Last Sunday me and Phil ventured down to Wakefield for Attention to Detail to attend Flo’s workshop.

Here are my key points I took away from what was covered:

• Style – use all your body parts in creative ways to add original flavour to your moves. The feet do most of the moves, but your heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes add the style
• Create new top rock moves and interpret the same moves on the floor to come up with new footwork.
• Musicality – listening to the track and picking up on the recurring accents such as cymbal crashes every 8 or 16 beats etc. Make sure you go down to the floor at the start or end of a bar (on the accent beat and not randomly part way through a count of 8 beats) and hit your freezes on beat.
• To contrast with freezes and fast footwork try to add slow elongated moves when there are long droney notes and accents in the music – this adds another dimension to your throwdown instead of everything being aggressive and as fast as possible. Mixing up the tempo and dynamics adds style and makes your set more interesting.
• Power moves – for whipping and kicking power train sweeps, both directions with both legs. Then practice entering the power move from sweeps. Sweep to flares, sweep to mills, swipes etc.

Practising power moves brought us to the end of the workshop…

I had previously done one of Flo’s workshops covering the same areas a year or two ago, but it was great to be reminded of the key aspects that a lot of people are unaware of when they’re breaking.

It’s all about the music, it is a dance after all!

I just wanted to write down these key points to review what I learned before I forgot again, but maybe you will have gained some useful knowledge from it too… and if Flo holds another workshop you’ll know to check it out because it’s all amazing stuff, going much deeper than just how to do this move or that move, instead covering the stuff that really matters for those who already have a bit of experience breaking.

Laters potatoes!

And why not a quote from Flo for this post:

“Her life long ambition is to go see Stevie Wonder?!?

What kind of an ambition is that??

My life long ambition is for Stevie Wonder…to come see me!”

Florent Gonthier

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

Anyway, here are the details to win a pair of SportStyle Asics and breakdance mat. Quite a cool competition challenge I think, I might have to enter myself… I could do with some new kicks to train in!

Find Your Flavour and win a pair of ASICS SportStyle trainers and breakdance mat

Win a pair of trainers from ASICS SportStyle and one of the first ever breakdancing mats – start the year the freshest kicks by sending us your freshest pics!

To celebrate the launch of their SportStyle range, ASICS have created the first ever breakdancing mat. Put together with the help of award winning B-Boy Mouse, it is designed to teach novices the basic moves through simple, guided steps. One lucky entrant will be able to win one of these mats and pull off the toprock, sixstep and even the wakfreeze. The winner will also receive a pair of ASICS SportStyle trainers to practise new moves in true style.

How to win

Winning is simple – find your flavour and photograph it!

Started breaking in front of a local attraction? Dressed your dog in a tracksuit? Maybe you spotted something quirky, like funny graffiti or discovered a really funky record in your parent’s music collection.

If it’s got flavour, it has a chance of winning

Simply take your photo, ‘fan’ TooMuchFlavour on Facebook, then post your photo to the wall for a chance to win.

For further details, example photos and to watch a video of what happened when the ASICS SportStyle breakdancing mat took to the streets of London, go to http://toomuchflavour.co.uk/competition_entry.html

Ok, that’s all from Dave, back to me - they’re claiming its the first ever breakdancing mat. Not sure what they mean by that, cardboard and lino were used way back in the late 70′s… but I  remember being shown a hilarious video of Alfonso Ribeiro, the dude who played Carlton in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, releasing a similar product way back in the day (1985)!

That’s enough comedy for today. Remember to get taking your flavoursome photos to post to the TooMuchFlavour facebook fan page!

“And tell mum and dad it’s the safe way to break and pop. Not the things you shouldn’t try.”

Alfonso Ribeiro

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!

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

I watched the footage of the Freerun Champs earlier this year, which Livewire won, but nowhere featured the awesome b-boying show with Junior, Cico, Blinxx and more as well as Diversity, who won Britain’s Got Talent! Have a look for yourselves, some mighty impressive moves!

Damn! I wish my planche would be somewhere near as impressive as Livewire’s or Junior’s… I’ve been working on it a bit recently though. I’ll be back on the hardcore no foot press up and human flag training soon! You’ll see… you’ll alllll seeeee!

Here’s a link to Livewire’s YouTube channel. It’s definitely worth checking out his many other videos. There’s even one of him battling with Trinity Warriors against Leeds very own Ghetlow Pirates and others over 2 years ago!

Today’s quote:

“The thing about hip-hop is that it’s from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized.”

Russell Simmons

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Where are you going? …Before you leave, take a second to check out my new Funky Fresh Threads clothing designs. I came up with a bad ass paint splattered design similar to the logo on my video blog posts the other day. The amazing thing about the store that print them, Zazzle, is that you can customise your order entirely and choose whatever style of top and colour you want. Have a look and see if there is a style you’d look fresh in. Personally I like the hoodies, but the basic t-shirts are pretty cheap ass! Make sure you use the Promotional Code: UKWINTERSHIP to get free shipping before 10th December!

Move Biatch! ICameToDance.com (Dark Fabric) Hoody by icametodance

Check out some of the elements of hip hop in its original form with popping, locking, bboying, rapping and DJing. They even threw in a couple of magic tricks in their routine -funny stuff! I was planning on doing similar bits of magic in my throwdowns… just another reminder that everything you think you have created has probably been done before!

ELECTRO ROCK – A BBOY EVENT FROM LONDON 1985

Man, I wish I had a tracksuit as cool as that…

This is the middle part of a few videos of the whole event, you can check out the rest of the videos on that guys YouTube channel – he’s got some pretty awesome old school videos. I’m currently listening to The Specials live in 1979.

“All you punks and all you teds,
National Front and natty dreads,
Mods, rockers, hippies, and skinheads
Keep on fighting till you’re dead!”

The Specials – Do the Dog

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!

If you’re planning on going to the main event this Sunday 15th, make sure you get there early to get a ticket, or buy one online in advance, especially if you’re travelling a long distance. It’s probably as bad as being the fat smelly kid at school that nobody likes when you arrive at a venue 2 and a half hours away and are told you can’t go in The  maximum capacity is only about 350 or so, which means it will sell out fast!

The line up looks amazing, it’d be worth going to see the battles on Sunday at the main event if it was just the b-boys on the reserve list but with international and UK invites including B-Boy Mouse, Hat Solo, Mounir etc. you know it’s going to be off the hook! The Just Jam live band/percussionists will be playing some funky beats for the breakers to dance to over the weekend so I believe. Even the Pre Party this Saturday 14th November with some surprise showcase battles  is set to be an awesome night. Hat Solo and Mounir will be running workshops during the day too, if you’re free – get your ass down there this weekend!

You can find all the details for the event here: http://www.ukbboy.info/forum/showthread.php?t=15084

Have a gander at Doy Travel’s bad ass trailer from last years event if you need persuading…

Bad Taste Cru Presents ‘Just Jam’ Feat Just Do it, Mouse, Hat Solo, Duzk from Le Doy on Vimeo.

For all you bboy geeks who spend hours scouring the internet for bboying videos you might not have seen yet, there are some more battle videos from last years Just Jam by Doy here: http://www.ukbboy.info/forum/showthread.php?t=14111 if by any chance you haven’t seen them yet.

Have a good time if you go this weekend! Who knows, I might still make it.

“No great work is impossible; the word itself says I’m Possible”.

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