You asked for it, you get it: a pendulum
based beginner combo! Drex here from
drexfactor.com and I'm coming at
you with a brand new combo for the month
of June and this one unlike some past
months is really Oh truly Oh a combo that
is made for beginners. So I'm doing
something a little bit different with
this combo: namely that I'm gonna teach
you guys a lot of the moves that you
need in the course of this video. That
said there are three tricks that would
be really helpful for you to pick up
before you do this combo. Those tricks
are: corkscrews, tuck turns, and stalls. Now,
you can find links to some tutorials
that I've done on these very tricks down
the description of this video or up in
the cards if you happen to be watching
it on YouTube. I'm going to show you the
combo at full speed, then take you
through it piece by piece, and finally
show it to you again in slow motion. Make
sure you hit that subscribe button as
well as the notification bell so you
know exactly when I'm dropping a new
video. Before we dive in, I just want to
take a moment to give a shout out to the
friends of the channel. Big thanks to Dark
Monk, Emazinglights, Flowtoys, Spinballs,
and Ultrapoi for helping to make the
videos on this channel possible. You can
find them all on the web by following
the links that I've got down in the
description of this video.
So the first thing that I'm sure you're
probably thinking after watching all
that is: my goodness, there are a lot of
pendulums in this combo! And you would be
right! I recently did a video on some of
my favorite pendulum based tricks and
that got me thinking about wanting to do
a combo around them. Now, the funny thing
is is I'm not actually using any of the
pendulum tricks that are in that video,
but it was still a good idea and a place
to start from. So let me teach you
everything you're gonna need to know
about pendulums in order to get through
this combo. We're actually gonna start
off by just swaying our hands back and
forth across the bottom half of our body
with the poi being carried with them. Now,
I want to get the poi up to about
shoulder height on either side of my
body, but I don't want to put enough
energy into the poi that they go up and
over like that. They should always be
either just past my hands or below them
as I'm going back and forth, see? Okay, so
this is gonna turn into our first trick.
What we're gonna do is when the poi are
off to our left hand side right here I'm
actually gonna step forward and turn my
body all the way around so that my back
is now facing the camera and my face is
facing the back of the room. The poi keep
on going as though nothing has changed.
Once again, with a poi off to my left
hand side I'm going to step across their
plane and turn my entire body so that I'm
faced towards the camera again. I can do
this as many times as I like: putting in
one turn, then another turn, and I can
keep on going just turning my body in
complete circles, right? Now the key to
this is making sure that your hands
always pass in front of whichever
direction your body is facing at any
given time, right? If you let one hand go
behind your back, not only is it
uncomfortable, but the poi is gonna get
stuck and you can't get it back out. Cool,
so for our next trick we're gonna go
ahead and have our hands go over top
above our head as we keep the poi
dangling just beneath them, yeah? I
personally like to do this in such a way
that I kind of have the poi almost stall
out to either side as they're doing
pendulums, yeah? The trick to this is
making sure that your hands rise slowly
enough that the poi heads cannot get
above them and if we want we can
actually change the direction of
poi on either side. I can have them back
over to my left going around what to me
looks like it is counterclockwise and
then start back over to what looks like
clockwise in front of me, right? I can
either do this when the poi are on
bottom or I can do it when the poi are
on top. Really, I just want to make sure
that I carry through the momentum either
which way, yeah? Okay, last trick: then
we're gonna try having our hands moving
around in opposite directions like
they're going in butterfly, right? Cool!
Here's how that's gonna work: we're gonna
start with our hands out to the side and
we're gonna let them pass by until our
arms are crossed and then we're gonna
raise our hands up and over to let them
exit. This happens slow as molasses.
Remember: the point here is to try and
keep the poi underneath our hands at all
times, yeah? Now one of those things that
is almost certainly going to happen as
you go through this is that you're gonna
get your poi tangled up as you try and
bring them up and around. Here's how to
fix that: realize that whichever hand is
on bottom is also just a couple inches
closer to you. Right now it's my left
hand, yeah? So in order to keep the poi
from crossing over each other, make sure
that you're always keeping that hand
closer as well as the poi. Cool! Now
you've got all the tools, now let's start
to break this combo down. One thing to
keep in mind as we work through this is
that this combo obeys something called
the rule of threes. This is a really
common device in storytelling and it
basically breaks down like this: I'm
gonna give you the same set up twice and
then the third time I'm gonna change
something about it. You can probably
already think of a ton of jokes and fairy
tales that follow this format. It's also
a great tool for creating choreography.
So in this combo whenever a trick gets
repeated twice, something is going to
change on the third rep. Keep your eye
out for it. Sweet! So first thing's first:
we're gonna play around with that first
pendulum trick that we did where we turn.
We're gonna pitch the poi out to the
left and turn once, twice, three times, and
as the poi come around back in front
of us, we're gonna switch around to
having them sweep up and around
then down below, yeah? So what that looks
like is: I pitch left and I step out, I
pitch left and step out, they come down
around, go up and over, down and around, up
and over, and now on the third time
through I'm going to do a tuck turn. That
is: as the poi are coming down and around
and I would normally be bringing them up
and around, I'm gonna bring them down
around with enough momentum that I'm
gonna just stall the poi back behind my
shoulders turn over to the right and
then stall them out in front of me. So
this is where the corkscrew comes in--and
it's also gonna require just a little
bit of footwork. Let's see what that
looks like.
So first up I'm going to reach my left
foot behind my right foot like so; which
is gonna twist up my body in kind of an
uncomfortable way but we're gonna get
out of here soon, don't worry. Now from
here I get up on the balls of both of my
feet and I untwist around to face the
back of the room and then re twist
around to face the camera once again.
From here, I can either step out with my
left, then right to get back to a normal
air orientation or I can step right,
then left to get out of it, right? Now
here's what the poi are doing
through all that:
now as I step behind with my left, my
right hand poi is gonna come up and then
my left hand poi is gonna come up, doing
a little bit of a corkscrew until I
arrive back in front of myself with the
poi resting in front of me, yeah? So from
here I'm gonna switch into that
butterfly pendulum move that was the
third trick that we learned earlier in
this video, right? And I want this to feel
as though my arms are crossing and then
going out to the sides crossing as they
come up, out to the sides as they go down,
right? I do this once, I do this twice and
the third time through I sweep both my
hands and poi down and around to stall
to the outside, yeah?
From here I cap off the combo by having
my right knee and a focus switch go out
to the right like so, yeah? Cool!
So let's try all that again from the top.
Cool, so I start off pitching to the left,
I turn pitching to the left, I turn
around up and over once, down and around,
up and over twice. The third time I come
around in the tuck turn and stall down.
My left foot reaches behind my right,
right hand goes up, left hand goes up, we
come back around to face the camera with
the poi at a rest and we do pendulum
butterflies up once, up twice, stall out.
Right knee and face both go to the right
to cap it off, yeah? Cool! Let's see that
again in slow-mo.
Cool! So I very deliberately crafted this
combo around doing pendulums because
they require just a little bit more
precision than standard poi spinning
does, right? And that's something that I
think beginners should get to work on
sooner rather than later. And now I want
to see your version of this combo! Do you
want to add some tricks? Do you want to
take some away? It doesn't matter, I just
want to see what you come up with! Please
post video of yourself doing this combo
to Instagram with the hashtag #drexfactorpoi.
I can't wait to see it! Before
I turn you guys loose, I just want to
send out a massive thank you to all of
my amazing supporters on Patreon. You
guys would keep this channel alive and
keep a roof over my head! Thank you so
much for your contributions. If you dig
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Thanks so much and peace!
