After Flo’s awesome workshop, reviewed in the previous post, I spontaneously decided to enter the battle at Attention to Detail, even though I hadn’t been training very much due to recovering from my sprained ankle.

So obviously my name came out of the hat first to battle, against Si – B-Boy Crackroc (which is spelled incorrectly in the video below, my bad).

So lets get straight to the point, here’s the qualifying battle:

As it transpired, Crackroc won and even though he got lucky hitting that beat at the end of his throwdown, he had a lot of style and different dynamics. So well done to Si…

Next time I won’t be holding back

The rest of the jam was awesome as always, incredible cyphers and battles with a few bboys from Scotland there representing.

Unfortunately the next Attention to Detail jam is on 21st March when the Masterz Crew are performing at a Castleford Tigers rugby match. So we’ll be dancing around on the pitch, but you should still go check out ATD in Wakefield, it’s the best regular bboy jam ever in the Universe!

“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”

Gore Vidal

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!

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

Just a quick video update from training on Tuesday… I’ve been practising this bad ass flag freeze to windmill. I’m rather impressed with it myself  so thanks to Bruce for suggesting I add a coin drop to the end of my flag freeze!

Obviously this was the first session practising it, so it might take a while to smooth out, but here’s an inside scoop for you peoples!

I thought I would mix up the tunage a bit and surprise you with the 5th Symphony! Check me out killing those beats! Ha ha.

I’m going to the gym now so I’ll practise rolling about on the floor a bit more and then it’s the tumbling class later. Hopefully I’ll perfect my standing front somersault so I can bust it out when I’m breaking!

Until next time hombres…

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

Warren Buffet

Keep it real!

Here’s a video filmed on Saturday which I’ve only just had chance to edit together and upload. Since then I’ve done even more fun stuff, so I’ll put that together in a separate video for your personal enjoyment in the near future. I don’t want you to get too excited, but it’ll feature me and others spinning around very fast in the air.

B-Boy Goodies of Loveliness and The Masterz Showcase Battle Highlights

If you’re admiring that fine ICameToDance.com clothing and wish to acquire a top to look cool in just click here now and receive free shipping when you use the promotional code UKWINTERSHIP. The light coloured tops are significantly cheaper and you can get yourself a basic white t-shirt for a measly £13 – do it! Although I’m rather pleased with my black hoody and I even wore it out on Saturday night. Everyone loved it long time

I know the design looks very bright and pretty funky with the paint splatters… I think it suits it like that. But for you boring plain people who can’t handle it, I’m working on some simpler designs to satisfy your mediocre needs.

Unfortunately there wasn’t very much usable footage of our showcase battle from the Shed Bar on Thursday night, so there’s only a short little bit at the end of today’s video. You should have been there really! And if you were, thanks for coming

To end with how about an appropriate quote for how I feel at the moment…

“If you can read this make me a sandwich!”

There is also a massive range of really cool b-boying clothing, including caps, t-shirts and hoodies available on Zazzle designed by other people. Check all the breakdance clothes out here.

The video says it all…

Our showcase battle at the Shed Bar was supposed to be next Thursday, but it’s been moved forward. So unfortunately a couple of our crew members can’t make it – not to worry, I got some bad assssss b-boys in to cover. It’s gonna be off the hook! … If there ever were a hook in the first place…

“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”

Louis Hector Berlioz

Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!

Greetings Earthlings!

Hope you’re all feeling fine and dandy today… if not both, at least one. Dandy is always a bonus!

I’m in a strange mood at the moment – quite happy yet a little bit sad, absolutely knackered, aching and bruised but still energetic enough to whip up a massive feast before bed… I’m smiling so I suppose my positivity is living on as always!

I’ve been a bit retarded recently and haven’t been going to bed until stupid o’clock, so training at midday the last two sessions has been exhausting as I’ve only just managed to get in a couple of hours of sleep  beforehand. Which is absolutely ridiculous – SORT YOURSELF OUT TWIST! Okay, but posting this blog in the early hours of the morning isn’t helping…

Today, which has now become yesterday or Monday, we had a funny training session at the gym. I don’t think anyone was feeling on top form to be honest. My achilles tendon seemed to be aching a lot after Saturday night’s dancing and I couldn’t even top rock comfortably. On top of that, after I did one power combo set my shoulder expanded to reveal its lovely windmill bruise again. I really do need to stop rolling about on it! Butttt I managed to get out the longest power combo in the history of my b-boying today, which doesn’t look incredibly impressive if you watch the video. However in terms of personal goals I feel like I have achieved something reasonably good.

The exhausted crew aka The Masterz training video…

Featuring B-Boy Puddles, B-Boy SchoolPumps and B-Boy Moonshine!

I had better go get some fuel in the form of food and sleep for tomorrows indoor climbing adventures. I’m definitely feeling like tearing it up at Tiger Tiger as well! Find your chastity belts ladies, this b-boy is gonna be going off!

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

Henry Ford

If you take approximately 14 seconds of your life to scroll to the top of the page, enter your current email address in the box on the right, then click subscribe you can be notified by FeedBurner each time I add a new fun post or video  for you to enjoy whenever it is convenient. Isn’t that just dandy? No? How about fine? … Interesting, neither fine nor dandy – who would have thought that day would come?!

Good night ladies and gentlemen! Safe journey home… oh, you’re already there…

It’s currently 3D Week on Channel 4 and Sainsbury’s provided free 3D glasses for the occasion. My brother went to Sainsbury’s a couple of weeks ago and acquired about 9 pairs…even though there’s only 4 of us in the house. So that’d be why they ran out and you probably couldn’t get any for yourselves.

Here is the link to my test 3D video from training:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ03SzuFFRs

Select the appropriate 3D Viewing Option on YouTube underneath the video player. For the Channel 4 3D week glasses you need to choose “Amber/Blue Glasses: Full Colour” but to be honest I’ve had the best three dimensional results from choosing the “Cross-Eyed” viewing option then going cross-eyed until the left and right video’s overlap and become focused. It looks surprisingly cool whereas using the 3D glasses looks pants because I didn’t film it correctly.

Please be beware that going cross-eyed for long periods of time can be risky! Apparently severe winds are a lot more likely when you’re cross-eyed (even inside) and if you’re not careful, you will definitely become permanently cross-eyed for the rest of your life… according to my grandma anyway…

There are now a few random 3D videos utilising YouTube’s new 3D viewing options, just search for “yt3d:enable=true” and that should show you all the 3D enabled videos.

I found a cool video which has a mixture of breaking, juggling and magic in 3D, not at the same time though – they haven’t got anything on me or B-Boy Magic Superman ha ha. Sylvester the Jester is a funny magician though, I had the pleasure of seeing him live a couple of years ago, most entertaining!

“What I do today is important because I am paying a day of my life for it.

What I accomplish must be worthwhile because the price is high.”

SUBSCRIBE BIATCH!

Yesterday I went training with my brother at the gym, b-boying in the dance studio for a while and then a workout. After that intense weekend and the days training I was pretty pooped so when I got home after  a couple of hours I had to have a lie down.

Fizzle…no, sorry, The Phasion (as he is now known) phoned me mid nap and woke me up to see if I was able to help them out. The Jigsaw Cru were booked to do a show at The Plug in Sheffield that night but Hau and Afro were unavailable so The Phasion and B-Boy Energy needed an extra crew member. I jumped in the shower,  wolfed down my roast dinner (not at the same time) and our expedition began!

Na-na na-na na-na na-na B-BOY!

We got to The Plug and jammed a bit to warm up. We were going to be battling 3 other breakers in a showcase battle on stage. The other crew were damn good all round – nice style and smooth power.  I think I had seen them all battling before at Fresh Jive and other events but it was far too loud in the club to even talk to them and get to know them. Ah well, show time…

Showcase breakdance battle – The Plug, Sheffield 10.11.09

The Jigsaw Cru plus myself, B-Boy Twist on the left, Sheffield and Manchester b-boys and b-girl on the right.

“Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?”

Bob Marley

Ho ho ho, Christmas must have come early… What an awesome weekend of bboying treats that was

Keep reading cause I’ve got 3 lovely videos for your entertainment today, and I know you’ll particularly enjoy the last one…

Street Dance Competition – Friday at Mission

Friday night at Mission was LoveDough, as I mentioned a couple of posts ago they were having a street dance battle  with a £200 cash prize up for grabs.

We got there at about 11pm to enter and get warmed up. I’d texted to get myself + 7 on the guestlist,  so we paid £5 in, even though we were on the guestlist and competing, but Philthee and War who came down later got in for free on my guestlist. Mother truckers! Quite a few bad ass bboys turned up which I didn’t expect, so we got a cypher going on the nasty concrete floor before the competition began as the room filled and the crowd grew.

The whole event was hilarious, clearly not a bboy battle – the stage was awful, it was like dancing on coarse sandpaper painted black and the DJ was playing shit-hop. I still gave it a go though and busted out a few moves, saving some in case I got through to the next round, ha, never mind. I received a fairly decent response from the audience – woooooo, and so on. Despite that the dancers who went through to the next round after the qualifiers seemed to be 8 people picked at random. The dancer who won overall was pretty good though, a nice fusion of different styles of hip hop dance. Well done to him, whoever he was.

Here’s my 45 second throwdown in all its glory:

I wasn’t too bothered about not getting through, especially as B-Boy Flo and other’s didn’t make it either. Fun was had and I ended up dancing the night away till about 5am with lots of lovely ladies They just can’t resist the b-boys! It was cool seeing friends I hadn’t bumped into for months too.

The Fresh Factory – Saturday in Huddersfield

My brother and I arrived a bit late, thankfully just after the popping qualifiers, right on time for the b-boy battles. Don’t worry though, I still received more than a life times viewing of body popping through the evening.

The atmosphere was really good and friendly! I managed to get a seat and actually see what was going on for the whole evening, without even having to struggle and push my way past any unusually tall people that always seem to appear right in front of you at crowded events.

The body popping battles were impressive and there were some amazing contestants. Shuffles won overall, whoop. But to be honest once you’ve seen more than a couple of minutes of body popping you’re probably going to fall asleep whenever you see it again. Maybe that’s just my opinion…

The bboy battle was where it was at! Flo won, cause he is pretty damn awesome. Some day I’ll have power moves like that, but hopefully I’ll still have hair as well.

I jumped in the cyphers a few times through the night, mostly at the end along with B-Boy Just Me, who for some reason was wearing a full green body suit hahaha! That was damn good fun, it’s nice to have him back from Germany. Unfortunately my phone had taken a strong dislike to me recording so much video so I only filmed a couple of my throwdowns:

Well done to all those who organised the event, you should do it more frequently than in 4 months time!

At the end of the night I was chatting to Flo, our conversation went as follows:

Flo: “Are you battling tomorrow?”

Me: “Errr, I don’t think so. I’m not sure if there are any places left. “

Jamie happened to be stood nearby so we called him over and asked if there were any spaces available to enter. So Flo continued…

Flo: “Are you battling???”

Me: “Hmmm, maybeee.”

Flo: “Let me ask you again, are you battling?!?”

Me: “YES! Yes I’m battling tomorrow!”

Haha, I definitely needed that little push and I had an ace time on Sunday. Thanks Flo!

Attention to Detail jam – Sunday in Wakefield

I fuelled up at Subway and got there early for the battle. I know, I was amazed by our time keeping too. The whole jam was funky as it always is, phat beats and cool people all having fun!

I thought up a little surprise before setting off that I could throw in the mix and was excited about my first proper solo battle (Friday night at Mission didn’t really count). The qualifiers were only 1 round each, and I was up against B-Boy Lil Jay. Damn. The dude’s got skills! I thought I’d let him go first so I could see what I needed to do to beat him. Personally I thought I’d done enough, but for some reason I lost, boohoo. Ah well, no shame, Lil Jay is awesome and I had a great time!

I took my shiny HD camcorder and filmed it all, however when I was copying the video files from the SD card to my hard drive my PC thought it’d be hilarious to crash and corrupt my memory card, loosing all the files. Nice one. Thankfully Seb filmed it all and he hooked me up with the footage of my battle… Check it out!

B-Boy Twist vs Lil Jay at Attention to Detail

Hope you enjoyed watching “the Paul Daniels of the bboy scene” I didn’t get through but I danced a little bit in the cyphers and got to sit down to rest my tired little self. Plus there was the other 6″s of my footlong Sub to devour,  mmmmmmm yeeeeeeah. There were some dope battles through the afternoon. Jingles ended up just beating Ryan in the final. Nice one Jinglist!

What an intense weekend!

“A good fight should be like a small play…but played seriously. When the opponent expands, l contract. When he contracts, l expand. And when there is an opportunity… l do not hit…it hits all by itself (shows his fist).”

Bruce Lee

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