How much practice did you guys put in until you got really good?
13 Replies to “Practice”
What if you have no one in your area that is very good at freestyle? is it better to jam with oter people or to do it solo?
it should be other
Thank you for all the info on freestyle, I am just new to this and I am sometimes having trouble with the moves.
If you don’t have anyone near you to play with, then solo practice is best. I had
one person to play with occasionally during my first four years, but I would say
90% of my progress came from the work I did on my own.
OK, THANK YOU FOR ALL THE ADVICE. THAT WILL HELP A LOT IN MY FUTURE FREESTYLE FRISBEE TRAINING.
Ryan, I think Fabio will have some very helpful things to say about this since he got good very quickly and he practiced very hard.
My answer is that it depends. If you’re a prodigy, you’ll get good very quickly no matter how much you practice. If you’re like the rest of us, you’ll need to work to reach the level you want. That brings me to my next point: what is practice?
Most people think of practice as a structured repetition of a skill until you master it. A workout with a plan. That can definitely speed your development, but it’s not the most favorite activity within freestyle. Most people like to be less structured and learn through jamming.
I’ll say this: you can learn both through structured practice and jamming. Structured practice can give you access to more during a jam. Jamming helps with interaction and improvisation. There is actually at least one approach in between the either/or of practice vs. jamming, which is to jam with the idea to work on a part of your game.
Let’s say you are learning a pull. You can practice that pull on your own. Over and over again. And over and over again. Or, you can jam. And when the disc comes is passed to you, you can try the pull. When you get the disc for an individual combo, you can work that pull into the moves. This approach lets you practice but keeps you in community with other freestylers and gives you opportunities to do your chosen move in a variety of circumstances. One note on this approach: mix it up. Practice the move, but if you do nothing but that move you practice, it becomes boring for others. Mix in some other skills to fuel the energy of the jam.
One last note on how much practice it took me. It took me a winter and spring to learn the basic delay moves when I was 13. Between age 13 and 17, I practiced mostly on my own to the point where I was doing triple spinning moves – and I was able to throw some Z’s. I gave up the sport between age 18 and 26. When I came back, it took me no time to remember my skills but an entire winter to rebuild my game from scratch with Dave Lewis’ help so that it had the potential to be a world class game. After that, every jam was a learning experience whether it was practice or not. Even now, I work on new moves and notice new things. And that’s the beauty of freestyle: there’s always something new to discover. It’s a lifelong sport.
Solo practice is great if you have a mind to it. But i know for a fact that a lot of people dont like to practice alone (im not one of them). So if you can get somebody else into the game, and you meet and play say once a week, then your solo game can be sort of prep for your coop jams. Which keeps it fun and motivated. Check out the word Solonoyed in frisbee-freestyle.de, you will know what happens to people who jam solo too much )
I got this idea from John and Joe in the UK, dunno if they will agree with me )) Playing only solo is like forgetting about half the game. Its meant to be coop on the high-end level of play. Also, good ZZ’s are hard to master if you have nobody to throw to.
—
No jump, no catch!
Does it matter what type of silicone spray you use? and Will it make the frisbee spin longer.
Over the years, Krylon has been the most popular silicone spray. There are
some environmental concerns because it’s an aerosol can. Some people have
experimented with other brands, but I don’t have info on that.
The specific Krylon model of silicone is now sold through the Ace Hardware
chain. If you can find it at your local store, you can order it
through Ace Hardware by the
case pack (6 cans).
Where are most of the Freestyle competitions?
They are all over the world. Recently, most of the larger events have been in
Europe, but the best way to get started is to get friends together for casual
competitions.
The FPA website has a list of upcoming competitions.
Ciao, I’m happy you are starting this great sport.
I played solo a lot, but sometimes I found people to jam with, this is what I noticed during these years:
SOLO:
-Pros-
>Skills develop faster
>Great self sets
>Good understanding of the techincal aspect of the moves
>If you play for hours alone you start getting your body really fit
>Going outside and facing a new problem everytime is a great way to take it, like solving a puzzle
>You start to think much more on the phisics of the disc
>A great journey in your inner being (I changed a lot in better thanks to frisbee), I think my willpower got a lot better.
>Always a will to learn something new.
-Cons-
>Repeating many times the same move could be really boring
>Nobody to share your developing is sometimes really sad
>Your form gets longer to build up as you can’t see your movements, people can help you on that viewing you from outside.
>Too techincal means sometimes a bit robotic and flat game
>If the weather is bad it’s so hard to go out there.
JAM:
-Pros-
>A great way to meet and know better people
>Great feeling of improvisation
>Better sense of the disc in air because it’s set by someone else
>Someone will see and cheers your big combos
>Company before and after jam
>Sometimes you enter "THE ZONE" a magical state of jam where everyone is moving around the disc touching, setting and catching it perfectly and everything is improvisational. That’s the best feeling you could have from a jam as far as I know.
-Cons-
>Slower develop of skills
>It could be stressing not being able to set or throw good to your playing partners
>If the jam is big 5 people or more and everyone start playing solo, it sucks.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS:
Well, I think the best thing to do is to mix things up. Play SOLO and JAM with other people. If it’s hard for you to find other people to freestyle with, start with them with the basics. Call your friends to jam with you with throws and catches, they’ll have fun. If you start delaying and making solo combos all the times they’ll get bored.Try to hook them with that and maybe it will work. It’s hard to explain how to start freestyling and I think many formed freestylers have differeent opinions.
My advice: go out and have fun alone or with other people, keep in touch with freestyle frisbee players from around the world (they’ll help you a lot developing your skills) and try to get to a tournament to see what’s it like, I’m sure you would have a blast!
If you have any other questions you can find me at pandracchio@hotmail.com
Fly high…
Fabiosis
—
” FLY HIGH AS A DISC IN THE SKY ! ”
Solonoyed – Have you ever hung out at the park soloing for 2 or three hours, waiting for your partners to show up. You jam, you wait, you get annoyed. That feeling of irritation is called solonoyed, a play on the term solenoid (an electromechanical switch).
YES as a matter a fact I have! Not to mention those defintions are the work of Z~Z and yours truely 🙂 My "waiting for Diego" series resulted with inventions like "wipers" & "back from the grave". Simply go to Yahoo video search and type in JAMCO for the wipers stuff.
—
“The Gordie Howe” of Freestyle 😀
What if you have no one in your area that is very good at freestyle? is it better to jam with oter people or to do it solo?
it should be other
Thank you for all the info on freestyle, I am just new to this and I am sometimes having trouble with the moves.
If you don’t have anyone near you to play with, then solo practice is best. I had
one person to play with occasionally during my first four years, but I would say
90% of my progress came from the work I did on my own.
OK, THANK YOU FOR ALL THE ADVICE. THAT WILL HELP A LOT IN MY FUTURE FREESTYLE FRISBEE TRAINING.
Ryan, I think Fabio will have some very helpful things to say about this since he got good very quickly and he practiced very hard.
My answer is that it depends. If you’re a prodigy, you’ll get good very quickly no matter how much you practice. If you’re like the rest of us, you’ll need to work to reach the level you want. That brings me to my next point: what is practice?
Most people think of practice as a structured repetition of a skill until you master it. A workout with a plan. That can definitely speed your development, but it’s not the most favorite activity within freestyle. Most people like to be less structured and learn through jamming.
I’ll say this: you can learn both through structured practice and jamming. Structured practice can give you access to more during a jam. Jamming helps with interaction and improvisation. There is actually at least one approach in between the either/or of practice vs. jamming, which is to jam with the idea to work on a part of your game.
Let’s say you are learning a pull. You can practice that pull on your own. Over and over again. And over and over again. Or, you can jam. And when the disc comes is passed to you, you can try the pull. When you get the disc for an individual combo, you can work that pull into the moves. This approach lets you practice but keeps you in community with other freestylers and gives you opportunities to do your chosen move in a variety of circumstances. One note on this approach: mix it up. Practice the move, but if you do nothing but that move you practice, it becomes boring for others. Mix in some other skills to fuel the energy of the jam.
One last note on how much practice it took me. It took me a winter and spring to learn the basic delay moves when I was 13. Between age 13 and 17, I practiced mostly on my own to the point where I was doing triple spinning moves – and I was able to throw some Z’s. I gave up the sport between age 18 and 26. When I came back, it took me no time to remember my skills but an entire winter to rebuild my game from scratch with Dave Lewis’ help so that it had the potential to be a world class game. After that, every jam was a learning experience whether it was practice or not. Even now, I work on new moves and notice new things. And that’s the beauty of freestyle: there’s always something new to discover. It’s a lifelong sport.
Solo practice is great if you have a mind to it. But i know for a fact that a lot of people dont like to practice alone (im not one of them). So if you can get somebody else into the game, and you meet and play say once a week, then your solo game can be sort of prep for your coop jams. Which keeps it fun and motivated. Check out the word Solonoyed in frisbee-freestyle.de, you will know what happens to people who jam solo too much )
I got this idea from John and Joe in the UK, dunno if they will agree with me )) Playing only solo is like forgetting about half the game. Its meant to be coop on the high-end level of play. Also, good ZZ’s are hard to master if you have nobody to throw to.
—
No jump, no catch!
Does it matter what type of silicone spray you use? and Will it make the frisbee spin longer.
Over the years, Krylon has been the most popular silicone spray. There are
some environmental concerns because it’s an aerosol can. Some people have
experimented with other brands, but I don’t have info on that.
The specific Krylon model of silicone is now sold through the Ace Hardware
chain. If you can find it at your local store, you can order it
through Ace Hardware by the
case pack (6 cans).
Where are most of the Freestyle competitions?
They are all over the world. Recently, most of the larger events have been in
Europe, but the best way to get started is to get friends together for casual
competitions.
The FPA website has a list of upcoming competitions.
Ciao, I’m happy you are starting this great sport.
I played solo a lot, but sometimes I found people to jam with, this is what I noticed during these years:
SOLO:
-Pros-
>Skills develop faster
>Great self sets
>Good understanding of the techincal aspect of the moves
>If you play for hours alone you start getting your body really fit
>Going outside and facing a new problem everytime is a great way to take it, like solving a puzzle
>You start to think much more on the phisics of the disc
>A great journey in your inner being (I changed a lot in better thanks to frisbee), I think my willpower got a lot better.
>Always a will to learn something new.
-Cons-
>Repeating many times the same move could be really boring
>Nobody to share your developing is sometimes really sad
>Your form gets longer to build up as you can’t see your movements, people can help you on that viewing you from outside.
>Too techincal means sometimes a bit robotic and flat game
>If the weather is bad it’s so hard to go out there.
JAM:
-Pros-
>A great way to meet and know better people
>Great feeling of improvisation
>Better sense of the disc in air because it’s set by someone else
>Someone will see and cheers your big combos
>Company before and after jam
>Sometimes you enter "THE ZONE" a magical state of jam where everyone is moving around the disc touching, setting and catching it perfectly and everything is improvisational. That’s the best feeling you could have from a jam as far as I know.
-Cons-
>Slower develop of skills
>It could be stressing not being able to set or throw good to your playing partners
>If the jam is big 5 people or more and everyone start playing solo, it sucks.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS:
Well, I think the best thing to do is to mix things up. Play SOLO and JAM with other people. If it’s hard for you to find other people to freestyle with, start with them with the basics. Call your friends to jam with you with throws and catches, they’ll have fun. If you start delaying and making solo combos all the times they’ll get bored.Try to hook them with that and maybe it will work. It’s hard to explain how to start freestyling and I think many formed freestylers have differeent opinions.
My advice: go out and have fun alone or with other people, keep in touch with freestyle frisbee players from around the world (they’ll help you a lot developing your skills) and try to get to a tournament to see what’s it like, I’m sure you would have a blast!
If you have any other questions you can find me at pandracchio@hotmail.com
Fly high…
Fabiosis
—
” FLY HIGH AS A DISC IN THE SKY ! ”
Solonoyed – Have you ever hung out at the park soloing for 2 or three hours, waiting for your partners to show up. You jam, you wait, you get annoyed. That feeling of irritation is called solonoyed, a play on the term solenoid (an electromechanical switch).
YES as a matter a fact I have! Not to mention those defintions are the work of Z~Z and yours truely 🙂 My "waiting for Diego" series resulted with inventions like "wipers" & "back from the grave". Simply go to Yahoo video search and type in JAMCO for the wipers stuff.
—
“The Gordie Howe” of Freestyle 😀