The Freestyle Mindset — Rediscovering FreeStyle #3
“Be in love with the climb, not the summit” — Mark Manson
Something I seem to have forgotten for the past few months. As I was unable to reach the summit (gather an audience for my blog) I decided to stop climbing. Which is a logical decision! But then when you stop climbing, you are ultimately falling behind.
So after a long time and some struggle, I decided to get back to the climb! Yes! I will write for just the sake of expressing my beliefs about freestyle football. The audience is just a factor I cannot control, and I have to live with it. What else can I do other than write?
Picking back up from where I left, I am continuing the series Rediscovering FreeStyle where I try my best to search for the true meaning of Freestyle in freestyle football. If you are unfamiliar with this series, just open this page in a new window and have a quick peek into what I am talking about.
Growing up as a freestyler, I have experienced several events which made me question the basis and rules on which this community functions. ‘You are not practicing if you are not uploading videos’; ‘You are not a complete freestyler if you are not good in lowers’ and many such other obsolete rules.
When I started writing this publication, I always had a perception of the current generation being wrong on how they perceive freestyle football. But then, who am I to decide? I am not really a high level freestyle footballer, or have any accolades for that matter. So what makes me have an important say in this matter? Well, somehow it does.
But for Today, I have someone else to take on this topic and answer my questions on how one should or should not perceive freestyle football.
Welcome one of the most experienced personality in freestyle football! — Gleb BenGau Karpov
Well, if you do not know Gleb BenGau Karpov and call yourself a freestyler, I want to tell you that you are not worthy to call yourself a freestyler yet! Haha.
BenGau is a freestyle footballer hailing from Russia and is one of the most legendary upperbody freestyler out there. Starting out in the beginning of 2009, he has been a judge at several high level competitions in recent years and is one of the most experienced person who can comment on freestyle.
One of the hottest topic in freestyle football trending is the concept of Originality. Who is original? What is original? Why is it original? So many questions! But the trained eye always looks at things differently.
Bengau looks at this topic from two different perspective.
- As a judge, he believes some people do actually show originality in competition. And it makes a huge advantage for the judges. There are different scale of estimation where it’s not only people’s hard physical work on execution but there is a lot of work on creating a new move itself from nowhere. And huge work on building mindset aimed for bringing that original style on a stage. In his own words — “There are no standards for me as a judge. Either you are original or not. How do i find that difference? If you’re asking me as a judge then it’s easy — you just know which moves are often to be used in battle and which aren’t.”
- As a freestyler, originality is rather a feeling according to him. That “creative/original” mindset always leaves its marks on people’s freestyle. If you mention any “original” freestyler then you find out they are not ‘original’ in one specific part or trick. They build their original style by mixing tricks. “Moreover there’s an annoying trend in originality topic. That trend originates from an old division of “hardcore” and “creative” freestylers. For me FX would have been one of the most original guys with his lowers on competition. I’m not sure about his mindset as I’ve never met him. But nowadays such way of combining lowers is exception unlike another another transition to weird sole stall.”
Well said Sir!
So why is there such a decreasing trend in the number of original tricks that freestylers are bringing on the stage ?
“I think it sends us to the “trick hunting” topic. Nowadays freestylers often rely on appreciation they get for what they do. The most certain way to get the appreciation is to do tricks that made the creators hyped. Like if you see that trick X explode the crowd in competition then you recognize that move as a favorable trick and try to learn it.”
“Those who wanna succeed in competition just hunt for others creation. Those who wanna express themselves, who wanna find their own style are making content for those hunters. Such division is caused by the rising value of competitions, social media statistics(followers,likes and stuff) and decreased standards of appreciation in community in process of it’s growth. The bigger community, the harder it is to remain individual.”
Well, that is a very normal process for an expanding community. In the process of its growth, It tends to suck people in who are attracted by certain amount of tricks and hence are keen on learning on that specific trick only. They know that they do not have the burden to create for someone in the future, they are just in a race to be at a high level themselves.
This decreased burden is what pushes them into adopting whatever they are comfortable with. And hence the lacking creativity.
“Artists are not always recognized in society. Admit it. And those who choose the way of artist should accept this fact to avoid spontaneous depressions and other stuff caused by incorrect perception of reality” — BenGau
SO HOW DOES ONE DO IT? How do i become creative? Or even for reference, how do you be creative in your process?
BenGau — “All I do is just look for new moves and concepts in uppers. Unfortunately uppers are different from other parts of freestyle where new way of juggling could build the whole new style. Uppers are about control so you gotta be a skilled one if you wanna make something exceptional in uppers. In fact some of my tricks that people found to be”hardcore” are sometimes not that really hard and vice versa — tricks that people recognize as original are deadly hard to make looking good. My ultimate goal is to have my own style , my individual corner of uppers where i don’t feel pressure, haunting or something else. And that’s where I had actually succeeded till some people started to use my moves in their regular uppers with regular concepts. That’s the way my moves became a part of “hardcore” world. That actually brings some stress in my life because i need to find another pacific corner of uppers with new tricks that have never been done before. Repeat. That’s how creating became a competition in my life.”
Answering to my question about creativity being part of hardcore stuff he explained there’s no border between hardcore and originality. There’s just people’s mind following the existing concepts or creating it’s own ones.
Building the mindset for adding creativity to or even exploring your own style is the ultimate key for success.
And any message to the young and budding freestylers out there ?
BenGau — My message is simple. Respect basics! haha. No matter what you’re doing in freestyle, you’ll never determine yourself in freestyle without that special type of meditation called “basics training”.
That was probably the most deep and insightful conversation I had with someone regarding freestyle football. Experience speaks for itself, doesn’t it? I would like to send my warm regards to Gleb BenGau Karpov for giving me so much insight on various topics. Below is his story on how he got started with uppers. The thing about Legends is that they all started from Zero.
“After I started practicing freestyle i met the usual problems of beginners, especially back when I started, I think. I didn’t know where to speak with freestylers. And actually there was nothing to speak about because I had zero skills. So I spent hours training. But out of a 4 hour session I spent 1–1.5 h training and the rest speaking to a friend, sitting on the ground and watching around and so on. I was so unproductive! From the beginning I started my hunting strategy. General sense was to find a person who started freestyle at the same period of time and to start “competing” with him. I found a lowers guy who started 3 months earlier than me. His improvement was one of the best in Russia in 2009. And the further we went the bigger was difference between us. I was a usual beginner with usual improvement speed. When i did my first beck atw that guy made 4 amatw nt (or maybe 5). I met him and others on Moscow qualifiers of Red Bull Street Style. I went there like a spectator because I was too scared to compete. There I found out how big is gap between us. And seeing how real freestylers train, I saw this inner fire, passion and sporting anger. I totally understood my problem and started changing my game, I was much more focused, I stopped wasting time. But it was autumn and I didn’t have a gym to practice when it sucked outside. So I decided to try out sit-downs to be at least at basic level when winter comes and lowers time is over. But after 2 week I was in stuck with it. I was bored and felt it’s not a thing I wanted to spend my winter on. I realized I really need an explosion on my freestyle so as not to stop it over the long winter season (which is 6 months in Russia). The only thing left to try was upperbody freestyle. I felt if I do not get any success there I will quit this thing which I liked but didn’t have any talent for. That was 1st October 2009. I began with the basic headstall and poor dirty atm which is zero. I promised myself I will not hit 1000 side-headstalls (1600 was World record of Turlakov, previously there was legendary side-heads battle between Jesus Gomez from Spain and we1rd from Russia, so side-heads were an easy trick to estimate success, I thought) until 1 December. If i do so then I will record a video for WPUC2 (deadline was 6 December). So it felt like a dramatic game with simplest rules. I practiced almost every day and i tried to improve my record every day. I continued my hunting game doing side head battles with different freestylers I had met earlier during RBSS. Day by day people in Russian community cracked jokes like “hey watch out here’s a future side-head record holder, he did 10 side heads!”. Then i did more and more and one day Turlakov wrote me a message — “You can beat my record, but I’ll get it again”. That happened when I did 37 side heads. It was hardly imaginable for beginner like me that famous guy will take my attempt to save my freestyle career so serious. I felt more motivated than ever. I did 1192 side headstall on 21 November and proceeded to recording my first upper video. I became more or less famous in Russia, people knew that I’m a guy who did 1000 side heads so it was a great success. But the way i caught it was even greater success. After that I was hungry for uppers and that’s how I’ve became an upper guy just as the most people since then have heard about me. There’s a story behind it, right? :)”
If you have come this far you are awesome and you probably do not have a date for this Valentine. Thanks for being with me till the end of this journey. This is the third part of my new series for my publication Freestyle Works. It is an independent freestyle football publication right now and I run it to spread new and unique ideas about freestyle football.
Give a clap if you liked what you read. Follow this publication for the next part of this series. Talk to me down in the comments section if you have any suggestions or a demand for me.
