Breaking in a Myachi: The Experiment Begins

by Crazy Ivan

I got an e-mail yesterday that ran all of one sentence:

"Should I rub hand lotion into my Myachi and stick in under my mattress?"

To most people, that would be a really weird question.  I like to imagine that e-mail accidentally getting sent to some random dude who then spends the rest of his life trying to figure out what the heck it was all about.

But I know exactly why he was asking.  He has a stiff Myachi, he wants a yummy one and he's probably heard all kinds of weird, random stuff in way of advice on how to break his Myachi in.  There are a ton of common methods and most of them work very well.  There are other methods, though, that may not work at all.

I'd love to list the ones that work and those that don't, but to be honest, I really haven't experimented with all of them.  I have a method that I use and it works well for me, but I feel obligated as something of a Myachi historian to really flesh out all these other methods.

So I'm writing this entry to announce my intention to do a Myth Busters style experiment.  Starting Monday I'm going to get 8 Myachis, all exactly the same, and I'm going to give myself 7 days to break them in using 6 different common methods.  After the whole thing is said and done, we're going to examine all the Myachis and see what does work and what doesn't.  Hopefully, in 9 days we have the definitive answer as to what is the best way to break a Myachi in.

Before we get into all of that, though, let me give you a quick run down of the methods I'll be testing:

 #1) Wetting and Drying

This one definitely has an effect.  I learned this during my first summer with Myachi where we had an outdoor booth at Dollywood.  Every time it rained (and it rained a lot), all of our Myachis would get wet and we'd have to dry them in the sun whenever it finally came back out.  We saw that the demo sacks that had been wet and dried generally worked much better than the ones we'd managed to keep dry throughout.

Many methods of breaking in a Myachi involve wetting it and then adding some other substance.  A lot of the reason that I'm undertaking this experiment is to see how much of the break in method is due to the water and how much is added by the additional substance.

 #2) Shampoo

This is our first foreign substance and it's probably the most common.  It makes sense that the detergent in shampoo would help to break down the fibers in the Myachi.  They might remove foreign particles that give it a bit of extra stiffness.  But of course, it's entirely possible that this method only seems to work because to do it you have to get the Myachi really wet.

I've actually heard people go as far as to say which shampoos work better.  I have to think that would make zero difference, but if we find a significant advantage in the shampoo method, maybe we'll test different shampoos later.

 #3) Conditioner

This is usually done in conjunction with the shampoo method and this one is almost certainly over the top.  Chemically speaking, conditioner is essentially a wax for your hair that is designed to bind to hair, fill in damaged spots, make in shiny, et cetera.  That being said, it's hard to imagine it helping in the break in process of a Myachi.  If the polymers stuck to the Myachi at all, one would expect they'd make it harder to catch rather than easier.

That being said, I know a lot of Myachi players that swear by this method and some of them have the most broken in sacks in the game.  I'm far from an expert on hair care products so I'd love to be proven wrong in my assumption that conditioner won't help.

 #4) Moisturizing Lotion

This is another common substance add that may or may not include wetting the Myachi.  Rubbing hand lotion into a Myachi came into vogue over the last two years or so and now a lot of jammers swear by it.  I've actually never tried this method myself and I'm kind of curious about it.  From my extremely limited understanding of science I can't think of anything in moisturizer that would effect the relative yumminess of a Myachi, but hey, that's why we're doing the experiment.

 #5) The Fold & Rub

This is probably the 2nd oldest method in the game.  In this one, you basically just rub, fold, squeeze and smack around your Myachi.  Since the point of all of this is to break in the fibers of the fabric, it makes perfect sense that folding and rubbing will make a big difference.

The big questions, of course, are how big of a difference does it make and how quickly is that difference made?  This will be the hardest method to test scientifically because it's not very specific.  That being said, this is one of the methods that I actually use so I have a pretty solid methodology to start with. 

 #6) Rubber Bands

There's probably some truth to this one as well, but it's any body's guess how much.  This is a pretty common method for breaking in a new baseball mitt or a new pair of shoes so it stand to reason that it would work with a Myachi as well.

The idea here is to cocoon the Myachi in rubber bands.  This folds the fabric and twists it in all kinds of weird ways and the hope is that this stress on the fabric will start to break down some of the stiffness in the fibers just like you do with the Fold & Rub.  It will be interesting to see how this works compared with the much more painstaking and labor intensive method described above.

 #7) Under the Mattress

This is another method that almost certainly comes from common baseball mitt procedures.  I seriously doubt that it has much of an effect on something as small as a Myachi, but again, a number of seasoned jammers all but swear by it.

This one might be tough for me to test because I have a memory foam mattress and I don't think that will work the same as a traditional spring mattress.  Just to be thorough, I'll have one of the guys test this method and they may even do so unwittingly.  Perhaps I'll just sneak a Myachi under Mavericks mattress on Monday afternoon and retrieve it in a week.

 #8) Jamming

Obviously every scientific experiment needs a control so I'll be using a 8th Myachi in this experiment as well.  This one I'll just keep with me every day of the week and jam with here and there.  I won't rub or fold it, I won't wet it or shampoo it and I won't wrap it in rubber bands or leave it under my mattress.

My standard answer whenever people have asked me in the past "how do I break my Myachi in?" has always been, "just jam with it".  Generally speaking, that's all I ever do.  Once in a while I'll do a bit of fold and rub on a newer sack, but 99% of my break in method is just playing Myachi with it.

I don't doubt that some of the other methods are more effective and quicker than simply jamming, but it will be interesting to see the difference.  If you can break in a Myachi 10 times quicker by wetting and shampooing it then it's definitely worth it.  If you're only making a slight difference then probably not.  After all, playing with a Myachi is fun.  Shampooing one?  Not so much.

I'll be getting snippets of video over the week and I'll keep everyone posted on the progress.  If you have another method or if there's another method you've heard about that you'd like to see tested, let me know.  E-mail me at crazyivan@myachi.com or leave it in the comments section below.  If you get me before Monday I might add your method to this experiment.  If not, don't worry.  I'm sure I'll be revisiting this one in the future.