Should You Use Swaps in a Shred?

by Crazy Ivan


In the past, I've referred to Swap Moves as the "holding patterns" of Myachi.  Every skill toy has the equivalent of this.  In juggling you have moves like the Cascade and Columns.  In devil sticks you have the tic-toc and the infinity.  In poi you have butterflies and trubines.  In contact juggling you have palm crosses and waves.  In Myachi you have Cold Fusion, Heartbeat and Fu. These moves are all impressive and fun, but the main thing they have in common is that they fall in between the other tricks.

When I say "holding pattern", what I mean is that these are tricks that you can slip into when you finish a big trick or combo before going into your next trick or combo.  They slow down the action so your audience can catch up and they allow you to reset to whatever part of the body or particular hold you're going to need to start the next move.  They're also employed as temporary patterns in the middle of improvised freestyle; a trick to do while you're thinking to yourself "what tricks haven't I done yet?"

As useful as it is to have tricks like this at your disposal, it generally leads to Swaps being considered the low point of any shred.  They're the calm before the storm; the silence before the next movement; the drum roll before the reveal.  Too often a routine turns into "Trick... fusion, fusion fusion... trick... fusion, fusion, fusion... combo... fusion, fusion, fusion... trick... fu, fu, fu..."

This has led many freestylers to try to leave out the swaps altogether.  Among veteran players, a freestyler might seek to go as long as possible in an improvised shred without resorting to a swap move.  It gives the shred the feel of a single continuous combo rather than a series of combos interrupted by a few holding patterns.  It provides a bit of continuity that the holding pattern would take away.

And thus many shreds you see from accomplished players will have a bit of Fu at the beginning and maybe a Heartbeat in there somewhere, but other than that, you can scarcely find a swap move.  Even worse, you won't see one until the middle of the shred and then you'll spend 20 seconds watching a really fast Cold Fusion before moving on to a bunch of other swapless combos.

But like any type of trick in the game, Swaps are best if they're littered throughout a combo.  This doesn't mean that you have to have a peaks-and-troughs routine filled with regular low points, though because Swaps don't have to be holding patterns.  They're really useful as such, but that doesn't mean that's the only way they can be used.  Adding two quick Fu swaps to a routine might not add much to it, but it also won't take much away.  It's only when you do 12 or 14 of them in a row that it starts feeling like a break in the action.

Of course, if you're doing a tough enough Swap move to begin with, people might appreciate a solid 20 seconds of it.  The Subter-Fusion has caused something of a resurgence in the use of Swaps in shreds simply by being a really cool, really hard, really impressive trick.  The more complex the swap pattern, the longer you can get away with doing it before it starts to slow down your shred.

The other important thing is not to reuse the same Swap over and over.  You can (and should) use some Fu and Fusion in your shred, but that doesn't mean you have to use the same moves over and over again.  There are plenty of Fusion moves to fill in the gaps in even the longest shreds.  When you start mixing in Fu, Turbines and Heartbeat variations, the possibilities open wide.

The key is that if you make a concerted effort to add some good Swaps to your repertoire, you can get all the advantages of the holding pattern tricks without any of the disadvantages.  After all, nobody can complain about the Swap move slowing down your routine if it's the coolest trick you throw down.

The Trouble With Aerials

by Crazy Ivan


When I teach people how to play Myachi (and I do that an awful lot), I have a certain method; a series of tricks that I teach them in a certain order.  Now, this will vary a bit depending on who I'm teaching.  I'll keep it easy if they're struggling and I'll ramp it up if they're doing really well, but the vast majority of the people I teach learn these 4 tricks first:

1. The Half Pipe
2. The Cold Fusion
3. The Under the Leg
4. The 360

As I go down the line of tricks, I'm waiting for the game to click.  There'll be a look or a smile or a sound of muffled victory.  It's a sign that they "get it"; that they now understand what it is that makes Myachi fun.  For some people this comes right away.  As soon as they get that first catch, they understand the game and see all the possibilities.  Some people get it one the Cold Fusion and for others they need only to hit that Under the Leg for it to click.

But if they're not already there by the time I get to the 360, I'm not worried.  There's something about hitting that trick that always makes it happen.  Getting a solid 360 is pretty tough for most people, but they usually get it after a few drops.  The internal reward of nailing that trick is almost always enough to inspire them to take a Myachi home and learn more.

The Aerials usually dominate an early Myachi player's practice and I think this is why.  Hitting a 360 or a 720 is so rewarding that it tends to be everyone's focus as soon as they break open they're new Myachi.  Illusions, Wolverines and Butterflies keep them interested and before long they'll know 30 tricks and more than half of them are aerials.

But then, for some reason, they start to drop off.  Body Crosses are usually the next big focus along with Swaps and then most avid players shift to filling in deficits on the High Body and Low Body Stalls.  Centrifugals pop up here and there along the way and that's how people develop into balanced players.  It's obviously not the same with everyone, but with most people it progresses along these or similar lines.

Along the way, Aerials tend to get relegated to a smaller and smaller position until they all but disappear.  They might eventually show back up as variations on common High Body patterns or as fix-breakers in swaps, but with the exception of an occasional dramatic Double Wolverine, the Aerials might get left out of shreds altogether.

The same tendency can be seen in MYACH games as well.  Two players who've been in the game for a few weeks play a game of MYACH and you can expect to see 360s in several combos.  You can expect to see a Wolverine or a Double and possibly a 720.  Odds are good that you'll see at least a couple of sets that use nothing but Aerial tricks.  But watch those same two players six months later and there's a very good chance that neither of them will use any Aerials at all, even as a closing trick on a tough Body Cross combo.

So why?  What's wrong with these tricks that we love so much as novices and ignore as veterans?  What changed about the triumphant feeling we used to get out of a Triple Wolverine?  There's clearly no end to the combos that we could do, so why do so few players really push the envelope when it comes to Aerial tricks?

I've set this up with a bunch of drama, as though there's some mysterious cause that we'll need to deeply explore to understand, but I think the truth is actually pretty simple.  Once you get past a 1080 (or a Triple anything), it's all just a blur.  We've all seen a friend claim to do a 1440 and really do a 1080 and a quick hand wave that's supposed to be the 4th circle.  We've all seen a You Tube video somewhere were some newb thinks he has a Quintruple Wolverine and just chucks the Myachi 10 feet in the air while he flails his hands in a vaguely Wolverine-like pattern.

I've got a pretty clean and consistent 1440, but I don't think I'd ever use it in a game of MYACH.  Why?  Because it's so easy to do a poor, "sort-of" 1440 and there's no really objective way to measure it on the spot.  Am I going to nitpick at somebody's 1440 for not really going all the way around on the fourth orbit?  If we disagree, there's no instant replay to turn to, so it's just my opinion versus my opponent's.

Most of the time this is no big deal, but I think everyone who's played a lot of MYACH has played against somebody who insists that they're Triple Wolverine is really a Triple Wolverine while you're not sure it's even a double.  You could argue with them, but they'll vehemently defend the integrity of their trick and even do it again in the same half-right way.  It's not necessarily that they're being dishonest, they might just not realize they're not really hitting the trick and you don't want to have to argue and give a whole big lesson on proper Aerials, so eventually we all start leaving these moves out altogether.

But even if that explains how they disappear from MYACH games, that doesn't explain why they disappear from shreds, does it?  One could argue that it's an "out of sight, out of mind" thing and that once you stop using it in competitions you simply don't think to use it in a shred, but I don't think that stands up to scrutiny.  After all, not everyone who shreds plays MYACH.  I'd venture to say that the as many as half of the really dedicated freestylers have never played a game of MYACH at all.

So why do these people trend away from Aerials as well?  It may well come from the same place.  The fact that a Quadruple Wolverine doesn't impress an audience much more than a Triple means that there's a point of diminishing returns when it comes to Aerials.  It's extremely hard to learn the 1800.  Only a handful of players have ever truly mastered this move properly.  It requires a lot of practice and if you think you've got an 1800 and haven't practiced hard to get there, you don't have a true 1800.  But is an average observer going to appreciate just how much harder an 1800 is than a 1440?  Will they even notice?

Don't get me wrong here.  I think that Aerials belong in every shred.  I think they're over used by new players but that doesn't matter.  They're fun and there's a lot of them to learn so it's probably a good thing that new players focus on them first and foremost.  I'm far more concerned about the fact that veteran players underuse them in shreds.

I'm as guilty as the next person of forgetting to add the Aerials.  I can challenge myself a lot more with moves in other categories so that's where my focus lies.  A Triple Wolverine might wow my audience, but it's not challenging so I don't even think about it.  But I know deep down that a solid shred should employ a solid mix of every type of trick in the game.  So next time you're having some fun and throwing down and you notice that some people are watching, offer them up your cleanest Double Wolverine.  You owe it to them.

The 360 Dilemma

by Crazy Ivan


The 360 is one of Myachi's staple moves.  Patterned after the infamous soccer trick called "Around the World", a move that quickly became a staple of footbaggers, the 360 is a relatively simple move that creeps into literally thousands of Myachi moves and combos.

The Around the World is a cool trick, but it takes 80 days to do...

In the footbag world, the "Around the World" is done on the toe.  You pop the hacky sack up, move your foot and calf in a circle around it and then catch back on your toe.  In Myachi this move is called a "Foot 360", though many staunch footbag fans still call it the "Around the World".  But the hand version is a far easier move to master.  So much so that where it might take a few months or even a few years to learn a toe 720, a 720 on the hands is something that a pretty coordinated player can hit on their first day.

In the footbag world, nobody's surpassed a 1440.  Well... I'm not as up to speed on my footbagging records so I could be wrong on that, but I seriously doubt it.  Only the best of the best can manage a 1080 so it's hard to imagine anybody doing an 1800 unless they were about 9 foot 4 (about 2.8 meters for our European readers).

The upper body version of this move, on the other hand (get it? hand?  It's just like comedy!), is much easier to do and moves much quicker.  Because of that, a determined Myachi player can rack up those multiples of three hundred and sixty pretty quick.  A 360 and 720 can be learned in a flash, but even a 1080 will yield to a determined player with only a few days of practice.

When you go above 1080 things get a little bit tougher.  To do a 1440 and and an 1800, not only will you need practice, you'll also need a few physical advantages as well.  Height becomes a huge factor when you start adding rotations and there's an obvious reason why.  For a true 360, your hand must go all the way around the Myachi, both over it and under it.

See, many of the 720s and 1080s you've probably seen people do wouldn't hold up to a technical inspection.  A lot of people just vaguely wave their hand in a circle somewhere around the Myachi and call it a rotation and if that's your standard you can probably work your way up to 6120 after a while.  But the real Myachi standard is much tougher.  You have to orbit the Myachi during each rotation.

Obviously, if your hand has to go over the Myachi, you can't throw any higher than you can reach.  This is where the height thing makes a big difference.  In order to give yourself enough time to get four or more rotations, you'll have to start and end pretty low to the ground.

Wait... not that low to the ground.

You'll want your hand a few inches off the ground to start.  That way you can start circling the Myachi while it's still heading up.  The problem is, you can only throw as high as you can reach so if you're 4 foot 5, you're not going to be able to throw as high as somebody who is 6 foot 8.

So now we get to the big question that is the ultimate point of this entire article:  What's the record?

Well, no surprise, it's not a clear cut case.  Many people have hit undeniable 1800s and several people claim 2160s (including the author), but as of now there is no real video evidence of a 2160.  I'm pretty darned sure that I've hit the 2160 a number of times, but things get moving so fast at that point that it's impossible to tell for sure if you're actually getting full and fair rotations.

To know for sure, the act would have to be captured on a pretty good camera and it would have to be from a certain angle.  A straight on shot wouldn't tell you if the hand was going around the Myachi (as opposed to just making circles behind it) so you'd have to be able to see it from the side.  I'm certain that evidence will show up soon because I believe there are a number of people out there that can hit honest 2160s, but until the evidence proves it we can't say definitively that 6 rotations is the record.

There are plenty of claims of much higher numbers.  There have been You-Tube videos claiming 2520s,  2880s and even a 3600 at one point.  When you check these videos, you'll find that the evidence is lacking.  The movements on anything over an 1800 are so fast that a real time video is all but useless in assessing these claims.  Invariably, these videos are too far away or too grainy to back up the claim at all.

Officially, the record stands at 1800, though we all know unofficially that this record has been broken.  If you can provide a solid video of anything above six rotations, you'll be the new record holder.  Just keep in mind that we'll want some pretty substantial evidence, so don't film in from 25 feet away on your little sister's phone.

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.

All the Tricks

by Crazy Ivan

One of the cool things about Myachi (if not the coolest thing) is that you never run out of tricks.  Sure, you may someday reach a point where you stop challenging yourself to learn ever tougher moves, but it won't be because there are no tougher moves to learn.

Got an e-mail the other day from a fan of the game who lives in Atlanta, Georgia and has been avidly following our "Trick of the Day" videos.  He started off with some effusive praise for the Myachi movement (always welcome) but then he expressed concern about the trick of the day.

Rather than summarize, I'll just quote the pertinent part of the e-mail:

My concern is that [if] you promise a new trick every day, eventually [you're] going to run out and have to disappoint people.  Eventually you'll have to start reusing the same tricks so maybe you should just do a new trick every week or maybe you should only do it for a year.

Well, I appreciate the concern for my job security and all, but I can assure this Myachi Maniac and all others that we're never going to start running dry on Myachi tricks.  The trick of the day can keep going until long after I'm too old to do it anymore.

But it's not just one or two random fans of the game that have expressed this concern.  Even Myachi Man regarded the idea with a bit of skepticism when I first brought it to him.  He felt like a new trick every day might be a bit too ambitious.  I said how about Monday through Friday (everybody needs time off after all) but even then he was left scratching his head.

Maverick expressed a similar concern the other day.  "I know you're not close to running out now, but how long can you really go with this?  A year?  Maybe two?"

Given the wide range of knowledgeable people who have expressed their doubts, I figured it would be fair to address this concern publicly.  As I assured Myachi Man and Maverick, the Trick of the Day can stay fresh for years to come.  There is solid proof and it exists in the form of a small notebook I have where I track every possible trick I can think of.  It contains well over 100,000 tricks and it doesn't include any moves that use 2 or more Myachis, moves that use 2 or more people or moves that use the Myachi along with another object (like a cup or basketball, for instance).

There are well over 100 thousand moves in my book, but even if it was "only" 100,000, that gives me enough tricks to do a trick of the day 5 days a week for almost four more centuries and even with all the advancements in medical science I don't think I'll make it that far.

If by some miracle I do make it to the ripe old age of 419 and am still in good enough physical condition to do the trick of the day video, fear not.  I will have used some multi-sack tricks along the way to bide my time.

Gauging Difficulty

by Crazy Ivan

As I'm sure many of you know, I put a new trick on You-Tube every weekday.  Each week we'll select a them and then I'll put up videos for 5 different tricks in that theme, each one a bit more difficult than the last one.

That works out well because it means that beginners will usually get at least one trick they can do each week, but veterans will probably get at least one new move that will challenge them each week.  Of course, with some themes there aren't any beginner moves and for some there aren't any really advanced moves, but usually it works out really well.

But sometimes I'm left with making pretty arbitrary calls between similar moves.  Once I select the theme for the week I'll usually figure out which 5 moves I want to use and then order them by difficulty.  Usually that's pretty easy, but sometimes you really have to scratch your head.

A perfect example of that came up twice last week.  The theme was Foot Variations and the five moves were the Shoe-Snap, the Step Over, the Gui, the Osis and the Pendulum.  Ultimately, that was the order that they showed up in, but that order was the subject of a couple of debates: (a) which is easier, the Shoe-Snap or the Step Over and (b) which is harder, the Osis or the Pendulum.

Of course, "hardness" is a relative measurement and it changes from person to person.  I got a lot of feedback from people this week telling me I'd gotten it wrong and that the Osis was much more difficult than the Pendulum.  I even had people telling me that the Gui was harder than the Osis so there were plenty of disagreements to go around.

And, in their defense, all of these people were correct.  For them, the Osis is harder than the Pendulum (or the Gui is harder than the Osis).  The relative difficulty of a move is different from person to person.  For somebody who is naturally flexible and really thin, a move like the Yoga is probably easier than a move like the Mantis.  For somebody who isn't very flexible and a bit thicker, the Mantis is probably going to be way easier than the Yoga.

In Myachi, we're often left to divide Myachi tricks up into "echelons" like Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced.  A spectacular failure to do this correctly can be seen right now on the new myachi.com where tricks were seemingly randomly fitted into various difficulty ranks.  Even on the DVD where Myachi was in direct control there are some pretty questionable inclusions in the beginner and advanced levels.

Clearly, there are moves that we can all agree are beginner tricks (Cradle, Cold Fusion, Trampoline, Hulk, etc.) and moves that we can all agree are advanced (Crypto, Jedi, Space Cowboy, Double Swordfish, etc.), but if you had to rank those specific moves in order of difficulty, it would be much tougher.  Is a Cradle harder or easier than a Hulk?  Is a Crypto harder or easier than a Jedi?  Clearly there is no precise answer to this one.

This is the position that I often find myself in while ordering the Tricks of the Day.  I usually know which trick should go first and which should go last, but a lot of times those middle ones are real head-scratchers.  I will admit freely that I don't always get it right and that much of the time there probably is no "right".  I honestly don't stress over it all that much.

There is an important element to this whole thing.  See, I talked to some kids the other day on Facebook and they told me that sometimes if the Wednesday trick is too hard they don't bother trying the Thursday or Friday trick.  I suppose that makes sense.  If you can't get the trick I present on Wednesday then it stands to reason that you'll have even more trouble with the Thursday and Friday moves.

But this isn't always true.  When I judge the difficulty level I try to think of the "average" person who isn't particularly flexible, who doesn't have particularly broad wrists or forearms, that doesn't have unusually fast hands, that doesn't have unusually developed foot skills and that doesn't have any other natural advantage to any particular move.  The thing is, though, that nobody's average.  Everyone will have some advantage in some type of trick.

So to those people who don't try the late in the week tricks, I say have at it.  First of all you have nothing to lose, but secondly, you may find that you're one of those lucky, freakish individuals that nails a Clipper Delay the first time they try it.  You may be far more flexible than you realized or you may just have a much better than average catch.

And to those that wrote in to tell me that the Pendulum was easier than the Osis, I offer a shrug and a nod.  I'll never get the order right enough that it suits everybody, but I'll continue to do my best.  And part of doing your best is being humble enough to accept it when people tell you got something wrong.  So keep the feedback coming, both positive and negative.