A couple years ago when I was traveling through Africa, my host wrote a computer program for me that worked both as a poi simulator as well as a mathematical tool for measuring the distance a poi head travels in each hypo and epitrochoid pattern I could dream up at the time. After comparing a lot of the numbers the program created, it turns out there are some really fascinating harmonic relationships that emerge when you combine moves that normally wouldn't go together as a result of a lack of alignment with either the poi heads or hands.

techblog245.mp4

Taking threads from the past three weeks worth of videos: how to chain together the forwards weave, reverse weave, windmill, and weave turn together into a fountain variant that has some body tracer elements. This move can be done either inspin or antispin and sets up a lot of great moves down the line.

4beatfountain.mp4

Windmills are a fun variant on two-beat weaves that you do around your head. They're great for level-changing among other things. He's the best technique I know for learning them--it also gives you some of the basic motor skills that go into a lot of other moves around the head.

windmilltutorial.mp4

This is a tutorial on how to take some of the tricks we used last week in creating our forwards 3-beat weave and apply them to learning the same trick in reverse. As an added bonus, included are steps to learning how to turn between forwards and reverse 3-beat weaves. A friend of mine had pointed out that frequently the reverse 3-beat can be as difficult to learn as the forwards one because one has to switch around the arrangement of pieces in a way that seems almost upside-down.

rev3beatweave.mp4