Forums > Advanced Poi Moves > Problem with 5 beat weave

Posted: 30th Oct 2009
Practice, it's all in the wrists. Do it as slow as you can. It's bit of a bastard to get it right, but it will come eventually. Just keep playing with it and have fun. I would say it's essentially in how you move your wrists and hand positioning... When learning the reverse 5bt I couldn't get it at all, got so frustrated, in the end I tilted my hands in a slightly different direction and it worked.

"We were making castles in the sand: Now we swim in the seas that swept them away"

Posted: 30th Oct 2009
I had a similar problem. I fixed it by tearing to the other size, if you're going to spin them at a decent speed it's got to come across your body HARD. From there you can slow it down if you want to slow down the turn. Also try really over-emphasizing the awkward wrist position.

Posted: 30th Oct 2009
If you have clubs (or can improvise them) you can get the movement solid without worrying about speed.

'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: 31st Oct 2009
I know the problem I first had with five beats was that I was twisting one of my hands around the other, but pretty much just stopping one hand. This made one slow or stall, sometimes with the collision you mention. I fixed this by adding an extra wrist motion to keep a bit of momentum in the slower poi. I figured out the motion by closing my eyes and miming the move without the poi, then freezing when I hit the trouble area and looking at where my hands were and sort of thinking out where they should be if they were both continuing their arcs.

Later I wobbled to the other extreme (I actually just noticed this in the last week), and jerked into the twist, speeding up one of the poi, usually hitting myself as soon as I tried to bring it across my body. The cure for this seems to be focusing on it as an even, fluid motion. Imagine a track that your hands trace to do the move, and just run along that track.

p|.q|r:|::s|.s|s:|:.s|q.|:p|s.|.p|s

Posted: 31st Oct 2009
Thanks for the help guys. Still haven't quite got it down, but definitely getting better.

Posted: 31st Oct 2009
Sticks can help if you don't have clubs. ^_^

Posted: 1st Nov 2009
Aston had mentioned clubs too, talking about juggling clubs? I don't have any of those, but I do have some wooden dowel laying around in the garage somewhere, would that work?

Posted: 1st Nov 2009
Yeah. The idea is just that with those you can go as slow as you need to, to work out where your hands and the poi should be (roughly). Then you build those positions into muscle memory and when doing it with poi, it should be a bit better. Your milage may vary.

'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: 2nd Nov 2009
0k, I'll dig out the dowels later on today and see what I can do. Hopefully not kill myself with them, I seem to be rather accident prone lately

Posted: 2nd Nov 2009
So I've been at it all day, tried with the sticks and that's just confusing lol. Went back to the poi and I can get close, but the only thing I've mastered so far is a headache in record time. Maybe I can get a video uploaded and somebody can point out what I'm doing wrong.

Posted: 2nd Nov 2009
Ok, I don't know what happened, maybe I just needed one more knock to the head to figure it out , but I got it. Still having a little trouble keeping good time on the last rotation but I have the pattern down well enough I can keep the weave going and actually spend some time analyzing where my timing is off.

Posted: 2nd Nov 2009
Nice work.

'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