Tetsundo Kumamoto

 I want to be able to do some of this stuff so badly... but i can´t :(
awesome video that deserves way more attention than it got so far.

Enjoy

  

More Devilstick Tricks

 It´s been some time, but now over the holidays i found some time to film and edit a trainingssession.
i haven´t been practising much Devilstick lately but here are most of the tricks that i did, most are still sloppy but hey... that´s how it is

hope you enjoy the video and your holidays as well

20131215／とても寒い

Lots of really lovely tricks in there

Dubé Juggling Presents: Colegiales. Trigon Devil Stick.

How to practise Devilsticks

This article was one of the things i had in mind when i started this blog, i started it several times and then stopped because it didn't feel right to tell people what to do.

Now today Selina messaged me and told me that im lazy and that i maybe should write some more instead of posting Videos all the time. So lets get it started.

Disclaimer: All these Tips are mainly based on my personal experience.. I can't grand they will work for you but i believe they will. I suggest to try them out but don't try to force something that feels wrong because someone (me) told you.

Warming Up:

Unless you just woke up half an hour ago, ( in which case i suggest a two cup of coffee warm up routine)  or have serious muscle soreness (in which case i suggest light stretching mainly of wrists, forearms, back, shoulders and neck) i don't recommend any warm up routine.

Just pick up the sticks and start playing any trick that feels comfortable for 5 to 10 Minutes.

Try to walk around and use tricks that involve steady but slow movements while doing that.

Structure:

Especially when it comes to Toss Juggling there are people who use really strict structured practise schedule. There are points that speak for that especially when you want to improve few but difficult patterns and tricks. A well planned schedule will force you to do a lot of preparatory work, practising all single aspects of a trick on their own before putting them together und than slowly progress from that.

Also it can work well in forcing yourself to practise tricks you don't like to practise. But strictly structured programs never worked for me because i never had enough fun to enjoy my practise with them

So this is a Schedule i was using for quite some time and i made huge progress with (which means my 2 Devilstick and my 5 ball basics have been achieved with that schedule)

Song 1: 2 Devilstick Tricks

Song 2: Ball Juggling

Song 3: 1 Devilstick Tricks

repeat at least for one whole album

I made a lot of progress with that. One reason for that probably is that i forced myself to spend 20 min nearly everyday on my 3 main projects. If you want some science you need to check out this article on musical training that was recently discussed in severall juggling groups

www.bulletproofmusician.com/why-the-progress-in-the-practice-room-seems-to-disappear-overnight/

Lately i moved a way from that system to a more free practise, the reason for that is propably that i started to practise rings and clubs as well as some multiprop stuff to.

Now i start with spreading all my juggling props wide around me (i feel like i work more creative in a chaotic environment, i once had some science to back that up but i cant find it anymore)

Then i pick up whatever i like and start practising anything i like.

The only “rules” i follow are

- never practise a single trick or a group of related trick for more than 5 minutes at once

- try to practise as much tricks as possible every practise session

- if a trick feels bad one day, try it a few times if its not going to go better, try again next week

- practise tricks that have a high priority for you at least twice each session. separate these sessions by at least 5 minutes of doing a completely different trick or even prop.

- have fun, if you aren't having fun you're not training efficiently.

- use more time one tricks you can do solidly than on tricks you can't do yet

Intensity:

There is one thing people often forget when they talk about training.

Obviously it is important how much time you spend training and we all know the more time you spend training the better you get.

But training does not equal training. If one is not focussed, thinking about other things, making breaks every other minute his training won't be as effective as the training of someone who is training like a mad man, running after every drop to recover as fast as possible and get another repetition out of his worthy time.

So here are some tips on how to train sticks more intensely

- always practise like someone is watching you (i know its a little bit paranoid but it psychs you up and is a good performance training too

- pick up all your drops as fast as possible with a certain amount of style (kick ups, immediately starting with a trick etc)

- listen to music

- drink coffee  (i used to have scientific proof for that too)

- start with exhausting movements/tricks immediately after the warm up, once you start melting in sweat it's easier to keep up a high energy

Drops:

All i can say about drops is: try not to.

One of my first teachers told me that everytime i dropped i was doing another repetition of the wrong movement. If you try a trick for 10 times and you fail 9 of them then there is propably a easier exercise that will allow for faster progress without fucking up the pattern.

Wrist Pain:
 
I am not sure if this is practise related but if you have any wrist problems stop for at least a week. If they are really terrible take a bandage and but it around the hurting wrist. I dont know if its the pressure or the stabilisation effect but it works for me.

If its not better after a week are starts hurting after a week go and see a doctor.

Seriously enough awesome players have stopped Sticking due to wrist problems don't be one of them.

Strenght Training:

Strength Training is a great way to prevent yourself from injuries and i felt like it was slightly improving my sticking too.

There are several possible ways to do it.

Bodyweight Training:

I never did this before i started Circus School. The big plus is its free all you need is motivation and maybe a chin up bar. Make sure to do something for abs lower back and legs to and not only push ups and chin ups then im sure youll be able to profit from it

Barbell Training/ Fitness Studios

This is what i used to do from 16-18 and i believe it was key to me never suffering serious injurys. I started with doing the machine circle my studio suggests. later i moved to free weights. In the end my Trainingsprogramm would look like that

Session A

Squat 3 (sets) x 5 (repetitions)

Bench Press 3x5

Cable Row 3x5

Session B

Deadlift 3x5

Overhead Press 5x3

If you really want to go into this Bodybuilding/Weight Lifting Stuff yust make sure to read stuff in the internet. theres way more quality articles on strength training then on devilsticking in the internet so i am sure you will find something

Acrobatics:

It works and its Circus Style i only practise it for 3 weeks now and i'm not that good, but i might write something about that later

Cool Down:

Often i don't do any cool down except for smoking a cigarette (which i'm not recommending but hey thats how it is) If a muscle group or more feels sore or tighend up i use to stretch it a few hours later.

Also Stretching is a thing you should do. If you just want to be a good stickers all you have to do is wrist, forearm, back, shoulders and neck. If you want to move around a lot and have a healthy balanced body stretch every muscle from every angle. This topic is to complex for me to give you advice here so google it up or even better find someone who knows about it (dancers, acrobats, physiotherapists, yoga instructors and other hippies) and learn from him

There are definitly more things to say about the topic but they dont spring to my mind now so this is the end of the article. I hope you enjoyed it, feel free to aks further questions or comment.

Contemporary Devilstick

Sorry, i was being lazy again, i try to post more reliably from now on again but posting a video each day is harder than i thought.

To make up for it i have a real goodie for you today.
His name is Lennart Helm, he also lives in Berlin as a professione and he put a lot of work into the combination of movement, dance and devilsticks which works out really well as you will see once you watch the video

have fun and a nice evening to everybody


m

Kinesticks

This is not to technical, instead it has propably the most beautiful editing i have seen for a devilstick video.
Love the colours, the mediaval feel and to be honest it just reminds me of a coffee cup with saurons evil eye (from lord of the rings for the not so nerdy readers) i once owned and now that i remind myself of that i realise that im not sure weather i still own it but dont have it here in Berlin or if it shattered on the ground which would be really sad cause i loved the cup as much as i love this video

enough said,  enjoy the video and have a good day

Flower Power

Well, normaly i am a bit biased when it comes to flowersticks but this is another great example of how to do flowersticking right.

Sweet contact moves, 3 Flowerstick patterns, extreme Flowiness and one of the best juggling soundtracks period.

His name is Paul Rozaire and as far as i know he is still living in france

balance flips

Devil Stick - Jerome Leberre

This is a chapter from the juggling dvd "visual juggling"
He is from france as far as i know and plays a very balanced, very smoth style i like very much.
Have fun and a good evening

JJF (Japan Juggling Festival) 2013: Devilstick Championship Videos

JJF is the big japanese Convention held once a year and there seems to be some kind of competition which produces quite a few awesome Devilstick Videos year by year.  This morning i found the winning Video from "Baronnetgobu" who was featured here before.

The tricks are mindshattering and the routine is not to extravagant (just a guy playing awesome devilsticks without any gimmicks) but very well performed

Here are 3 other Videos of this Years Competition, if there are more out there and you know about it please post the link in the comments,

Yuho
juggle scientist
one of Yuho´s Yuniors

a normal day in the life of markus furtner

 If you dont know Markus Furtner allready, just let me tell you he is the King of Two Devilsticks.
I always loved the Video partly becouse of the technical awesomeness but also becouse its fun and kinda ironic about us Stickers spinning and ticking always and everyway.

Enjoy and sorry again for not posting this weekend ill try not to be that lazy next weekend

v

Tic Tac Drill

Hello everyone, i found this video on the internet 5 hard Devilstick Drills which i quite liked (from a didactic point of view the trick selection could be optimised i guess) mainly becouse i reminded me of the idea of Devilstick Drills.

Refering to this Video a drill is an endurance run of a singe or very similiar Tricks i would define it as: A Sequenz of similar Tricks performed dropless and as smoth as possible beginning with the easyest and then working up to the hardest trick.

A drill should contain only tricks you can do fluently, with good form and without a high  risk of dropping

I know i had more thrills but i nearly stopped doing them for the last years becouse i did improvisations rather than drills for most my warm ups, but there is one i still use quite often when i start a sticking session.

It contains only tic tac (idle) Variations, and i guess they are a good warm up for advanced stickers but also an interesting challenge for a beginner (learning all these tricks as well as performing them in one dropless run)

I will try to reconstruct some of my old drills and maybe also figure out a new drill or two on the next weeks, but be patient with me, im still adopting to circus training (meaning sore muscles and extrem lazyness every morning/evening) and have other stuff to do like searching a room for next month (seriously: IF YOU KNOW A FREE ROOM IN BERLIN PLEASE CONTACT ME )

nevermind sorry for caps lock, have a good evening and enjoy the video

devilstick 3.1

i´m super tired becouse my first week of circus training was super awesome but pretty intense, i might find energie to post more than a video on the weekend but for now just watch this...

he calls himself baronnetgobu on youtube ( his Channel ) and is working out with a lot of idle technices you propably haven´t seen before (unless you´ve seen his videos of course) but despite beeing a creative genius he seems to practise a lot becouse he can do of super technical stuff, too.

(actually that was way more than i wanted to right, which says quite a thing about how amazed i am about his sticks play)


d

EJC 2013 - The devilstick point of view

 Nikki did a great job once again by filming and editing this years EJC-Devilstick Video.
It´s a great example for the diversity of Devilsticktricks and Styles .




here are the links to the Videos of previous European Juggling Conventions

2012
http://youtu.be/KlVZ53mRgdQ

2010
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVtg2JPAxfw

Mr.Simon "Devilsticks machine" act

 Nice, professional Devilstick Act

b

Alì Ghost - Dream up Again

Today i want to present you the first Flowerstick Video on this Blog
I think i meet Ali for the first time at the EJC 2008 in Munich but i heard a lot of him beeing one of the interesting Flowerstickers out there before. And people were right, he is very innovative and even if i personaly don´t like Flowersticks (guess i´ll write a few words about that sometime) he does and he creates a wonderful style.

So here is his most recent Video which has not only amazing tricks but a really interesting editing which is unfortunetely not to common for Devilstick Videos.

If you´re interested in more of his works check out his channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/3FlowerGhost/videos

The 1st Devil Stick Practice Meeting

There´s a lot of amazing sticks play going on in Japan. There are so many insane japanese stickers that i couldn´t decide whom to show first. My only solution is to show all their awesomeness combined in this Video of the first Devilstick practise Meeting. It´s a nice mix of different styles, super hard and super creative tricks, sweet sequences... and it always makes me sad that i couldn´t been there.

Devilstick Timetable

there used to be a timetable here, it was partly incorrect and misleading so i wrote this article instead
http://ezine.juggle.org/2016/12/29/a-short-history-of-devilstick/

My Channel

As this is my blog i guess it makes sense to try to promote myself a tiny little bit :)

So i´ll start off with my Youtube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/irrelevantius

I have about 40 Videos there most of them containing Devilstick Tricks

The first Video was postet 7 years ago (and it´s terrible) but you can decide that on your own. I´ve been practising for about 5 years then and filmed and edited it with a good friend.

the videos got better after a while (and so did I). At least i stopped wearing stupid hats and grow a beard. The editing can still  be better but hey i´m a devilsticker, so í´ll try to spend more of my time practising than sitting in front of a PC

 Another thing i used to use this Channel for are the Devilstick Challenges with Nikki.
Everyweek we would film a trick and the goal for the other was to manage to do this trick the next week.
 You can find the videos here:

Devilstick Challenges

we stopped at the moment but i´ll guess we´ll pick it up again sometime

I´d like to make some tutorials, too. But my Laptop does not support Video Editing so that has to wait until i have the money for a better PC.

Oh by the way: If you want to support me the you can simply book my act (preferably in and around Berlin)
I guess the Video above want convince you so i´ll post a more recent video here (if you like i can also send you a video from the whole act, but i don´t like to see that on the internet becouse i´m trying to sell it, and no ones buying things that are in the internet for free)

Cat Petting Record

Hey, i was a bit lazy the last two days but now it´s weekend and i´ll try to keep up.

yesterday morning before i went to school i got a mail telling me that recordsetter.com featured an old record i made with my cat. the record is pretty stupid and it mainly made me miss my cat, nevermind i guess it´s worth beeing posted here

devilsticking in france - nikki

had my first day of artistic education today, juggling rocks, stretching sucks i´m tired so here´s a video that came out today by nikki.

just believe me she´s awesome, i´m propably going to write a few things about her videos and our devilstick challenges we hopefully start again soon in the next days but for now just watch this video

6mön - French Devilstick Master

The main reason im posting this video today is that it´s the first and only Devilstick Video that went kind of "viral".

Despite that it´s an dropless 3 minute flow with an interesting style combining fast sticking, with bodyrolls/contact moves a bit of balance and some pretty hard behind the back/under the leg moves you would normaly expect to see from a flowersticker

Article on Devilstick "Boom" from 1996

Even High-tech Toy Industry Gives Devil Sticks Their Due

I found an article from March 1996 puplished in the Chicago Tribune about the increasing sales of devilsticks in the US.
Here are two of my favourite quotes but i recommend reading the whole article:

"Devil sticks ranked among the top 10 selling toys in speciality retail shops in late 1995, according to a survey published in the trade publication Playthings."

"In 1995, devil sticks became the No. 1 selling toy in Toys R Us of Canada and was picked up by a New York toy company called Happiness Express, which declined to release sales figures."

I hope that the "Devilstick Boom" continues, at least there´s no doubt that the amount of Devilstick-Vendors is still growing  and i feel like devilsticks become more common in the juggling community

Devilstick act by Kasper Jensen

I found that gem a few month ago and i was shocked how such an awesome act could slip my radar.
He´s doing technicly very challenging tricks (double balance to balancing one stick on the hand the other one on his nose) combined with great movement/dance and an very interesting (weird) character work.

if you´re interested in more off his works check out his channel, i especially liked his mime routine called "circusmachine"

https://www.youtube.com/user/nycirkus

Devilstick Homepage Collection

Here´s a collection of all Devilstick homepages i am aware of, i hope the list is incomplede because it´s not that much and if you have a site to add just drop a comment and i´ll fix that

https://www.facebook.com/groups/303957917748/

  that´s the only facebook group i know, it has about 150 members at the moment and is propably the number one place for questions and the hunt for new videos

www.devilstick.org

it´s pretty old but there are a lot of tricks described and also some other interesting content

http://www.devilstick.de/english/home.htm

is a old german site with a lot of animations and some other content

www.bravojuggling.com/en/

this is one of the most active site at the moment, they have a great interview series with a lot of "famous" stickers and a lot of interesting own content

http://www.stixguru.com/new/Tricks.htm

lot of trick tutorial videos

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/DevilStickForum/info

is the devilstick yahoo group, i don´t know if anyone is still active there have been a lot of people posting there in the past. if you want to know something it´s likely it has been discussed there before, unfortunetly its not always easy to find

http://www.sethoscope.net/devil-stick/

seth has tried out quite a few things with alternativ devilstick builds (including a triangle), you can also read about his trys to find a notation system for devilsticks. the sides quite old but theres still interesting stuff to find there

Devilstick Bonobo

Well the first Devilstick video has to be something special and for me there´s just one video that can earn this place.
I don´t know how many times i watched it, but it was propably the most inspiring juggling video in my life.

Most circusgeeks know Florent Lestage from winning silver at cirque de Demain and beiing a insane club-juggler but here´s a Devilstick video he posted 5 years ago which, in my oppinion, initiated the beginning of contemporary devilsticking.

http://youtu.be/RRWpwbZL-ng

If you are wondering why he hasn´t uploaded anything new since then, i have to tell you that he´s mainly doing professionel jugglers stuff and ain´t that much into devilstick but i saw him practising a bit at the ejc (european juggling convention) in toulouse this year and he can still do it.

for those of you who are interested here´s an interview from the awesome "stick heroes" interview series from bravojuggling

http://bravojuggling.blog.hu/2012/07/31/stick_heroes_july_2012

Welcome to my Devilstick-Blog

Hello and welcome to my Devilstick Blog :)

I´m sticking around for 12 years now and i´m quite confident that i´ve read and watched almost everything there is on devilsticks on the internet.
Sadly most of the Homepages seem to be quite old and havent been updated in years and some of my favourite videos are harder to find becouse there are so many stick videos beeing uploaded each day that filtering through got way harder in the last years.

So what i´ll try to do with my blog are these two things

1. Post an awesome Devilstick Video everyday
2. Write an article on any Devilstick related topic at least once a week.
3. Collect as much content on Devilsticks at one place as i can

I hope this will be interesting for people who are new to devilsticks as well as for sticknerds like me.
If there´s anything you´d like to read about, a video you want to see on my blog or anything else just leave a comment or write me a message.

Nevermind i´m looking towards a fun time running this blog and i hope your as excited as i am