This week I'm going back and revisiting a couple ideas from the past couple months to follow up on them both to show progress and where some of those ideas have taken me. First up is the isolated weave: I've had some progress on this both by practicing standing isolations in all four individual positions of my arms during the course of the weave and with a helpful piece of advice from Charlie on switching from one side of my body to the other. Next, the CAP vs static BTH hybrid poiboi07 and I had chatted about a couple months ago.

techblog69.mp4

After demoing the around the head meltdown last week, I got a comment from one person asking about performing the meltdown as a fountain. While I think that conceptually the two are different enough that a straight-up combination of these moves is not possible, there is a way to perform a similar maneuver by using Alien Jon's concept of body zones. Demoed here are a couple ways to play with this concept. Next up, I'm getting to be relatively happy with my transitions from isolation to lockout, so I'm starting to work through an isolated weave.

techblog67.mp4

 I'm back to drilling isolations in hopes of getting down the elusive isolated weave, but shooting for lower hanging fruit in the form of the iso to lockout combination guys like Nevisoul and Ronan have made famous. I'm specifically working on getting the isolated bit in the middle locked into the iso position like they have to make it really pop.

techblog66.mp4

Here's the second installment of my explanation of how hard and soft transitions work with Alien Jon's concept of arcs and loops. Here I demo all the permutations of these transitions through the intratangent circles (concentric) versus extratangent circles (outside--btw, if any mathematicians know what these concepts are actually called, please let me know) for a bunch of different circle sizes.

poitransitionspart2.mp4

The first installment of a short series of vids on transitions between unit circle patterns, antispin flowers, and extensions. What the common elements are and how to switch between them. Most of this vid is defining basic vocabulary and providing basic examples of the concepts that will be explored in later videos. A major debt for this is owed to Alien Jon, whose concepts of arcs and loops is one of, if not the critical underpinning of these concepts.

poitransitionspart1.mp4

 First up, the first hoop trick to make it into my tech blog! My friend Katie/Surprise showed my a funky isolation trick that I dug that seemed to have this odd stopping point. Remembering some bits learned from a recent Hoop Path workshop, I realized a body can keep the hoop constantly in motion by jumping one's grip. The demo here is terrible--it's with my old hoop, which weighs a ton. Nonetheless, I swear this one is doable (incidentally, if any hoopers out there know what it's called, please drop a line in my comment box).

techblog64.mp4

 After working through trying to do a mode change in same direction with Charlie's 9-square theory, I came up with an interesting solution that involves using soft transitions across a unit circle grid to switch between box and diamond mode. The idea for this is centered on isopops from hooping and more specifically how you can change circle size by treating them as adjacent circles rather than dilations of the same circle. Included is a demo of how this technique can be used to switch between iso vs cateye antibrid to static vs triquetra antibrid to iso vs extension and back again.

techblog62.mp4

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.

techblog31.mp4

This week we have a replay of some of last week's action, being as how it was too blurry to make out, as well as working on turning with the triquetra, mercedes, antispin hybrid--whatever you want to call it. Ironically, even though I've been working on turning from forward to reverse over my right shoulder, I'm finding the turns the other direction easier. Also: I've returned to my isolation intensive exercises and am now working on opposites. My split-time is a spot cleaner than same time, but that was the case with the same-direction variants too.

techblog27.mp4

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.

techblog17.mp4