Mentality for improvement.

[Ethan]

hey hey, with all this stuff from leha popping up i thought i would give my insight as to improvement in lower freestyle...

*gonna say this here, what i am saying is pretty much only relevant once you reach a level of learning things such as tatw amatw nt, latw etc

This is tough to explain but if u can understand what i am saying it is likely to hugely benefit your lower trainings!

so here goes...lower improvement is down to a battle between your legs and your brain. when you learn tatw amatw nt it is very rare after a tatw your legs are going to be able to go into an amatw nt, it simply isnt natural. so what you have to do is let your brain trick your legs. you have to make your brain control your legs movement (this is really hard to explain). by this i mean you have to force the movement - and in your head you need to break the combo into sections. so you do a tatw then instantly your brain has to be moving your leg around for the htw nt then crossover nt.

moving onto something differnt, co ahmatw nt (i did this for the first time today purely becuase of the method i am about to describe). so i was trying it and not even getting close, then i remembered the zero hesitation technique. so i made my brain convince my legs that the crossover was in fact just the first touch of an ahmatw, so after the crossover i simply had to not hesitate and do an ahmatw...this sounds hard to believe but i did it first attempt.

so a big trick people always ask for help on is patw...there is so much technique involved in learning patw and if u can master this whole brain controlling your legs concept it makes it far far easier!

I have probably made it very hard to understand because it is very hard to explain, but i will explain it through a video soon

[Reynoldz]

Thanks for that

[renato10]

This is so intersting I understood a bit of it ;you must focus ur brain on what you do with ur legs and not do it for random.

[alexfs]

loved it
looking forward for more on that

[Ethan]

i read through it now myself and it's pretty hard to understand...

so i will try and explain better if you can see what i am saying i can guarantee it will help you in your next training....


when you freestyle you tend to just go for a move. often you can't get it because your technique is wrong! i am not going to go through every move and explain the correct technique but i can tell you a way which will enable you to certainly get better attempts/achieve a trick.

the reason you won't get a good attempt at a trick is because your letting your legs do the work. you should make your brain do the work. you need to mentally force yourself into 1. really going for the trick and putting your all into it and 2. processing the technique in your mind as you are doing the trick.

if you are reading this and thinking it sounds obvious or whatever, go out next training and when u arent landing a trick/combo think through this. make sure you are processing the technique and forcing yourself into the correct technique and forcing yourself into doing the trick.

[DanTheMan]

very very very very very good post

[Royal Freakiness]

this is true
the move I did (x crab ass or whatever the hell it is) in my intermediate comp top 12 video was frikkin hard to do.
The whole time I was aiming for an x over - datw nt movement (like crab ass except that you do an x over, not co)
I was there for an hour. Then I paused and thought what would happen if I tried a rco movement instead so that my legs would go all the way and give me space to do the datw part?
It took me a few attempts to get it and almost all of them were very close.

[Adi]

We need to turn this into an article for our site.  ethanfreestyle, do you want to edit it yourself or should one of us do it?

[SvenF]

Good post Ethan, I used the same method when learning co-latw nt, which is a quite difficult move as well. Thanks for sharing! I couldn't have explained it better, well done.

[L_I_S]

Hmm, weird. I find that thinking too much puts me off and I get the worst attempts than when I just go for it.
Am I doing something wrong? When are you supposed to be doing the thinking, before the move, just before the execution or during?

[alexfs]

well mental part is important indeed
lets say your are going for amatw-amatw strong to weak - and you did amatw - nice height - but you don't go for the finishing amatw nt - just because you can't believe you can actually do it - or you re afraid to fall
if you approach this combo mentally right, then you'll land it

i have talked to several guys about that - and it's great that Ethan wrote that out - really important for making a progress
it's not as vague as Doctor's G posts and makes perfect sense to me
respect

[Tupac]

Helped me land latw! (even though it was crappy style)