Still practicing hyperloops--I feel like I've got a lot of catching up to do with this, so repetition is key. I've also added under the legs moves to my catchup game for beginner to intermediate skills. Beyond that, I keep finding more stuff I love to do with CAPs. First up is taking the flower stall switch from last week and instead switching to a CAP. In wallplane, it creates a really cool pattern that I want to play with more.

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On world hoop day, I found myself teaching a large crowd of hoopers how to do a move that's called a cateye in poi. Here's a to-do for it being as how I haven't seen another video tutorial out there for it. To see this move in action, check out videos by Rainbow Michael or Sean Stogner.

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Two weeks ago at Boom Boat, Insignia showed off some spherical CAP ideas that really sent me back to the drawing board to see what was possible. Here are some of those ideas rendered, plus some more fun stall switching patterns and head orbit play.

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At Wildfire, Charlie and I worked through all the four compass points of a cateye and worked out the stalls that transitioned out of each point--there is some crossover here with the Yuta stalls I was playing with two weeks ago. The thing that's got my brain burning (and unfortunately I haven't had shit for time to play with them) is elliptical CAP patterns of the type Zan is showing off in the Encyclo-Poi-Dia 2. My initial breakdown of this move turned out to be incorrect, so I'll be working out the proper iterations of it in the coming week.

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More fun with Yuta stalls! Specifically, it turns out that they work just as well with floats as they do with top and bottom stalls, opening the door to doing them in tandem with isolations, extensions, hybrids and cateyes. Also, some more footwork and danciness inspired by nightanddaydance's excellent response to my last blog. Had to trim a couple tricks out to keep it under 10 minutes, but they should be making an appearance in a later blog.

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Definitely a smorgasboard of tricks this week. The first is a repeating triangle pattern done that is repeated at 90 degree angles to reveal what looks to me like a pinwheel, though the trick takes so long to render the idea may be irrelevant for performance. I tried it this past weekend and got a good response, though. I don't know what to call the next trick--I think it ultimately breaks down to halving the triquetra in split-time horizontally. Most of us know the vertical variation, but the horizontal one requires some arm-crossing action.

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Starting off with the wallplane CAPs I played with two weeks ago. Rather than bisecting the diamond with vertical floats, I'm trying instead to bisect the diamond horizontally with linear extensions. The results are messy at best, but mark my words I'll get it cleaned up. This also leads me to a pattern that resembles an arrow pointed straight down. I've got my split-time same direction cateyes looking presentable now--on to the cateye weave...someday.

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Very short blog this week...DJ pointed out to me last week that the CAP, flower, and isolation patterns I've been playing with constitute a variant on unit circles wherein the direction of the poi change with the direction of the hand, thus creating a grid with extensions and isolations overlapping each other rather than extensions, cateyes, and isos overlapping each other. Also, I've started playing with 1.5 patterns that use cateye rather than static spin patterns. The first one resembles a hybrid I've seen Alien Jon do.

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I've officially gotten fed-up with my sloppy isolations and have begun what I'm sure will be a very long process of cleaning them up properly. I've dug up every iso exercise I could find, invented a couple of my own, and have been practicing them daily. Beyond that I've been working on getting both hands to do cateyes in all the different primary motion categories--this one, too, is going to take a while. The one thing I do have that looks pretty is an interesting 1.5 combo Lucas from Richmond cooked up that is inspired by double-staff spinning.

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Nothing new this week, just polishing tricks I've shown in previous video blogs. I'm trying harder to get the nice circular pattern with the hand in the horizontal cateye and working on being able to do it both directions. Plus I've put a lot of practice into the unit circle grid--it's flowing better but still needs work. Finally, my buzzsaw fountains are getting cleaner and I'm getting better at switching between standard, antispin, and split-time butterfly variants. Happy holidays, all!

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