Forums > Beginner Poi Moves > new to poi! want some moves :)

Posted: 18th Aug 2006
this should get you thinking!

[Old link]

read it, think ,'what the hell is that?' for half of it and then have a look at some videos/threads/ the tutorial vids

hope that helps a bit!

Because ActiveAngel sounds like a feminine deodorant

Like sex, I'm much more interesting in real life than online.

'Be the change you want to see in the world around you' - Ghandi

Posted: 18th Aug 2006
wow two days and you can do all that! it took me at least a week to learn the 3 bt weave - so well done! a good way to start is variations of what you already know - so you can start turning and flowing - like butterfly split time, over the head (halo), behind the head (angel wings) or alternate butterfly. Weave - um keep adding beats, weave turns, definately learn backwards weave - it will totally amaze people! Windmill, learn giant windmill, and also the fountain as you can add a windmill in that or go from windmill to fountain.

hope that helps - and look at otehr threads around as there are ideas floating around somewheres!

nat

"Be the change you want to see in the world"

Posted: 20th Aug 2006
yeah that is good i took forever to do 3 beat

Also try and learn linking moves too so u can do a full routine

Reels are good moves to learn too because you can do lots with them

The love shack is a little ol place where we can get together.....

Posted: 20th Aug 2006
well i can do behind the back weave now but its still rusty, got 5 beat down but i still run around doing 3 beat cos its nicer i think, can do the corkscrew now and link to and from it to the weave

POI ROCK! hehe

Matt

Posted: 22nd Aug 2006
How much time do you spend each day on poi?!?! You're learning absurdly fast.

Anyway, since you know the basics, put on some music and poi to it. Work on linking the patterns together in time to the music.

And you may want to goof around with stalls.

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

Posted: 22nd Aug 2006
i dunno, the first 2 days i learned the most did about 5-6 hours those days, then the odd 20 min seasions here and there, i cant put them down lol

music is always playing in my head lol as im a lil crazy!

seems i was born with some poi knowledge as i could do 2bt weave straight away haha 3 bt soon followed.

at the mo ive been doing this weave type move that i cant find a name for the last 2 days and its driving me nuts! lol, gonna have to get a vid and someone can tell me what im doing. also got some weave turns going really well now

tails on my poi are bugging me now and i cant do wraps with them either so im gonna get some sock poi that light up then try those type of moves.

will look into stalls too, fire poi again 2moro (wed) see if i can impress people with everythink ive learnt since last wed woohoo. ok gonna go have another go now lol damn poi...

Matt

Posted: 24th Aug 2006
boo, no fair, ive had mine same time as you an im nowhere near those moves. you're going to have to help me hun you live so close x

Posted: 25th Aug 2006
hehe im not THAT good lol, will attempt to teach you if you desire me to

MK

Posted: 25th Aug 2006
just remembered on wednesday i was spinning around going from front to back o front again weaving and spinning lol, i was so dizzy but it was so fun! cant wait to try it with FIRE!

Posted: 25th Aug 2006
2 days damn. after 5 months i still cant get btb weave. Try some wraps and isolations. corkscrew, btb butterfly and flowers maybe?

then airwraps, hyperloops and other such stuff

Posted: 25th Aug 2006
I would suggest spending time on the moves you can do now, perfecting them and learning all variations.
Make sure you can do them in all directions, leading with different hands. Bizarrely one of the hardest things I have found is doing butterfly with the "wrong" hand on top - absolutely necessary for TTN, and it's far better to learn that early on before your "usual" butterfly becomes too ingrained. Learn inwards and outwards butterfly.
Try doing them in different positions, walking around doing them. Can you move the cross point of your weave to silly places - above your head, on the floor- , can you turn around with your weave without doing a weave turn, as well as being able to do weave turns. I spent a while yesterday working on doing my 3bt behind my back without doing BTB (i.e. pulling it over my head so I was doing it behind me bent over backwards, or turning my upper body around until the cross point was right behind my bum! great for flexibility).
I would recommend Nick's "Scales of poi" video as an introduction (and more) to freeing up those moves and turning them into something more fluid.
You are obviously doing a great job of learning fast, but be really careful about keeping things fluid and beautiful, otherwise you may end up getting stuck in a rut where you need to make your "tricks" more and more complex, but your performance isn't improving.

Posted: 25th Aug 2006
what kash said, ive got stuck doing inwards ttn and inwards butterfly great but i cant do outwards ttn for the life of me. outwards butterfly is good though.

my brain cant work out outwards ttn, seems impossible

Posted: 25th Aug 2006
matt, i'll see you when i get back, and you can help me. just dont use the word desire with me, you know its bad! bye hun xxx

Posted: 26th Aug 2006
meh i hate doing butterfly, pretty much sucks as a move, wanna learn ttn as it seems kool.
i can do all sorts with my weave now, yeah i can switch it from front to back without a turn i think my moves are pretty smooth and i do practise the ones i know, i want to be able to use fire poi with all my moves so i make sure im good enough first which tends to lead to much smoother moves
waiting for scales of poi to arive, ive already ordered it along with some sock poi as i hate the poi i have (fat mouse) then i can start doing wraps and hyperloops and stuff

Kenetor

Posted: 26th Aug 2006
sweeeeeet! my new poi and the dvd have arived, good job i was up lol now to watch the dvd!

Posted: 26th Aug 2006

 Written by: Kenetor


meh i hate doing butterfly, pretty much sucks as a move, wanna learn ttn as it seems kool.

Are you kidding?
Butterfly rocks. Why? Because:
Butterfly --> giant butterfly --> lock outs, which look cool and are great for transitions.
Butterfly --> btb butterfly --> giant angel wings.
Butterfly --> take out --> mexican wave and a variety of other take out sequences including...
Butterfly --> take out --> one each way --> 360 butterfly.
One each way --> giant one each way --> v. funky flowers.
Butterfly --> split time butterfly + weave = butterweave
Butterfly --> halo/overhead butterfly --> satellite
There are probably a lot more that have slipped my mind.

This is what I mean about exploring and perfecting a move. Don't just learn a move, get to know it intimately, where can you lock out or take out, where can you carry over to something else. What can you do with it to make it more interesting (and interesting does not have to mean complex).

Personally I could really take or leave TTN. I don't think it's very good value for effort, and if I hadn't already been learning butterfly in all its variations I probably wouldn't have bothered. From the front, it looks no different to butterfly (with crazy hands) unless you are using say, flags of different colours, and from the side it looks a bit.... odd. It's fairly handy for the odd transition and for feeling smug and self-satisfied, but I just don't think it's that pretty.

Posted: 26th Aug 2006
Hmm I think you pick up the basics of basic moves quickly. I've been doing poi for about 5 days, and I can do the 2 beat weave, what is either the 3 or four beat weave (not sure which! extra turn on each side?) forwards butterfly, giant butterfly, mexican wave and turns to make poi forward-back, back-forward, and forward-one in each direction. I can almost do alternating butterfly as well, but have a hard time bringing the left poi back into the butterfly sequence.

I can't, however, do anything backwards, and my transitions are not as flexible as they should be. I also need to learn something I can do backwards, but I keep smacking myself round the head so I can't keep at it for too long...

Maybe I'll try some more butterfly variants, or learn the corkscrew, which for some reason completely eludes me...

Posted: 26th Aug 2006
only one in that list i wanna do are flower moves but only for pictures really. and the halo is only impressive i think when its one handed and on fire. guess its down to personal taste.

BTB seems to be alot easier with sock poi and i can now do one handed 2bt weave lol dunno why i cant do it with my other poi though

Matt

Posted: 27th Aug 2006
Ok then. So what is your personal taste?

You asked for new moves, but it's getting hard to make suggestions now.

Any spinners/videos that inspire you, what kind of style are you looking for?

Have you tried isolations? That's an interesting challenge as your planes need to be spot on. Will help your stops and stalls too.

Posted: 27th Aug 2006
Ah, another one of these learning at an unbeliveable rate threads.

You seem very specific on what you what to learn, and what you don't want, so I'll refrain from making any suggestions of moves.

If you follow the basic premise of Nick's dvd, and follow kash's suggestions, you'll be well on your way to impressing friends and neighbours alike.

Posted: 27th Aug 2006
Although the question isn't aimed specifically at me, I'll answer for me anyway - I want to learn anything, and everything , that I can. I need to slow down a bit for a time, and ganer together all the transitions that I need to go from anything I know to anything else - the corkscrew (which I could not do, came to me this morning in a flash of inspiration after I dreamt about what it would feel like to do - weird I know) seems to be very difficult to get into rapidly so any advice there would be great.



I can't do anything in the way of airwraps with the poi I have at the moment, but I'll be getting some better ones as soon as the postal service gets into action.



What are flowers? I can't find any reference in videos or online lessons anywhere, and its *really* difficult to learn from text.



I suspect what I should do now is rather than trying to learn new moves left, right and centre, I should focus on what I know and the variations thereof, so I can do them in both directions and in different positions with my eyes shut. Staff taught me the need to have flexibility with what you do so that'd be my advice.



Thats a pretty strange post, advising from a newcomer while asking for advice. Juxtapositions these days...
EDITED_BY: TotalEclipse (1156685476)

Posted: 27th Aug 2006
Eclipse, you're on the right track, and your staff experience will translate well to poi. You're right about the slowing down idea, most spinners ( imo ) tend to spin to fast, which looks impressive from a performance point of view but seriously complicated the learning process. Spinning slowly just gives you that much more time to think about what you're doing.

Likewise learning things in the other direction, or the hard way, pays off in the long run which I'm sure you've found out with your staff spinning. You know, when you find yourself in "unfamiliar territory" mid spin, and rather than bailing out of a move you're able to roll with it simply because you practiced.

Transitioning into the corkscrew usually involves a plane change, meaning going from spinning circles in a vertical plane to a horizontal plane. This is easier with a rigid toy like a staff, but with poi it can feel a little more awkward ( like trying to spell that word ). I suggest turning your body with the rotation of the upper part of the corkscrew as you bend the planes into this "move"
Turn as much as you want, 90 deg, 360 deg. It'll definitely smooth out the transition. Likewise for getting out of this move too, just figure out where you want to put your next move eg. weave, and go with the flow and drop your poi into the position you want them.

Flowers? the basic concept is pretty simple, but the plane control required to pull these off, isn't. https://www.feuershow.de/
has tutorials on flowers, but I don't seem to be able to link directly to them

Posted: 27th Aug 2006
Thanks. With a little experimenting, I can transition to the corkscrew from spinning backwards by bringing one poi up to swing around my head in the horizontal plane for 1 beat, and then beginning. I can then drop out into the 3-beat weave, turn into the reverse 3-beat weave, and then back to backwards and repeat. Turning does help a great deal, but I couldn't explain why...

No doubt some wisecrack physicist could explain it to me

Posted: 27th Aug 2006
Turning simply gives you a larger "space" or area to bend the planes in, making it a smoother transition.

No physics degree required.....

Posted: 27th Aug 2006
I find that the easiest transition into a corckscrew is to start with a windmill and basically turn it on its side.

I agree with you Total. If you learn *everything* when you are starting you will find unlikely links into new moves, making learning other things easier. Even if you don't like a move, it can prove to be a useful link that brings 2 other moves together smoothly, or a useful escape when things havn't gone where you wanted them to. Once you have a broad proficiency you can specialise in your favourite areas. This is also how it tends to be done in martial arts, and probably other movement arts. At the early stages, anything that improves your motor coordination and control has to be a good thing.

Flashes of inspiration seem to be the thing with poi. I can spend ages breaking down a move and really fighting with it, then one day something will click, I spend 2 mins practicing and I've got it. 3bt weave took me about 3-4 weeks of frustration, extended mostly byt the fact that there is a limit to how much frustration I can take before I need a nice cup of tea. I think the key for me is being able to visualise the path the poi need to take, and then visualise where they are relative to each other, and where the string/sock should be. Sometimes working with sticks helps with this, or even watching videos in slow motion.

Nick has a new video about flowers at https://www.playpoi.com

Posted: 27th Aug 2006
new flower tutorials here:

https://www.homeofpoi.com/lessons_all/teach.php/3_18_67

kyrian: I've felt your finger connect with me many times
lou kitten: sneaky little meatball..
ezz: please corrupt me more

Posted: 27th Aug 2006
Amazing!

Thank you very much, I understand what's going on now...and the concept of a flower. Armed with that the world can be mine...

*cackle*

Posted: 29th Aug 2006
well im slowly making my way through nicks dvd as i wanna get into flowers next.

also been trying to do an air wrap and there really hard! i only seem to be able to do it like 1 in 10 trys and i cant see what im doing differently lol

can someone tell me a good way to goto behind the back weave from various moves?

thanks for the help so far guys



edit: just watched the new fountain vid in the lessons and thats the move i was doing i didn't know the name for yay! it was really beginin to bug me lol



Matt
EDITED_BY: Kenetor (1156843117)