behind the back

Top 3 Behind the Back Poi Tricks You Should Know

I've been in the poi community long enough that I've seen several waves of tricks come through that become cool, then passe, then rediscovered all over again.

When I first started spinning, behind the back tricks were one of those tricks that were absolutely essential if you wanted to be taken seriously as a tech spinner. They've lost a lot of that sheen in the past several years but I still see people on occasion doing creative things with these tricks.

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Basic Poi Dancing Tutorial: Meltdowns

Meltdowns are a great combination of behind the back (BTB) technique and reel turns that look cool as hell. Here's how you can build up to them piece by piece.

 

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Basic Poi Dancing Tutorial: Behind the Back Waistwraps

Following up from last week's video on waistwraps, here is how you can accomplish waist wraps behind the back. It helps to have the behind the back weave under your belt, but if you've got that piece of the puzzle, this isn't that big a leap.

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Basic Poi Dancing Tutorial: Behind the Back part 3

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.

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Basic Poi Dancing Tutorial: Behind the Back part 2

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.

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Basic Poi Dancing Tutorial: Behind the Back part 1

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.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #256: Thomas's BTB 1.5 move

Another in the wrap-up series from IgNight. This is a BTB 1.5-like move that Thomas "Nevisoul" Johannson came up with that had a lot of appreciators. Like Keith's move, this one isn't hugely difficult but has a lovely elegance to it that I appreciate.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #237: BTB waist-wrap air wraps

Here's a move that came out of a skill exchange I had over the weekend with Charles Hinton in Atlanta. He showed me a nifty pendulum-based move that was designed to teach BTB air wraps. I didn't have a lot of luck with the pattern as he'd laid it out, but I decided to work out a different approach to air wraps behind the back and have had some limited successes.

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Drex's Tech Poi Blog #205: BTB throw intensive

Many moons ago I did a video on isolated throws and catches that began moving into the world of behind the back catches, but it wasn't until recently that I was really motivated to practice enough to add this trick solidly to my repertoire. Here are a couple of the tricks I've been using to make this trick more solid.

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Video Tech Blog #178: Behind the back crossers

This is totally one of those tricks I didn't know if I was ever going to get, but fortunately Leo's recent video on body tracers showed a possible shortcut that worked out beautifully: by treating each side of a behind the back waistwrap as a 2-beat, one can train each hand to do its part of a behind the back crosser. The result needs some cleaning up, but it's a useful shortcut for folks with inflexible shoulders like my own.

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