A Few Tips on Glow-Jams

by Crazy Ivan

The existence of the Power Loop on every series sack since 2003 is a sure sign of Myachi's love and commitment to the idea of jamming in the dark.  Designed to hold a standard size of glowstick, the power loop insures that every single Myachi can be made into a glow in the dark Myachi in a snap.

Black lights are another favorite method of illuminating a Myachi and, of course, some Myachis actually had glow in the dark fabric or images such as the Dunkin' Donuts and the Sobe Flames.  Once in a while, when we really want to illuminate a Myachi, we even do ridiculously stupid things that nobody should ever, ever do... seriously.




Before we go any further, I think I should take a few more words here to emphasize how you should never, never do that under any circumstances.  The guys you see in that video are trained professionals with an accumulative 20+ years experience with fire props and the safety precautions necessary when dealing with flaming props.  One would think that nobody would need to be told that setting things on fire and throwing them around is inherently dangerous, but some people do.

Anyway, on to the less dangerous methods of illuminating your Myachi, namely glowsticks.

Glow jams are fun and they add a whole new element to your game, but there are a few things that you lose when you start doing glow in the dark Myachi jams as well.  Here are a few things you'll want to keep in mind when you're doing a glow jam:

• Avoid Aerials.  Aerial moves make up a huge part of everyone's repertoire, but if all your audience can see is your Myachi, doing a 360, a Double Wolverine or a Triple Illusion all looks the same.  Aerial moves are only impressive if you also have glowsticks on your fingers (recommended) and if that's the case, use as many of them as you can think of.
• Avoid Portal Moves.  For the same reason that the Aerials are unimpressive, the Portal Moves aren't going to wow anyone.  They'll be really tough to do, of course, since you won't see the parts of your body you're trying to avoid hitting, but nobody else will know that you did a Musketeer rather than a simple Behind the Back
• Use Speed Changes.  Speeding up and slowing down looks cool in any jam, but with glow-jams this is augmented greatly.  The trails of light that follow the Myachi are what make glow jams so much fun to watch.  By varying your speed, you'll be varying the length of the visible trail.  That change of pace can turn a good routine into a great one.
• Hold Your Patterns.  In a normal jam you wouldn't do the Heartbeat for a very long time before moving on to another move.  It's cool and it's fun to do it quickly, but it's not super-impressive.  In a glow jam, people can't really see what you're doing.  They just see the pattern.  For this reason, you actually have to hold a move like the Heartbeat for a while before anyone can see what's being done.
• Don't Use Body Cross Combos.  Body-Crosses aren't as bad as Aerials or Portal Moves in a glow jam, but they're not much better.  Behind the Backs look pretty good as do moves like Ducks and Daredevils.  Under the Leg combos lose a lot of their impact in glow jams so while I wouldn't cut them out altogether, I certainly wouldn't go to the trouble of using moves like the Yoga, Reverse Under the Leg or Infinite Under the Leg.
• Simple is Best.  In a normal jam, the audience favorites and the toughest tricks are usually one in the same.  That doesn't always hold true for a glow jam.  Sometimes the most impressive move in with a glow stick is a long, high-arching Rainbow.  That would certainly be more impressive than something like, say, a Duck N Dive which is approximately eight million times more difficult.
• Think About Colors.  If you're using multiple glow sticks (2 or 3 Myachi routines or routines where you stick glowsticks in your finger knugz or shoelaces), think about which colors you're using.  If, for example, you're using two orange and one green, you'll want to keep in mind that the green will always be more visible than the oranges.  It might be best to use the orange ones on your fingers and the green on the Myachi.  It would be very distracting for your audience if you used one orange on the Myachi, another on your weak hand and a green one on your strong hand.
• Let There be Light.  You don't want to do your "Glow in the Dark" jams in the dark.  I know that sounds weird, but glow jams look much better if you're in the "semi-dark".  If there's enough light to see the silhouette of your body the whole jam will look much more impressive.  In the pitch black, it might look like you're just holding the Myachis in your palm and moving them around.
• Use a lot of Centrifugals.  The Centrifugal isn't usually the go-to trick type in a jam, but moves like the Snake, Crane, Roller Coaster, Helix, Figure Eight, Slash, Vert and even the Cradle and Halfpipe look really impressive in the midst of a flowing glow jam.

As you can see from that list, jamming with glow Myachi is an artform all unto itself.  If you want to be good at it, you'll have to do more than just get good at Myachi and then turn the lights off.  You'll actually have to learn a lot of new stuff in order to master this aspect of the game.  Much of it will be antipodal to what you've learned before so it might be tough to break certain habits and avoid certain favored combos.

One final piece of advice and this one is not specific to glow jamming.  It's a piece of advice that I'd give emphatically to anybody who likes to do freestyle Myachi.  Practice in front of a mirror.  You'd be surprised the ideas that it will give you and you'll be pleased to see that some of the moves you thought didn't look that cool are actually awesome.