One of those bad habits that nearly all of us develop in our first year of spinning poi is the tendency to focus the poi's movement on the hand and wrist such that when we begin to play with flowers and the like, it becomes difficult to think of the poi being an extension of the hand rather than controlled by it. Here are a series of exercises to being with this type of movement. Most 2D tech poi is highly reliant on the mobility of the arms, so the sooner one trains themselves out of folding the arms against he body, the better!

extensionstutorial.mp4

Atomic weaves have a very intimidating name, but there are ways to perform them that won't break your brain. Here is one such weave that feels midway between a split-time thread the needle and a buzzsaw weave.

atomicweavetutorial.mp4

Never picked up a set of poi before? This is the video for you! This is a video to familiarize you with the hardware and how it can be held. No matter what set of poi you pick up, this tutorial should help you get to know this tool and how you interact with it.

wheretostartwithpoipt1.mp4

I uploaded a crosser tutorial several months ago, but both the audio and video quality were quite sub-par. I had a gap in my tutorial shooting schedule, so I decided to do a better quality video and hope it's of more use in the long run than the other one was :)

crossertutorialredo.mp4

If you've got your basic reel turns down, tuck turns are an easy next step that can add an additional level of visual immediacy to your turns. They're also the first example many of us encounter of a type of movement that plays a huge part in later moves called body tracing.

tuckturnstutorial.mp4

Here's a fun game I came up with the other day to help solidify one's command of timing and direction: put on your favorite piece of music and alternate 8-counts. On the odd 8-counts, you do whatever moves in that timing and direction suit you and on the even 8-counts you freeze in place and maintain timing and direction no matter where your hands land. Fun challenge!

tanddgametutorial.mp4

 It was requested over a year ago, but here is a video of some good ways to warm up and condition oneself before spinning. A lot of this is full-body intensive but the shoulder exercise at the end really will help develop the ability to perform flowers for long periods without fatigue.

warmupstutorial.mp4

Giants are one of those moves that take you out of keeping your hands still and your poi moving and set you up for extensions and flowers, which are essential to many intermediate moves. Here are a few basic exercises that can help these moves make a little more sense. That and they take up quite a lot of room, so they look really cool :)

giantstutorial.mp4

The archer weave is a fun embellishment for the three-beat weave that leads directly into body tracing and a number of other fun techniques. When I first tried to learn it, I was baffled at how it could work. Here is an easy way to break it down so that you can see what makes this move tick.

archerweavetutorial.mp4

While on the surface not terribly different from a thread the needle in same time, a thread the needle in split-time (also called split-time opposites) produces a small problem for the performer in that it doesn't present a dominant hand until one hand is crossed over the other. Thus, to perform this move successfully is to switch between positions in which the hands are crossed over each other rather than simply on top of each other as in same time.

stttntutorial.mp4