Slacker of enormous magnitude

Posted: 13th Oct 2010
Jon, you should write a book.
I'd read it.

Posted: 17th Oct 2010
Hi guys new to the forum I think it is a good idea to try to list all the possible poi moves and to help structure it into a syllabus much in the same way many martial arts are structured for instance coloured belts in Karate.

as an example the entry level basics would read:
-forward in same and split time
-backwards in same and split time
-alternate directions
-isolation stalls
-2 bt weaves
-basic butterfly forwards and backwards
-hip reels (standard and alternative)

As an instructor a list like this would be very helpful.
In fact Im going to get started right now...

We provide a range of services designed to Entertain, Educate and Promote. including spectacular shows, brand or event promotion and various skills workshops. check out our site for more info

Posted: 18th Oct 2010
I do like the idea of creating a structured list of Poi Moves/tricks but there are some very valid points in this thread. It wont be an easy task to compile a list like this and where do we draw the line when it comes to combo's&Augments.

We are looking at a HUGE amount of information here and this will need to be presented in an easy to use structure for it to be worthwhile. I believe nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it. Working on this as a community would make it a lot easier in the long run.

I personally develop the Fire Desire Community website and last week I started working on setting up the Poi Tutorial pages.

I decided to tackle this task one family at a time starting with Flowers.

Initially I was only going to embed youtube videos but as I started listing the links I realized there are just way to many videos to place on one page.

I then decided to break Flowers into Subcategories: Basic Concepts, Wheelplane Flowers, Wallplane flowers, Triquetras, Polyrhythm Flowers, Turning with Flowers and Additional Flower Tutorials.

Now for anyone that knows me I am a staff player and only recently took up Poi (10Weeks ago). There are probably subcategories for flowers that I missed or got wrong but this is why this kind of thing needs to be a collective community effort.

From here I have started making individual web pages for each subcategory. It is my goal to add to each of these pages as much useful information as I can.

So for example lets say we are looking at the Wallplane flower page. The page would then be divided into multiple Sections/Table for the various types of wallplane flowers. I have personally gone with creating a tables for each arm pattern. I plan on giving a definition for each(arm movement), List the possible Poi Directions & Timing. Include pictures and Flash demonstrating the patterns.
Tips for learning these moves and embed/create tutorial videos for each section/table.

Now I realize there are still complications to this structure that we will need to work through. I am however only one person and I do overlook things. However as a community effort this would be easy to improve/modify as we go along.

I would say lets start by listing all the basic & intermediate information and at a later stage one could start adding combos & hybrids.

I am willing to take part in this so pop me a mail at Bruno@firedesire.co.za and lets get the ball rolling.

Unity through Love, Light & Poi

Posted: 19th Oct 2010
Bruno! Great idea brother and i would have loved to help you with it. Suppose I can to some extend, but I think the right ppl to contact in regards to this is Drex or Chalie (from charlie's 9-square theory). I'll be in Pta from the 6th of Movember if you would like to catch up and have a play with your idea and a spin! Got some monkey fists a week ago!

Posted: 19th Oct 2010
this seems like a good idea but i think you should just get everyone on the site to throw in moves they know and see what happens. Hope this helps

xX!glowspaz!Xx

Posted: 20th Oct 2010
i would like to have a look at it as well for anyone maybe i can somehow add or at least help in the slightest way