Mental Trick Breakdown / Time Perception During Freestyle

Article by Nick Landes

     I've found that a great method of learning new tricks and mastering old ones is to break the trick down in your head. Imagine yourself doing the trick in slow motion, from start to finish. See if you can pick up on any form alterations you could make to improve your game, such as holding your hand in a different spot to have better balance, flexing your leg a bit more when doing dexs to increase speed, planting in a different position to better stick an osis, or even just realizing that you need to raise your knee a bit higher so that you can land softer. By slowly thinking through and plotting the movements you will be taking, it gives you a better mental image of what you want to do, so it's easier for you to send those messages to your body. Remember, footbag is a full body sport.

     Also, a few freestylers I have spoken with have told me that they have experienced "Hang Time", or a brief period of time where the bag seems to slow down to the freestyler. I believe this, in part, is due to the bag moving along an arc, and if viewed from above, the bag on top of the arc appears to float while it's peaking. This is the time that I usually use to start the downtime component of my trick to make sure I stall it well.

     Now, the other advantage of this method is it will actually help you in real time with your footbag game. If you can mentally see a trick happening in slow motion, then you can understand on a different timeline, and if you can focus in on the bag during the arc, you have seemingly a few seconds of time to prepare the next concept, and make sure you stick the stall, so that you can continue your freestyle with more balance and greater focus.

Step 1: Slow down trick concepts mentally to get better form
Step 2: Practice concepts with proper breathing (explained in a different segment)
Step 3: Learn to relax during shred and perceive in slow motion at the same time

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     I have heard in other sports and other high intensity acitivites, people have reported perceiving time slower than normal as well though, and that caught my interest about three years ago. Books have been writen about it (The Peacefull Warrior was a great one) and is refered to as being "in the moment". A state of mind that allows for greater processing of information because the mind is clear from all other distractions. I remembered that I had experienced it a few times during play, but had not been fully consious of it. After attempting to recreate this experience on purpose, with no success, I realized that it's not something that I could actually focus on doing, it was something that I had to relax into, somthing I had to surrender to.

     There was one time, during a session with Red in the basement on Christmas Eve (no joke) that I had such an experiance. I had the intent to break a world record. The record was 17 contacts of Paradox Legbeater >Paradox Atom Smasher>Legbeater>repeat, or Rubberman II, which are 4add or higher moves. Just before I went to start I thought about just relaxing and letting the concepts happen. The first five contacts were a bit uncontrolled, but I just unfocused and all of the sudden I understood the tricks better than I ever had before, it was just a pattern laid out in front of me and all I had to do was follow it. It all seemed so easy I couldn't understand why footbag didn't always feel that way, and even though I felt all of those things, I didn't think them. My mind was absolutly clear. Red wasn't there anymore, the music wasn't playing, I wasn't in a basement with low ceilings. It was just me and the footbag. I completed the drill four times through, 24 contacts, and ended with a hand seal. I would hope that the knowledge of this experience allows more freestylers to become aware of what is possible through footbag.

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