Stalls are one of the coolest tricks we have
in the poi world!
They’re great for transitions, hitting a
beat, and even look pretty cool in their own
right!
Drex here from DrexFactor.com and today I’m
counting down my top 5 favorite poi stall
tricks--that is the tricks made up of stalls
that I think have the coolest effect.
Been polishing up those stalls lately?
Great!
Let’s see if I can’t throw something your
way that’ll give you something new and exciting
to do with them.
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, Emazing Lights, Flowtoys,
Spinballs, and Ultra Poi for helping to make
the videos on this channel possible.
You can visit them all on the web by following
the links down in the description of this
video.
I love stalls.
I’ve done more than a few tutorials on them
and when I finally cracked the code for how
to do them cleanly and consistently it opened
up so many doors for me.
Every beginner asks how they transition between
tricks and using stalls is almost always a
good answer, but let’s not forget that stalls
look really cool in their own right.
So without further ado, let’s dive in and
take a look at 5 of my favorites.
Number 1: The “G”
The essence of this stall combo is really
just switching back and forth between split
time same direction and split time opposites.
I’ve seen it done many times over the years
but G definitely made it seem the most stylish
by far.
If you’ve played around with doing inspin
stalls in split opposites this isn’t going
to be a huge leap for you.
All you need to do is turn those inspin petals
in the middle into stalls in their own right
and spread your arms out to either side, then
continue on your merry way once you get back
to the middle.
This is really handy not just as a cool-looking
trick, but also for getting back and forth
between positions where the poi are out to
either side or together in the middle.
Very slick!
Number 2: Stall Chasers
Ah...stall chasers.
So easy to explain and require so much nuance
to get to look right.
I remember when these first hit the spinning
scene about 9 years ago and there was a festival
season where this was literally all anybody
wanted to learn how to do.
Doing this cleanly is kind of a badge of honor.
It requires you to be able to control the
relationship between your poi and hand both
with the poi leading as well as with the hand
leading.
Want a cool drill to try and get these down?
Start with your poi hanging beneath your hand
and swing it all the way around to the opposite
side of your body, then down to stall back
up on its native side.
Go back around and stall back down.
Simple enough, right?
Now do it so that you can visually see the
hand and poi go flat as they pass by your
face.
It’s going to require you to slow down your
hand any time you want to go up and over in
this pattern.
Practice this with both hands and you’ve
got the hard part of the trick down.
Be prepared to blow some minds.
Number 3: Yuta Stalls
I remember when I first nailed Yuta Stalls
and they were the first poi trick I mastered
that really felt like I was able to pull of
black magic.
Of all the poi tricks I’ve learned in my
day, it’s these that appear most to break
the laws of physics and make poi look like
sorcery.
Named for OG poi god Yuta Imamura, these are
also one of those rare poi moves that don’t
just look good with dance but practically
require it.
Best of all, if you can fling your poi back
and forth across your body horizontally you
already have most of the poi tools you need
to put the trick together.
Just lift up your hands at either side to
begin spinning the poi in wall plane and you’re
there!
Do a bottom stall, begin flinging the poi
from side to side, lather, rinse, repeat.
Of course, things get an order of magnitude
more interesting when you do these with the
poi in split-time opposites or do full 360
degree turns with your poi.
Remember to turn on the ball of your foot
for greater mobility and twirl yourself through
this trick like a whirling dervish!
Number 4: Horizontal Stacking
I cannot think of a class of poi tricks that
got so deep so quickly as stacking.
Whether it’s the original stack from Mel’s
“Red Pants” video or any of the dozens
of variations that have popped up over the
years, stacking is one of those things that’s
become so commonplace that it’s difficult
to remember when it wasn’t common.
This is another one of those tricks that I’ve
done a bunch of tutorials on and it really
all comes down to your ability to do both
top stalls as well as simple pendulums back
to back.
The great news is, though, that if you’ve
got these pieces down there is such a deep
rabbit hole of places that you can take it.
Any place where you can get the poi to line
up horizontally for a moment is fair game
and you can find some super interesting transition
points and tricks within this framework.
For an entry point into this world, learn
both the Mel as well as the Charlie.
You’ll find you can create them by cutting
and pasting bits of inspin flowers, extensions,
pendulums, and many more--see how many ingredients
you can add to your stacking stew!
Number 5: Plane Breaking Stalls
So...this one is just a little bit of a cheat.
Technically Yuta Stalls fall into this category
but I would say that most audiences can’t
tell that the two are closely related.
In this case I’m talking about the class
of plane breaking stalls that G introduced
us all to when he was touring the United States
circa 2009.
This type of super clean plane breaking was
totally unprecedented at the time.
I remember I could always find G at my first
Firedrums because he would have a herd of
a half dozen poi spinners hovering around
him trying to learn how to do this from him.
The key here is to really realize that a stall
and a flower are still a stall and a flower
no matter what plane they’re in.
So, functionally a stall away from you is
no different for the poi head whether you
stalled from a horizontal or vertical swing.
Because of this, you can look at these stall
points, sometimes called zero points, as being
transition points between any plane that intersects
on that position.
Vertical, horizontal, even diagonal!
All of these are fair game!
Cool!
So now that we have all these fun stall variations
out there, how about we put them together
into a sweet combo?
We’re going to start off with the “G”,
stalling in split-same, split-opp, and split-same.
Then we’re going to take a stall chaser
over once, then twice, then when we go for
the third one we’re going to change the
game plan a bit: at the top pull your arms
out across your body, down and out, then back
around up so the poi point at each other and
switch into the Mel.
It’s going to look like this.
From here, we’re going to switch into the
Charlie, and perform a Yuta stall around once,
and then twice, and then switch into split
time opposites flowers.
Off of the top petal, we’re going to stall
out into those plane-breaking stalls.
When we get into the horizontals, we’re
going to go ahead stop.
Cool!
Let’s see that again.
If you’re struggling with your stalls I
have a beginner course that includes a detailed
breakdown on how to learn them.
Head on over to Drexfactor.com and sign up
for my Spin Poi Like a Rockstar series.
You’ll get twelve awesome tutorials delivered
to your inbox over the course of several weeks
on topics like weaves, flowers, and stalls.
Learn at your own pace with some of my very
best lessons.
What are your favorite stall tricks?
Did I leave out your favorite?
Let me know down in the comments.
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Peace.
