How to Use Centrifugals in a Shred

by Crazy Ivan


We talked the other day about the severe under use of Trap moves by freestylers.  I promised then to highlight all eleven trick types over the coming weeks, but before we get to the pros and cons break down, I figured I should highlight another trick type that tend to be problematic in freestyle.  And that's the centrifugal.

For those who aren't up on their Myachi terminology, a Centrifugal is a move where the Myachi remains on one place on the body (usually, but not always, the back of the hand) and the body moves without disturbing the Myachi.  The most common examples are moves like the Half-Pipe, the Cradle, the Vert, the Snake, the Roller Coaster and all the numerous variations on those tricks.  This is the type of trick that makes up some 80% of a game of Fu.

When we talked about trap moves, I was focusing in on their relative under-use in Myachi shreds, but with Centrifugals, I wanted to tackle a different issue altogether.  For the record, I do feel that Centrifugals are under-used in freestyle, but nowhere near to the extent that Traps are ignored.  That being said, many freestylers make Centrifugals a center-piece of their routines and Verts and Roller Coasters find their way into many if not most long-form shred sessions.

So rather than convince people to use more Centrifugals, I instead want to spend this post convincing people to use them correctly.

It seems to me that most of the time, if I see Centrifugals in a routine, they're lumped together.  It's almost like the freestyler is saying, "I can do all the centrifugals as well, see."  They're very rarely used in concert with other moves unless they're used on the way into a Daredevil or some other body-cross move and usually you see several of them together.

This makes sense from the perspective of the jammer, but not from the perspective of the audience.  As a jammer, I recognize where this tendency comes from.  Most of the popular Centifugals use the "Tiger Fist" position where the Myachi rests between the 2nd and 3rd row of knuckles on your fingers.  The Roller Coaster, Reverse Roller Coaster, Snake, Crane, Helix, Centrifuge and any number of body-cross trap/swaps all use this same hand position and virtually no non-Centrifugal move in the game uses it.

So it's simply logical that if you, in the course of your jam, find yourself in a Tiger Fist position, you would just rock out a bunch of these moves one after the other.  After all, do you really want to find two or three more tricks that end in the same spot?  It's far easier to lump them together.

But from the audience's vantage point, it makes for a very unsatisfying portion of the routine.  Centrifugals are, like any other type of move, best peppered throughout the routine.  You could do a Double Wolverine> 1080> Butterfly> Double Sonic> Double Reverse Butterfly combo in the midst of a shred and it would be awesome.  But it would be far less awesome if you never did another aerial move for the rest of the routine.  Imagine that instead of using the Double Sonic here (where it's not really adding much to an already complex aerial combo), you held on to it and threw it in between, say, a Toe 360 and a Wing Catch that you were already doing elsewhere in the shred.  I think we can all agree that it would be far more impressive to see this unexpected aerial popping up in transition than it would be to have a 5 trick aerial combo instead of a 4 trick one.

The same is certainly true with Centrifugals.  Sure, you can lock them all up in one long combo.  I've often seen even the best freestylers in the world throw down something like Snake> Roller Coaster> Reverse Roller Coaster> Helix> Crane> Reverse Helix> Drop of Death.  Now, if you think it all the way through, this is a sick combo.  But now imagine the same combo with a transitional trick in between each move:

Snake> Double Impossible> Roller Coaster> Mantis> DarkSlide> Reverse Roller Coaster> Scorpion Strike> Helix> Cross-Over> Crane> Reverse Helix> Daredevil> Reverse MVP Daredevil> Drop of Death

Now, sure, 14 tricks are cooler than7 tricks by default, but even any series of 7 moves in the combo above would get a better audience reaction than all 7 Centrifugals smashed together.

Another thing to keep in mind is that in the above combo, the Reverse Helix would really get lost in a maze of movement and the inclusion of a Reverse Roller Coaster immediately after a Roller Coaster really diminishes the impressive nature of the Roller Coaster by itself.  In other words, if you follow a pretty tough centrifugal with a really tough one, the simpler one is quickly forgotten.

So when setting up a shred, look for opportunities for one off Centrifugals.  Practice landing some of your aerials directly into Tiger Fist position.  Look for combos that start and end on Centrifugals with other trick types in between.  This will add flavor to your routine and make it more distinctive in competitions.  And for Pete's sake, learn them with your weak hand too!