Having problems getting your stalls down? Here's the first part of a workout, that if you can master it will give you access to nearly any stall you could possibly want to play with. It bears some resemblance to Yuta's 8 stall theory but applies to every timing and direction combination.

stallworkoutpt1.mp4

I've done a lot of tutorials now on moves for beginners, but this is something that I think is equally if not more important: developing plane control. You'll never learn a move that doesn't require it and there will never come a time when you don't need to practice them. Here are three drills to help you get down your plane control and make your tricks that much prettier.

planecontroltutorial.mp4

Here's two different approaches to 4-beat thread the needles. The first is to do what I'd refer to as the "reach around" 4-beat wherein you wrap your hands around each other. The second is much more akin to body tracing wherein the extra beat puts the poi behind your body.

4beatttntutorial.mp4

It's been quite a long time since I've uploaded a flow video and the unusually warm weather we've had in DC the past couple weeks inspired me to get out and put a few things to video. Things to look out for: lots of single poi manipulations, toroids, inversions, and more!

flow10212012.mp4

Branching out a little bit! Learning antispin flowers with a hoop is similar to how one can learn them with poi. Here's a way to learn both 3 and 4-petal antispin flowers while doing off the body hoop.

antispinhooptutorial.mp4

Corkscrews are usually the first floor plane move that many poi spinners learn. It's fundamentally a chase move with the hands moving up and down the body while the poi rotate in a horizontal plane. Here are a few tricks on how to get down this trick.

corkscrewtutorial.mp4

In the final installment of this behind the back series, we'll tackle the meltdown! Meltdowns are a move in which one rapidly wraps the poi around their back, unwraps them, and then rewraps them going the other direction to create a rapid and exciting move. Here's how to build them up piece by piece.

btbpart3.mp4

Last week we worked out some basic exercises to acclimate the body to behind the back spinning--this week we'll work on the behind the back weave. Fundamentally this weave is identical to the standard three-beat weave but requires a little bit of practice to adapt to a behind the back position. Here are a couple exercises to get you there.

btbpart2.mp4

Behind the back tricks are one of those bellwethers that can take you from basic to intermediate spinning, but it can be a huge kinesthetic challenge to get to a point where these types of tricks can feel stable and in control. This week we'll start off with some basic exercises to teach control of behind the back movements before playing with behind the back weaves next week and meltdowns the week after.

btbpart1.mp4

The last day of Wildfire, Richard Cranium showed me a move he was working on, integrating cateyes into a stall chaser. Upon viewing the move, I thought the cateyes were looking more like inspin petals and tried to come up with a different approach to integrating cateyes into stall chasers. The result was less a chase move and a little more like a quarter time chase, but I do like the overall effect.

techblog279.mp4