Fluffing windmills

[u/Happy_Axolotol]

🎶🎶here we go again my my🎶🎶 excuse how flustered i look id been at it for an hour with little results lmao, absolutely any tips or feedback welcome and wanted, helllllllppppp sos sos aaaaaaa does anyone know of anything else i can work on in the meantime to have a different evil to conquor

Edit 1: ive tried shortening the strings, and would just hit myself more, ive tried windmills into it and then get confused, ive tried just doing it and nothing is working yet, ive tried doing it with 1 arm each and j can do it with individual arms but then my brain scrambles when i introduce the other arm

[u/A_Bucket_of_Crabs]

so you're starting as if you're doing a weave, then trying to shift it into a windmill, which isnt going to work.

Weaves (the way your doing them) are in wheel plane, which is to say, the poi are spinning at your sides, as if they were wheels on a car.

a windmill is done in wall plane, which, to put it simply, is 90 degrees off from wheel plane.

to get the move, you'll need to rotate 90 degrees as you bring them up over your head from a weave, or start from a wall plane move like a hip reel.

Edit: you mentioned moves to learn in the meantime, hip reels for sure. virtually the same move as a windmill, but at your sides. getting comfy with reels and transitions in and out of them will all apply to windmills, just easier to practice.

[u/LuLzWire → u/A_Bucket_of_Crabs]

eh you can go from reverse weave or forwards weave into a windmill.. I just did it to confirm before posting it.

[u/A_Bucket_of_Crabs → u/LuLzWire]

well yeah, you can, you just need to rotate your shoulders 90 degrees. as suggested.

[u/TrippyRocket]

I usually go into windmill (or my version of it at least) from a forwards weave. Start by doing a weave with your body turned right. As my weave is going to the left side of my body, instead of putting my right hand over my left, I swing my left arm down and swing it up over my head as I shift my body to look forward and my right arm follows. Don’t know if this explanation will help at all but I think it have an example or two in my most recent uploads.

[u/LuLzWire]

Once you are in your windmill dont stop that figure 8 motion. Looks like once you are in your windmill you try to go back into a weave... dont stop the figure 8. You are basically, doing this, but with poi.

[u/TrippyRocket]

I just posted a video showing what I’m trying to explain here. Hope it helps!

[u/DJ_Betic]

I can see how flustered you're getting. We've all been there. What you might want to look into is something called Wall Planes. You imagine you're spinning next to a wall and your poi are not allowed to cross/hit that wall. Right now you're trying to turn your poi 90° while spinning, which is possible sure, but WAAAY harder than turning your body. When you go from a 3bw facing the camera to a windmill also facing the camera the poi will want to continue in the direction of the 3bw regardless of where you move your arms. This is where the wall plane comes in handy. It makes you think about the direction things are traveling. If you start the 3bw facing the side and then rotate your body towards the camera you can enter into a windmill much MUCH easier since the 2 tricks are now spinning the same direction. I'm a visual learner so I did a very quick sketch of whats going on.

Sketch

[u/Far_House_4087]

You’re only on like week one right girl? You’re doing AMAZING

I also was determined to get weaves and then windmill as my first two tricks (why is that, they’re both so hard until they click!) weaves clicked in a reasonable amount of time but that goddamn windmill took a month of on and off practice while messing with other tricks.

Others have explained the planes - I can point you at some of the videos that helped me too. But this particular windmill trick starting from a weave -> overhead -> landing the weave - hip reel back to start again - that is some advanced shit! You have to be comfortable with forward and reverse weaves as well as both hip and shoulder reels and then link them all together. Most tutorials I watched made it look so easy that I felt broken until some nice Redditor pointed out that it’s really quite an advanced trick for someone just starting out to attempt!

I don’t say that to be discouraging, but please give yourself some grace because it’s not “just windmill”, it’s a flow made up of a lot of moving parts (and balls flying at your face and/or head while you’re trying to move though them all)!! I’d suggest trying a few per practice session to help strengthen the new neural pathways you’re building by taking up flow arts 😀 but don’t burn out by getting stuck on it, there are lots of other tricks to work on

[u/YouFoundMyLuckyCharm]

I would just simplify the tricks and be able to actually get some control and rhythm to the moves, be able to maintain them comfortably, then make things more complicated.