This week's tutorial covers throws that minimize the rotation of the poi, from float throws to plane-shifted throws, and finally no-beat throws. There's also a bit of inspiration here for how to play around with this type of movement and some of the fun things you can do with it.

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Here's a fun move that came out of a spin jam with Noel over the weekend at PEX Summer Festival: taking a no-beat throw and apply it to an antispin placement such that the top petal of triquetra vs pendulum winds up being a toss. This can be done either in front of the body or behind. I'm playing with my format a little bit a presenting the move both by narrating through it and showing it normal time and slowed down--let me know what you think of this format.

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Another fishtail-based move from Kate's video a few months ago. This one incorporates a fishtail with a tic-tac on the other hand to create a weave with one hand performing the afore-mentioned contact move. Watch out--this one is even harder than learning the original fishtail was!

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Part 1 of a 2 part series on how to do some of the most basic throws/releases with poi. This particular one is on throws where the poi continues to rotate after the release, including isolated throws and what I'd call "flower" throws. Next week we'll cover basic float throws and the like.

tutorialthrowspt1.mp4

I've demonstrated the unicursal hexagram on this blog before, but it's only been recently that I've been able to perform a more regular hexagram--the type that looks like a Star of David with a pair of overlapping triangles. Here are two approaches to making it. One has one point up and one down and the other has the points out to the side.

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This was an interesting discovery based upon messing up a trick I was trying to do: there's a great way to take horizontal body tracers and use them as an entry point for negative space combos and contact rolls.

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Contact rolls are one of my favorite moves. Here is a breakdown of how to do them on both the inner and outer forearm. They take a little bit of work, but they're a great tool to have in your box :)

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I got a nifty challenge at Kinetic Fire Festival to perform a Zan's diamond toroid in same time opposites but to have the poi phased in same time opposites as well. It resulted in a pattern where the verticals remain in opposites but the horizontals switch to split time same direction. Strangely enough, if you try doing the same pattern in split time same direction both with poi and hands, the timing and direction remains consistent throughout the pattern. I'm taking this to mean that a lot of our rules for timing and direction no longer apply in the toroid world.

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The very first hybrid I ever learned! Here is a quick tutorial on how to perform static spin vs extension. These lessons will serve you later when you get into more complex hybrids, but I think this is a fairly easy entry into this type of spinning :)

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This past week at Spin Summit, I noticed Kyle Ford from Chicago doing a really cool toroid-inspired move that struck me as a great use of the technique that was simple and eloquent and would jump out to an audience quite easily. Here's an adaptation of the technique, slightly techie-fied, of course ;)

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