CameronFord's practice log

CameronFord#

PracticeLikeAnthony, 60 minutes

Day 1 of trying to practice using the same method Anthony Gatto did. See my forum post for details of what this involves and my rationale for wanting to do it:
If you don't care about the specifics and just want general thoughts, they are at the end.
Warm up: Did all the moving about with a balance stuff, slightly windy, should probably do this inside on the landing and just make sure I don't drop the balance (Heydar would say you should never drop the balance anyway....)
5 balls and a balance: Not great, maybe 20+ catches on a few runs
Mills warm up was very promising, my 4 ball mills feels really nice in both fountain and 534.
5 ball mills was ok, maybe got 18 catches in one run, not sure exactly.
Pretty pleased with pirouttes in general, got some nice 2 stages with 3 and 4 balls. Would love to link some together at some point. Landed 2 5 ball 5 ups in my allocated 3 minutes! Pretty decent haul, wonder if I'll be able to repeat/improve on this. 3 ups out of 5 with weak hand were poor. Only tried 5 up with strong hand.
5 ball siteswaps: 10 rounds of 744 back to pattern and then 20ish rounds to drop. 10 rounds of 645 back to pattern after I remembered I prefer to throw my 6s on the inside. 633 was annoying, kept on throwing the second 6 lower than it should be. 9 rounds to drop or something. 94444 felt good, got 2 rounds starting out of each hand. 97531 same, 2 rounds starting out of each hand (I think). (8x,4)(4,4) was ok, nearly got 4 rounds back to pattern, would hope to get this soon. 753 got 10 rounds back to pattern.
Got 50+ catches of both 6 ball sync and async in my allocated 2 minutes of each. Possibly 60/70 of async. Pretty decent. Forgot to transition between the two or do kick ups.
Got 7 rounds of 771 back to pattern in my allocated minute (66 entry 661 exit)
Got 30+ catches of 7 balls! Quite surprised, hadn't worked on it much recently and only got it right as my allocated 3 minutes ran out.
5 ball half shower with backcross. Landed it a few times. Maybe 3 in the same run. Not great.
6 ball half shower. Got maybe 40+ catches in one run.

General thoughts:
It is certainly a different way to practice! I was pretty disciplined at sticking to time. It helped that the phone I was using to time 2 minute sections had a very annoying bleep which made me want to finish my run quickly and reset it. I was less good at taking breaks.
I think it is fairly interesting psychologically to practice like this. I found myself being aware of the time and really wanting to get at least 30 catches of 7 before my 3 minutes ran out. Felt very pleased when I got it on my very last run before the timer went off! This is only half of my 7b record so it's a bit weird to get excited about getting 30 but I guess doing it under time pressure makes it more exciting/fun. Possibly good practice for getting stuff under pressure, like on stage?
I think it's also a good way to avoid getting frustrated. My 663 was pretty poor today, but that didn't annoy me because I only had a minute to try it so not really enough time to get annoyed because I had to move on. Otherwise I might have kept trying until it felt nice, and if I couldn't get it to feel nice I may have got annoyed.
Hard to say whether this will help me progress, I guess today just kind of helped me assess where I am at the moment? I certainly enjoyed it, was pleasantly surprised how some things went. Also 2 minutes it actually more runs of say 97531, for example, than I thought it would be. I tweaked some of the timings as I worked through the list when I felt something was dragging. I filmed a few bits and bobs as Brook said it might be interesting to compare start and end of this experiment. Might give them a watch later.

Total practice time: 60 minutes

Location: Garden

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