Over the past year I've gotten lots of queries into the stage ball poi set I've come to use most frequently in my tech blog the past few months. I've not seen another tutorial out there on how they are made (at least not on YouTube), so here goes. Hopefully if you've been interested in them, this will tell you everything you need to know to make your own set. I think Ronan had the original design, but used the end caps of juggling clubs for his handles. The use of furniture feet is an idea I borrowed from Alien Jon.

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Thanks to Insignia's excellent post on hybrids, I've spent the past week reexamining the concept and working through some of the logical conundrums it presents. I find the idea of a hybrid being "a combination of two driving styles" problematic because I can't find a definition for driving style that isn't loose enough that potentially any type of movement could be considered a driving style. I think there is a simpler way to define them and it is presented here. Please please send me feedback on this one--let me know if this definition makes sense.

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This blog starts off with a demo of a 5-beat behind the back waistwrap that is still awkward and sloppy but I'm noticing I'm reaching for it in my BTB weaves now. Next is some explorations of the use of Yuta stalls to create horizontal flowers by stalling into an inversion rather than outswing as one usually does with this type of plane-bending. There's also some theory here as to how to use the Rastaxel stall shift pattern to create octagonal planes and finally a very special shout-out and a couple pieces of tech courtesy Mike Icon.

techblog52.mp4

Starting off with an update on the pattern I showed off last week. Insignia had posted a comment about plane-bending in and out of it and here is a demo of the combination he mentioned. Also, I got a request for a demo of a cateye flower a couple weeks ago and here are four extrapolations of the idea. Ultimately one can look at this concept as either a flower with multiple points of rotation or as a variant on the unit circle grid idea. Please share thoughts on this as I haven't seen it demoed before.

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