Last week we took a look at my 3 favorite
drills for learning isolations, but once you’ve
learned this trick the obvious question is:
what do you do with them?
Drex here from DrexFactor.com and today I’m
sharing with you my top five poi tricks that
use isolations.
Let’s see where that crazy antigravity magic
takes us!
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Before we dive in, I just want to take a moment
to give a shout out to the friends of the
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video.
Number 1: the Buzzsaw isolation
Let’s admit it, all of us really learn how
to do isolations in order to do this trick
right here.
It was the first use for isolations in the
poi world and it’s still a stunning and
attention-grabbing trick.
A lot of people compare this trick to cranking
the pedals of a bicycle, spinning the hands
and poi heads around in a way that seems to
defy gravity.
I’ll confess I’m way more partial to the
wall plane version of this trick, where you
get to look at the audience as you’re performing
the isolation but the buzzsaw version is still
an absolute classic.
Number 2: linear isolations
Okay...so clearly this trick kind of stretches
the bounds of what we could really call an
isolation.
While linear isolations are not actually technically
isolated themselves, they do include this
beautiful moment when switching top to bottom
and side to side that certainly captures the
feeling of an isolation for a moment.
I actually did a tutorial on this move a couple
months ago and I’m quite fond of using it
to transition from flowers to an isolation
at the body center.
For an extra fun challenge, you can incorporate
pirouettes, body tracing, and many other variations
into these linear isolations.
See how many different ways you can find to
get those poi heads and hands to stick together
as you’re moving them around!
Once you start looking for places where you
can get that stuck together feeling out of
the poi moving across your body, you’ll
start to see them everywhere!
Number 3: Isolated Weaves
Years ago, I remember people talking about
in online forums for months and everyone seemed
to agree that this trick was possible but
I’d never seen it done.
Then it popped up in a video that Zan Moore
posted and it was everything that I had hoped
for.
The gravity defying nonsense of an isolation
coupled with the move everybody thinks of
when they think of poi spinning.
It’s also a phenomenal challenge because
in order to perform it you have to not just
be able to isolate, but to switch which hand
is on which side of your body as you do it.
If you haven’t already, check out the video
I did last week on isolation drills and work
to perfect the Alien Jon drill.
It is absolutely essential to getting this
trick down.
For years this trick was really the Platonic
ideal of impossible tech poi in my head and
when I finally got it down I felt as though
I’d crossed some mystical border into arriving
as a tech poi spinner.
Give this one a try and see if it gives you
the same impression!
Number 4: Lovelacing
Again, this one really stretches the boundaries
of what we’d consider an isolated move but
there is a method to my madness here.
To put it as succinctly as possible, lovelacing
uses a lot of the same skills that isolations
do.
You have to find a balance point between the
momentum and drag on the poi in order to perform
them.
Really when you get right down to it, if you
were to uncross your arms from a lovelace
you’d wind up with our standard buzzsaw
isolation so these two tricks are not that
different from each other.
It’s also a great example of a class of
moves called inversions that used to be very
much en vogue in the tech poi world.
They’re no longer as popular, but they do
represent a fun challenge for anyone who wants
to move their poi through tight spaces.
Number 5: Antibrids
Yeah, so I’m totally sneaking more than
one trick into this last one.
Sorry--I really couldn’t choose between
them.
First up is horizontal cateye versus isolation--which
for my money is still one of the hardest poi
tricks I’ve ever had to learn and is packed
with such a wow factor that both poi enthusiasts
and muggles alike instantly get what an amazing
trick it is.
I remember back when I could count on my fingers
how many people there were in the whole world
that could do this trick...and when I nearly
threw my shoulder out learning it.
Learning a horizontal cateye is one thing,
but you don’t really know for sure that
your hand path is clean until you put it together
with the isolation.
Once you do the trick is just absolute magic.
And for those of us who are into gunslingers,
it also has an equivalent antibrid: isolation
vs a 6-petal gunslinger antispin flower.
I’ve seen a lot of people try to pass off
static spin vs 6-petal gunslingers over the
years but the relationship between the hand
and the poi head gets lost if you try to do
the trick this way.
There’s actually some pretty simple math
behind it: since gunslingers halve the length
of the poi, you wind up doing twice as many
beats going around a hand path of the same
size.
A 6-petal gunslinger flower only has 6 petals
because now the poi has 2 ends, so each end
is really doing 3 petals.
3-petal antispin flowers have 2 downbeats
to them, so they’re the closest gunslinger
equivalent to cateyes, which have only 1 downbeat.
It’s pretty easy to see the difference if
you put the isolation up against the gunslinger
flower.
The relationship is nice and clean and the
gunslinger flower traces out a beautiful 6-petal
flower.
This trick is currently one of my absolute
favorites.
Cool!
So those were my five favorite poi tricks
that use or are inspired by isolations.
What are some of your favorites?
Let me know down in the comments.
What other poi tricks would you like to see
me cover in this series?
I’d really love 
to know!
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Peace.
