Ok, it’s me, Twist, I’m back. Not much of a puzzle I know. It was hardly going to be Pope John Paul II – back with a vengeance ……… on my blog…

Anyway, there’s been a distinct lack of updatage going on here on my once nurtured website. For that I apologise to any die hard fans who enjoyed my frequent random ramblings. Fear not, I’ve been getting up to loads of mentally awesome stuff!

To save me time and effort describing evvvvvvvvverything I’ve been doing in my own little b-boy world here is our shiny new showreel that I spent hours labouring over and includes some of the highlights of past months which I’ve wanted to post updates about, but am too lazy haven’t found time to do:

Blood Masterz – Professional Breakdance Performance Crew Showreel

So it is evident that exciting new things have been hip hop happening. Importantly – the fusion of MixBloodFlow dance crew and the Drunken Masterz crew to form the Blood Masterz professional breakdance performance crew available for hire. Contact us to hire a breakdance show for your next event!

Blood Masterz?

Yes! Blood Masterz – once upon a time (about the end of July) myself, Bobak and Just Me from The Masterz crew joined MixBloodFlow b-boys Crackroc, Leeroc and Joe on a wacky and wonderful adventure to The Secret Garden Party 2010 to perform spontaneous breakdance shows around the festival site… AND THAT WE DID – CONSTANTLY!

From the moment we arrived, midnight on Wednesday, we wound down the windows of the car in the queue before even entering the festival gates, pumped out some funky tunes and unleashed our pent up b-boying moves on the grass to receive applause from fellow performers queuing up to get in! From then on we pretty much danced solidly until Monday!

We even had our own circle of tents with a lino in the middle. Every time a random passer by tried to take a short cut through our circle we made them bust out their best move on the lino!

Oh, there are soooo many crazy stories to tell about The Secret Garden Party, this post could go on for many scrolls of your mouse wheel but I’ll conclude in a couple of paragraphs and you can check out YouTube etc. for more about The Secret Garden Party 2010.

Here’s a sly video for you anyway from some other random festival goers that I happened to find. Our perspective of the festival was entirely different obviously and we didn’t even see most of this stuff going on, which just shows how many crazy things were happening the whole time:

Basically my point was (I think I had a point about all this…) we started off at the festival as two separate crews – The Masterz and MixBloodFlow but within a few hours, let alone the 5 days we were there together we fused and formed Blood Masterz Since our return from the rabbit hole we’ve done a couple of performances together at nightclubs in Wakefield and corporate events in Leeds and more! We’re looking forward to performing together at more weddings, corporate events and nightclubs as well as battling in the near future! Watch out, Blood Masterz are coming for you with more flavour than a Pot Noodle!

Contact us to hire a breakdance show for your wedding, corporate event or nightclub promotion!

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.  ~Jules Renard

Aww man! Just as I was getting the hang of somersaults – standing back and front tucks…

At training on Tuesday I was trying to practice a new throwdown idea. I got warmed up thoroughly and had a little stretch, but I was still aching and my muscles were quite tight from training on Thursday, Saturday and Monday as well as Bradford Gym on Sunday. Perhaps the aching and tight muscles are the cause of what happened next…

I threw a standing front somersault but landed with my left leg wide, which resulted in my knee bending inwards as my legs absorbed the impact. Consequently I heard and felt (definitely felt!) a crunch in my ankle… Oooooo, that wasn’t good! I’ll just walk over to… ohhhh Jebus, that’s starting to hurt… Ahhhh – Ed, can you go get me an ice pack please? I’ll just hop over here and sit dOWwwwn.

To the hospital Batman!

My brother kindly drove me to A&E as I wanted to make sure I hadn’t broken or fractured anything. Luckily the dude at Casualty, who saw me after a painful 1 and a half hour wait, rubbed my feet and ankles a bit and told me my bones were fine. Jolly good But my ATFL (anterior talofibular ligament on the outside of the ankle) is damaged. So I’ve sprained my ankle, awesome. Off I hobbled to get the bus home, on second thoughts – let’s just stop here at the end of the street and book a taxi.

Here I am 3 days later… still in bed with my leg elevated on a pile of pillows and my handy Morrisons Value Frozen Garden Peas on and off my ankle. (Get yourself some – 89p for an ice pack is well worth it in an emergency!) I’m getting back ache from being in bed for so long. On the plus side I’ve been productive and done a lot of work on my laptop, even though I can’t actually get to my room in the attic where my PC is haha! Damn it!

Today I’m feeling a bit more comfortable putting weight on it, I can hobble to the toilet and downstairs for food without very much swearing involved. Tuesday night was a different story however, I’ve never experienced intense shivering from pain before! Gotta try everything once I suppose

Man up, Twist

Anyway, I’ll survive and if I don’t – avenge my death! I’ve just got to keep going with the ankle strengthening exercises and make sure I don’t dance on it for at least a few days, although a few weeks is probably wiser and more realistic.

Standing front tucks are evil I tell you! They look cool, but I’ve hurt myself similarly, less seriously, at least 3 times in the process of learning them. From this I have 2 lessons to choose from: stop doing somersaults… or after I’ve recovered and strengthened both my ankles and legs properly train for them a LOT more to make sure I get some mega height every time so I can land safely.

That’s enough of my wining – I’ll have to be fine by tomorrow, I’ve got a magic job to perform at.

Now how about some comedy from the gym on Sunday

Training with Bruce, B-Boy Just Me, is awesome fun – the dude knows his flips and is a really good teacher! He had my brother landing front somersaults in 20 minutes! I’d already learnt the basic technique for fronts on my own, but he helped add a bit of height to my jump and spotted me doing a few back tucks. The Allstar Aviators tumbling class in Kirkstall helped me learn the technique for back tucks, but I’d never attempted one on my own. Within a couple of minutes of Bruce spotting me, I went for it and did it all by myself, aren’t I a big boy. The first couple were pretty funny, almost burying my face in the floor, or falling over backwards. But in a few minutes I was landing, I use the term ‘landing’ loosely here, them on the gym floor. Yey!

By the end of the session I was going less backwards, much more vertical and nailing the landing better than in the following video, but this is the funniest one from Sunday:

As you can see, I clearly bailed that first back tuck before I’d even taken off the floor hahaha. Obviously I didn’t do that again! You’ve just got to go for it! Although I won’t be going for much for the next month or two

Hope you’ve learnt something from my experience – practice your flips safely now kiddies!

Time to take my frozen peas off my ankle.

Instead of a quote to end with today, I feel like adding something even more fun. I am pretty bored after all!

Yesterday was my main man Phil Tang’s Birthday, whoop! So I made him a little video montage of his recent b-boying greatness, unfortunately I didn’t have time to upload it before we had to go out and have the best night ever with the b-boys!

So here it is a day late, or 364 days early…

Happy Birthday B-Boy Philthee

Last night town was absolutely dead, hardly anybody anywhere – it was freezing and there’s an abundance of snow everywhere! However, WE ARE THE PARTY, so we had an absolutely awesome night jamming where ever we went… some were even breaking on the street… in the slush and snow! Dedication or what!

Phil was of course killing it, busting out flares to the max and everyone else was repping hard. I even popped out a couple of front flips and everyone went mental, cause they’d never seen me do it before ha ha Phil started throwing down on the road while the traffic lights were on red, then the Police turned up and told us they’d seen us obstructing traffic on CCTV… Bruce’s response – “Yeah it was sick wasn’t it?! He was killing it!” hahaha.

Monday was also Aahid’s, Afro’s and Shane’s Birthday and if I’m right in thinking Jingle’s Birthday on Tuesday too? I might as well just say Happy Birthday to all the b-boys who’s Birthday it was recently, you’re all lovely and I hope you enjoyed yourselves!

Now I’ve got to go do some real work, so here’s your ‘quote’ for today…

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Philthee
Happy Birthday to you!

Me

So 2010 is off to some sort of a start, has it been good for you so far? Well, I’m rather enjoying it at least, although the snow is getting a little bit annoying now! I might venture out into the garden and make a snow b-boy before it all melts, if I can be bothered braving the harsh conditions!

One of my resolutions for the New Year is to learn somersaults! So, just 4 days into the year I used the motivational words of Arnie – “Do ittt! Come onnn, do it nowww!” to give me the courage to just go for it and try a front somersault on a hard floor for the first time ever Trevor and… nobody died! Quite the opposite, I’m very much alive and it felt pretty good to land it without injuring my ankles as I have in the past when practising standing front tucks on grass and thin mats. Booyah!

So I suppose you want to see this miraculous event…

B-Boy Twist’s first ever front tuck somersault on a hard floor

You might also notice some new moves thrown in for your viewing pleasure there too. I’m still working on that, so shhhhh, don’t tell anyone!

I’ve just been training at the gym today with my brother and at the end of the session I managed to build up the confidence to try another front somersault. I seemed to be thinking about it a bit too much and scared myself a little, so when I eventually came to do it I didn’t feel like I set it up properly. As soon as I jumped I thought ‘Ahh, I don’t think I’m gonna make it!’ but to my surprise I landed it perfectly :O whoop!

So the moral of the story is – stop faffing about and DO IT!

I plan on practising my front tucks a lot more to ensure I can do it consistently and then I’ll start practising back tucks. Which should be a lot easier in terms of getting plenty of height in the jump, but slightly more terrifying at the fact that you’re throwing yourself in the air and using the momentum of your legs to trust you rotate over your head 360 degrees and land safely on your feet again… and not your head.

At least with front flips you’re pretty much guaranteed to rotate enough to make sure your head isn’t in danger of the floor contacting it at high speeds and severe bleeding occurring as a result. Unlike we’ve seen happen to drunken idiots who think they can backflip when we’re breaking in clubs on nights out. The moral of that story – if you’re an idiot and you’ve been consuming alcoholic beverages – keep at least 1 foot in contact with the floor at all times, somersaults aren’t a wise idea pisshead.

“I ain’t got time to bleed.”

Blain – Predator