Profiles in poi covers one of my dearest friends in the spinning world--Teddy Petrosky (Elemensce). Here, Teddy tells the story of how he first saw poi as a shy kid 9 years ago and how it won out over his other hobbies to become his passion in life.

pipteddypetrosky.mp4

This is one of those moves that's rapidly becoming ubiquitous in the tech poi world: taking no-beat tosses and doing them forwards over the wrists/elbows/shoulders in such a way that you're constantly throwing and catching them. Here's the step-by-step of how to learn this trick yourself.

techblog344.mp4

A grab-bag of hand-switching throws I've either been working on or have encountered in the past couple months. The first is a triquetra vs pendulum hand switch Noel came up with during the same spin jam where I started working on the triquetra vs pendulum throw from the last tech blog. The second is a hand-switch that comes out of a snake that I've had a hell of a time getting clean these past few months. The third is a hand-switch I spotted Matt Cullen using a lot during a spin session he did at PEX Summer Festival.

techblog271.mp4

I'm taking a week off from last week's theory-intensive video to show off a couple tricks I've been playing with in the interrim. First off is a combo: meltdown - under the leg throw - 1.5 - antispin flower - spiral wrap. If you can nail the throw, the rest of it flows together incredibly smoothly. Next, after seeing the videos coming out of Russia from the Antispinners crew, I'm working to make my antispin flowers and stall switches to change direction cleaner.

techblog59.mp4

Starting off with a couple tricks I'd consider to be a little bit older school style tech than I usually work with--the first is inspired by rope dart tricks that shoot the head off in the opposite direction it's been wrapped in. Next is a trick that uses releases to transition from meltdown to behind-the-back waistwraps and back. This is sketchy! Next, in order to get down the spherical CAPs I've been working on the past few weeks, I've been doing drills to get my hands used to doing quarter-beat stalls in same-time opposites.

techblog46.mp4

A demo of the cube Charlie demonstrated for me at Wildfire--this takes seven plane shifts to accomplish and works through crossed arms, wall plane, and buzzsaw positions. A real challenge, but a fun one! Next up is a plane-changing pattern that works between opposites same-time and corkscrew into a kind of pendulum stall before reversing itself into the exact same pattern it started as. I really like how the reverse of this pattern is itself, whereas reversing most poi sequences require you to reverse the directions of all your movements.

techblog40.mp4